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Revision as of 15:25, 17 March 2019 by Murrigan (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by (talk) to last revision by Jpx)
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Developer(s) Alexandre Julliard and the Wine team
Latest version 5.0 (Dev: 4.3)
Active Yes
Platform(s) Unix and POSIX-compliant
Emulates Windows
Support ($) Paypal
License GNU LGPL v2.1+
Source code

Wine (an acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) is an open-source compatibility layer for POSIX-compliant systems such as Unix-like operating systems (Linux, BSDs, macOS, etc.) to run programs originally created for Windows. First developed by Alexandre Julliard, it's now sponsored by the corporate entity CodeWeavers, who use it as a base to create an enhanced, proprietary version known as CrossOver. Wine is especially useful for older Windows games, as compatibility with these is typically higher than if the same game were run on modern Windows versions.

Compatibility may not be perfect, however, and there can be various glitches introduced.



Some programs require official Windows DLLs. Most of these are available to download via the (usually) included script, winetricks. Compatibility lists for most programs can be found on the AppDB.

Games which use DirectX/Direct3D APIs later than 9 are mixed in terms of support, as many DirectX 10/11 programs run, but many still simply don't run at all.

Some software and games make use of kernel-mode drivers within Windows that are simply impossible to support due to restrictions on how Wine works, mostly having to do with security. These are especially abused by anti-cheat solutions such as GameGuard and certain others that will prevent you from playing games that use them, (e.g. Nexon) so your only option there is to run it in a virtual machine or dual boot (and even then, there is no guarantee that will get by their detection).

See also