14 DAY TRIAL // The highly anticipated Wine 3.0 release of the open-source and cross-platform compatibility layer for running Windows apps and games on Linux and UNIX-like systems is almost here.
A second Release Candidate (RC) has just been released, coming just one week after the first Release Candidate, and it brings a bunch of bug fixes and some new features like support for the Armel hardware architecture. A total of 17 regressions were addressed in Wine 3.0 RC2, improving support for various Windows games and applications.
Among these, we can mention Civilization IV, Fallout 4 (Steam), BioShock 2, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Avatar, Faery: Legends of Avalon, Deathspank, Chronicles of Mystara, Of Orcs and Men, Banished, Magic Duels, Lichdom, STO, Rocket League, Factorio, SpellForce 2, UE4 tech demos, and uTorrent 2.2.1 build 25302.
GNU Hurd microkernel support improved
In addition to improving support for the Windows games and apps mentioned above, the second Wine 3.0 Release Candidate also fixes build issues for the GNU Hurd microkernel. A complete list of all the changes implemented in this release can be found attached at the end of the article or in the official changelog for more details.
Wine 3.0 RC2 is available for download right now through our website if you want to take it for a test drive, but you should keep in mind that this is still a pre-release version that might contain unresolved issues or unknown bugs. The final Wine 3.0 release is expected to arrive by the end of the year.
Wine 3.0 promises to be a major release adding an Android driver to allow users to use Wine on Google's Android mobile operating system, Direct3D 11 support, Windows 7 as default Windows version for all new Wine installations, a new Direct3D command stream, and message-mode pipes.