It has always been said that Linux is not to play . This is because developers have always turned their backs on this operating system due to its market share. Despite being more than proven that the performance of the games is superior in Linux than in Windows. Although, thanks to Valve, some developers have started porting their games to this operating system, the number of titles available for Linux is still infinitely lower than that of Windows games. However, thanks to Wine it is possible to play virtually any Windows game on Linux without problems.
Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a set of Windows libraries and tools (Win16 and Win32) designed to allow Linux users to run any kind of software available for both MS-DOS and any version of Windows, from 3.11 until Windows 10.
Thanks to Wine it is possible, for example, to install and run programs such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop on Linux just as if they were running on Windows. And, of course, it also allows us to run games published for the Microsoft operating system within this free operating system.
In addition to being able to run programs and games from your .exe, as if we were using Windows, there are applications designed to allow us to configure and optimize the operation of games within Linux. Steam, without going any further, introduced in 2019 a function called ” Steam Play ” that allows us to download the games and, through Wine, allow us to run them on Linux. And also with full compatibility.
Now, games for Linux have gone a step further. And is that with the arrival of the new Wine 5.0 compatibility and performance problems will be a thing of yesterday.
Wine 5.0: all the news
Like every update of this software, the new Wine 5.0 brings with it a large number of changes and corrections. This version brings, specifically, 7400 bug fixes spread throughout the program.
In addition to these fixed bugs, two of its main improvements are mainly focused on the improvement of graphics and audio that is processed through this tool, either with day-to-day programs or games.
Some of the games that so far did not work well, and from Wine 5.0 we can use them perfectly in Linux are Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Sonic Mania, UFO, Skyrim, Rayman Origins and Divinity: Original Sin 2. Support has also been improved for many everyday programs, such as Acrobat Reader 11, dbpoweramp CD Ripper, ABBYY FineReader, Pale Moon, Foxit Reader and uTorrent.
In addition to the errors fixed and the optimizations in graphics, games and programs, other novelties that have arrived with Wine 5.0 have been:
- Support for multiple monitors has been added.
- The XAudio2 audio libraries are present again.
- Added support for Vulkan 1.1.
- The modules have been converted to PE format. This is expected to end the compatibility problems with anti-pircy systems.
Download and install this tool on Linux
We can download Wine for free by following the instructions that appear in the following link . In addition, in AppDB we can consult a complete list of compatibility with applications and games, in addition to the instructions and configurations necessary to make it work.
We may have to add Wine repositories to our Linux distro to install this tool. In the case of Ubuntu 18.04, for example, we can install Wine by running the following command:
- sudo dpkg –add-architecture i386
- wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
- sudo apt-key add winehq.key
- sudo apt-add-repository ‘deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main’
- sudo apt update
- sudo apt install –install-recommends winehq-stable
We remind you that, although Wine may seem a bit complicated to use and configure, there are tools such as CrossOver and PlayOnLinux that allow us to install and configure applications and games to work on Linux with just a few clicks.
Unfortunately, there are companies, such as EA, that are against being able to play their games on Linux. Recently there have been cases of users who, by playing Battlefield V through Wine, have been banned from their servers. A pity, although surely with time everything ends up turning against him.
