14 DAY TRIAL // Coming hot on the heels of the major Wine 2.0 release, Wine Staging 2.0 is now available for download with a bunch of improvements on its own end, allowing you to run some of the latest Windows games and applications.
Apart from all the new features and enhancements implemented in Wine 2.0, Wine Staging 2.0 adds support for several new windowscodecs image formats, better support for semi-transparent layered windows, improved emulation of deferred rendering contexts, and some other, smaller bug fixes and under-the-hood changes.
"The Wine Staging 2.0 release doesn't have any special meaning as we don't have a code freeze or a stable version, but we still spent some time to test various games/applications. We have summarized some of the more interesting test results related to Vulkan and DirectX 11 in a separate blog post," reads the announcement.
Play DOOM (2016) and Hitman: Absolution on Linux
But Wine Staging 2.0 adds a lot of improvements that would allow you to run some of the latest Windows games and applications on your GNU/Linux distribution. The development team led by Michael Müller is reporting on some of them, proving everyone that Direct3D 11 is not completely unusable on Wine.
Therefore, if you've been waiting for some DOOM (2016) action on your Linux gaming rig, the wait is now over, as Wine Staging 2.0 supports it on Vulkan. Hitman: Absolution is another game that requires Direct3D 11 and works pretty well with Wine Staging 2.0 on Linux, as well as the Unigene Heaven (DX11) benchmarking app.
Even though it was ported to Linux last year by Feral Interactive, the Windows version of the Tomb Raider (2013) game is also playable, and so is Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, both requiring Direct3D 11. Need For Speed Most Wanted (2012) is also playable, but for now, there are some serious performance issues.
Wine Staging 2.0 also brings some major improvements for the Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy, Battle.net, and uPlay clients, which you can run in Windows 7 mode to download and play your favorite Windows games. You can now download Wine Staging 2.0 or install it from the software repositories of your favorite Linux OS.
