WINE 10 is still not an emulator, but Windows apps won't know the difference
New double-digit vintage goes well with all sorts of things
After 32 years of maturation, even now, WINE is Not an Emulator, but it can work alongside them to run Windows apps on Arm Linux.
WINE 10 is even more mature than it sounds. However, we fear that you may well have had your fill of vinological wordplay and it's probably turning bitter. This version improves the handling of multiple areas, including high-definition screens, defaulting to Wayland, running several different types of Arm code at once, and more.
The WINE project started in 1993, although 15 years of work followed before it hit version 1.0. Since WINE 3 in 2018, though, the project has released a major version annually. The Reg FOSS desk has looked at WINE 7, WINE 8, and WINE 9, should you want to refresh your memory on how it's shaping up.
Linux is a major platform these days, with more native applications than ever before – and of course WINE also supports macOS, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. Even so, most of these platforms have either dropped 32-bit support or are in the process of doing so. Windows 11, macOS, and most mainstream Linux distros are 64-bit only, and the next version of FreeBSD will be. Arm64 hardware is also getting increasingly common. This means WINE still has important uses. As well as running 64-bit apps on 64-bit systems, it also allows 32-bit Windows apps to run on pure 64-bit OSes – even OSes such as macOS that won't run their own old 32-bit binaries. WINE can also work with external x86-on-Arm emulators such as FEX to run 32 and 64-bit Windows binaries on pure 64-bit Arm OSes.

WINE 10, with both Word 2003 and Word 97 running side-by-side, Control Panel, even a CMD prompt – click to enlarge
The developers have updated WINE 10's display support in multiple areas. If it finds Wayland, it uses it directly, although X11 still works. Support for next-gen OpenGL replacement Vulkan is now at parity with OpenGL, including rendering child windows. On high-definition displays, non-HiDPI apps are automatically rescaled. It has integrated support for Windows-style media decoding – now via GStreamer or FFMPEG – as well as .NET, MSHTML, JavaScript, and more.
- WINE 9.0 improves ability to run 32-bit Windows apps on 64-bit-only xNix
- Patches to make WINE work on Wayland display server protocol are being merged
- WINE Windows translation layer has matured like a fine... you get the picture
- Version 7 of WINE is better than ever at running Windows apps where they shouldn't
Support for Arm on Windows is complicated. As we found in 2023, there aren't that many fully Arm-native Windows apps yet. So, in addition to its all-native Arm64 ABI, Microsoft has another one called Arm64EC for creating hybrid Arm64X binaries, which allow a single process to contain a mixture of Arm64 and x86-64 code. It sounds horrendously complicated and inefficient to us, but either way, WINE 10 now supports this.
Aside from boring business apps, thanks to devices such as Valve's Steam Deck in recent years and soon the Lenovo Legion Go S, running AAA Windows games on Linux via Steam OS has become fairly mainstream. That's helping improve WINE too.
There are now nine months and counting until the end of Windows 10 support. A lot of people with Windows 10 PCs that can't upgrade will be looking for alternatives, and WINE 10 will be there to help them. ®