Wine 9.9 (Dev) – Run Windows Applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS
gitlab.winehq.org
gitlab.winehq.org
And does anyone have a good summary of the 32 bit executable story? Those are always problematic on Ubuntu but I never had a clear picture as to why
It'd be cool if they made that easier to do via Wine itself, but that's probably a bit out of scope.
It seems that every Windows game in Steam that I've tried recently (Helldivers 2, Hades 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Talos Principle 2, etc) have been flawless in Steam for Linux since Steam will run them with Proton.
Even non-steam games such as Starcraft II work well by adding battle.net setup.exe to Steam as a "Non-Steam game", and selecting Proton as the compatibility layer.
That doesn't answer the question of why anyone would run the Windows version of Steam on Wine, rather than running the Linux version of Steam, which would use Proton (which is built on Wine) automatically and painlessly.
(Eg Netflix plays on Firefox/Chrome under Linux, but if you run Chrome under Wine on Linux instead, you get 1080p video instead of crippled 720p crap.)
- Mod managers, trainers, and other external programs that should probably run in the same prefix as the game; yes, it's possible to manually run them in specific wineprefixen with specific Proton versions, or to use tools like SteamTinkerLaunch to pop up a menu first, but these are quite a bit clunkier than just running everything in the same prefix. Vortex and Mod Organizer 2 especially come to mind as being designed to handle multiple games within the same installation; the Proton-centric approach instead encourages having separate Vortex/MO2 installations per game, with all the shenanigans around browser URL associations and such that produces.
- Steam-managed editing/authoring tools for Steam games (e.g. the Creation Kits for various Bethesda RPGs). The Proton-centric approach results in these tools being in their own wineprefixen separate from the games themselves - and while that ain't impossible to live with, it's a lot less convenient than everything sharing a prefix.
- Newer installments in a game series importing save data from older installments (e.g. Mass Effect prior to Legendary Edition being a thing, or the Saint's Row games). Much easier to handle when everything's in one wineprefix; much more difficult when each game is in its own wineprefix (especially if these games don't offer an easy way to manually browse for the data to import).
It's theoretically possible to achieve some of this with Linux Steam + Proton by pre-creating shared wineprefixen and symlinking each game's own wineprefix to a shared one. This also defeats a lot of the point of using Proton in Steam - whereas it's easy enough to just... run Windows Steam in Wine directly (possibly even using Lutris or Bottles or what have you to create separate Windows Steam instances for separate sets of games).
It sounds like Wine might be able to run Paint.NET again.
That's pretty much the only app that still has me reaching for Windows at this point.
Still very useful though.
It’s not open source for more than 15 years. The last FOSS version was released in 2009 November
Proton uses wine heavily, so there is a massive market with the steam deck using wine to run their games.
Also, some 16 bit Windows applications that probably won't even run on current Windows, like the Windows Entertainment Pack that shipped with Windows 3.1. You can pry that version of Tetris from my cold, dead hands.
Of course, I also use the version of Wine that's built into Steam for nearly every game I play.
Interestingly, if you have access to the source, which takes some effort but is available after some paperwork, it has tools to compile specifically for greater Wine compatibility.
Besides that, I run Excel 2003, because nothing else even comes close to the power of Excel+VBA.
I also run some old multimedia educational software, as well as a multimedia Encyclopaedia Britannica.
A really nice tool to work with timing transcripts to audio and then using them for shadowing/chorusing, called WorkAudioBook.
Some old typing tutors for Chinese.
Would LIKE to run Paint.NET like someone mentioned elsewhere.
Winamp and foobar2000, two media players that are simply unbeaten by anything on Linux, and believe me I've tried everything. Although at the moment I'm committed to running mpd, so they're not getting as much use now.
Also games obviously.
If I'm going to use a Windows app I'll see if it runs in WINE first before breaking out a VM, it's convenient like that.
Now that doesn't mean I don't have other issues trying to do sound in Linux, but things have been improving considerably in the last couple years. Pipewire is also pretty solid now.