Good stuff Wine.
Wake me up when it can run Adobe Lightroom.
shake shake
“Hey, you! You’re finally awake. Trying to run Adobe software right? The boys managed to get things working smoothly with a virtualized method. They call it Winboat, a cut down VM that breaks Adobe’s windows infatuation.”
Last time I checked, Winboat just wasn’t there yet, see e.g. https://www.xda-developers.com/tried-cutting-windows-out-my-life-with-winboat/
However, your comment made me google again, and I found this thread that looks pretty promising. Will definitely investigate further. So thanks! https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1qdgd73/i_made_adobe_cc_installers_work_on_linux_pr_in/?tl=de
Went back to Windows 11 from Arch yesterday due to gaming performance issues, vst compatability, workflow issues etc. Linux isn’t ready for people who only game on their PC’s IMHO. I lean on my PC heavily for gaming. So I’m back to hating Microsoft again. Feels normal.
Wholly depends on the types of games you play, personally I don’t play competetive type online multiplayer games that require kernel level anti-cheat access and as such, I’ve had zero issues with gaming. Running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma.
Same. Steam stuff and old stuff. I don’t play multiplayer, that really seems to be where all the problems lie.
I love Linux, I used to use it for a few years during the windows 8 era. I eventually went back to windows and it’s just been a comfier place to be for me. Everything works. Every game works with zero additional thought. I need to run CAD software for work and unfortunately integrate with Microsoft services for work.
I could possibly switch to Linux on my home theatre PC that i use in my living room because I use Kodi and browsers for media consumption and mostly game on it by using steam remote play to access games from my windows gaming PC. That might be something that I consider trying in the future.
I exclusively use Geruda Linux. Things run better there than on windows.
I beg to differ. Haven’t had a Linux-specific issue in many years, it just works.
I’ve been gaming pretty much exclusively on Linux (and Steam Deck) for the last few years. No issues so far. What problems did you run into?
The only thing I need to run on windows now is for H&R block tax software. I wonder if I can try it with wine but I’m afraid of losing the activation license
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=6532
Looks like not great/no one has tried for a few years. I say give it a shot (far from tax season) and report back!
Sometimes I forget macOS exists
I love it because its existence means I get a good chance of having a UNIX-based machine in new corporate dev positions. If a company is giving me a work laptop, I’ll take a MBP over a Windows laptop any day (assuming I can’t install Linux)
I still can’t stand the Apple design philosophy no matter how much exposure. Perhaps is mostly has to do with their “saving the user from themselves” restrictions in their operating systems, makes me rather defang windows instead, even if it takes much longer per machine.
Have you used a Mac in the last 10 years, beyond just flicking the mouse around at a FutureShop?
I’m using a Mac for software development at my current job. I prefer it over windows but I still hate it. Can’t even alt tab through windows on that piece of garbage without extra software.
You can cmd+tab between applications, and cmd+~ between windows of a given application.
I just want a list of all my windows, like pretty much every other window manager does. This just makes finding the correct window take more keypresses.
There’s numerous ways to accomplish this. If you want the windows of your current app, “App Expose” (Ctrl+Down, and then Left/Right/Up/Down to select) is what you want. If it’s all the windows, “Mission Control” (Ctrl+Up, granted you do have to click the window with the mouse) is what you want.
I just put each different program on a different virtual desktop and swipe through them.
Wow, that sounds awful. If you needed to use a touchpad their UX developers already failed.
You can do the separate desktops without using a touchpad, there are keyboard shortcuts to do that.
Look, I’m not an apple fanboy by any means. I kinda hate their UX. So I’m not defending Apple by putting my suggestions here. I’d prefer a Linux desktop 100% obviously, but most jobs (in my experience) do not offer that unless you work for a company with a dedicated IT department.
First of all, I can cmd+tab to different apps/programs just fine. So I don’t know what feature your missing that you need additional software.
Second of all, you can use ctrl+arrowkeys to cycle between desktops without a touch pad.
Third, I use an Mx Master mouse with gestures mapped to the Gesture button on the mouse. I hold the button and move my mouse left and right, which switches desktops.
Honestly, I prefer virtual desktops to alt tabbing 100%. When I’m developing a web app, for instance, I have a browser desktop in between a front end code desktop and a backend code desktop. Viewing my changes is just holding down a mouse button and a quick flick of my wrist. Its consistent and quick.
Yes, last contract IT job (Macbook Pro, approx 10 months ago). I wanted to smash it in half over my knee and grab a random Thinkpad with my ventoy usb in hand.
Why? What was so bad about it?
For me it’s mostly the 3-4 key keyboard shortcuts that need about 1.5 hands to press comfortably. Yes, printscreen, I’m looking at you.
Also, why the fuck is F4 used to open the app drawer thingy? (no idea what it’s called) It’s do far away from where my hands normally rest!
You can disable the FN shortcuts so that they’re just regular F# keys. The print screen thing is fair though admittedly in so used to them that I’ve set them as shortcuts on my main Plasma desktop lol
MacOS repeatedly got in my way when trying to run specialist software needed for my work at [organization], because I had the audacity to use an executable not in line with Apple’s walled garden. Additionally, transferring files was a pain in the nuts - so many “mac moments” of files resulting in 0 bytes after drive ejection and repeated permission error messages despite having the appropriate credentials active.
Throw in some minor annoyances with frankly unintuitive UX for general settings and layout configuration, and I was sick of the damn thing by day 3.
Made me miss my old job where I got to smash a vacated lab’s worth of Macs with a sledgehammer. And where I was allowed to bring my own laptop.
You can disable Gatekeeper entirely using the terminal. They just don’t expose the option in the UI anymore (which I think is fine).
I love the duality of saying “in the last 10 years” and “FutureShop” in the same sentence.
I miss FutureShop. Fuck Best Buy for killing them
I forgot how long ago that died… BestBuy?
I guess this isn’t really even “news” to Linux gamers now, but once in a while it’s nice to make an article about what constant progress has happened in a certain sphere. Certainly many people staying on Windows out of inertia blinked and missed it.
My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.
My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.
Good news! Your future hope is reality’s past!
Seriously though, who buys a copy of Windows for a custom built PC that they install Linux on? I’ve built a bunch of computers over the past decade or so and I haven’t purchased a copy of Windows since the early 2000s. And technically that was just an OEM licence that came with a laptop.
Who buys? Most of people :)
So you’re telling me that someone who builds a custom PC with the intention of installing Linux will go out and buy a Windows license?
I ment who build a custom PC. That’s reality bro.
My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.
That’s what you said. And I’m not even sure what you mean by “I ment who build a custom PC. That’s reality bro.”
The reality is that a good portion of gamers either build their own systems or buy “custom built” systems from a company that builds them. It’s mainly only OEM manufacturers that include a Windows license, like HP, Lenovo, MSI, and generally laptops.
So ultimately there’s no scenario where your comment makes sense.
My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.
Who’s building a gaming PC and paying retail price (or any price) for the Windows license anyway? I think anyone who knows anything about technology knows how easy Windows has always been to pirate, and that keys are readily available for cheap
i would hope every new version of wine runs windows apps in linux and mac better than ever.
The next headline is going to be that they run better in wine than in windows.
Patch notes: “Made the app a little worse just to keep things interesting.”
Wine 1.1, now with AI integration
The trick is that isn’t a capital i, it is a lowercase L. Now with AL integration. Every program you run just has a picture of Weird Al and a snippet of a random song from his greatest hits album as a splash screen.
I’d run it.
You son of a bitch. I’m in.
That’s the Microsoft strategy, but they forgot to make it better sometimes too
Rule #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
The Microsoft strategy often seems to be “It worked well, but we completely redid it because we need to justify out existence. Now it barely works with new bugs”
That’s more Google’s strategy. Microsoft is more “we updated a bunch of stuff so that we could push our products and services even harder and closed workarounds people are using to avoid them, and if you don’t like it, fuck you, what’re you gonna do?”
It’s been Android too at least since they stopped naming versions after sweets
Kit Kat was the last great android version for me
jellybean and gingerbread for me
I wish everyone would follow Apple’s lead (literally exclusively just this one time) and rename their software versions to their associated year.
At this point, and given the current state of Proton (👍) and the current state of Windows (👎), the question should be, “Does the new version of Wine run Windows apps better than Windows?”
With some apps/games it definitely feels like it does. Would love to see someone dedicated do proper Wine vs windows benchmarks!
There were some last year specifically for games on SteamOS vs Windows, like this: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-steamos-than-windows-11-ars-testing-finds/
There are plenty of old applications that just do not run on windows 10/11 anymore at all. Wine and emulation is the only choice left for those.
There used to be a Wine on Windows project because Wine was so much better at backwards compatibility.
Yes. It can run classic gaming that windows outright refuses to run. Wild
I misread the title at first and I genuinely thought that’s what this article was about.
Yes. Especially if said application was developed before 2010.
Proton works nicely in steam
Non steam games is an entirely different complicated issue (for some games)
You can download Proton for use outside of Steam, I use it in Lutris and Bottles pretty regularly. Also, you should be able to get just about anything to run just as well in Bottles or Lutris as it will in steam, but I will admit it can take some tinkering with some games or software and there is a much easier option: Add “non-steam game” in Steam library and run whatever program you need through Steam anyway.
Heroic works great for pirated hentai games and GOG games.
Epic and GOG work on Heroic just fine and I’ve run two standalone games (Elite Dangerous and ESO) using Lutris with no problems.
What kind of complicated issue? Simply adding them as non-steam games seems to work fine. I’ve managed to get jank ass pirated 90s visual novels running, fan-patched, on a steam deck lmao
I’ve managed to run some old games on Linux with Bottles/Wine that didn’t work on Windows anymore.
It still probably doesn’t run two applications that I like to use, that is paint.net and the latest free version of SketchUp (unavailable for download officially).
We’re close to the Microsoft ecosystem here; newer version being better is not a given.
Yeah, I think that’s the entire point of having a new version lol
Not sure how serious your comment is, but I could certainly imagine Microsoft introducing new dependencies/hooks/all-executables-must-support-copilot, etc., that break compatibility faster than Wine can keep up. Glad to hear that’s not the case!
For old stuff though…yeah, I’d hope it’s not moving backwards :)
on average that’s the expected outcome, but sometimes there’s a regression here and there for specific apps
“Fastest iphone ever!” Yea I’d sure hope so being that it’s new and all
I need a modern version of office working well.
Copilot for Copilot you mean? Now with extra Copilot.
Could be one without copilot ;-). By modern I mean something in the last 5 years. Maybe even I could go 10. I mean I need something that my IT department will let me into my email with at a minimum.
If you have the activation key/account, you could try installing it through Winboat or similar on your distro of choice, since Winboat’s essentially a per-program VM that should theoretically have perfect compatibility.
Thank you. I will check it out.
Can it run FLstudio?
It can with the addition of WineASIO, but unless this release has focused on fixes for this setup (which it may have done!), we’re still not ready.
I tried during the summer (albeit with Ableton rather than FL) and it’s still quite high latency which turns into weird noise and artifacting if I try reducing the buffer size (with much larger buffers than I typically use on windows).
YABridge is getting better though, this time around I got a few more of my VSTs working, I still have zero luck with any of the VSTs with licenses that I have on my iLok key.
I can’t wait for the day the guys working on this finally crack pro audio properly, it’s literally the only reason I still run windows on my desktop.
And since every time I mention this problem, I end up having to say this in a reply to someone: To anyone suggesting I don’t use Ableton or my VSTs that don’t work (of which there are hundreds), I’ve got two decades of Ableton projects that I can open up in windows and pretty much carry on working on it as if I created it yesterday. That’s before going into the fact I’ve spent a lot of money over the years on licences for this stuff, so being able to continue using it is more important to me than my operating system choice. Until I can do the same in Linux it’s gonna have to be a dual boot situation.
That said when I next have a weekend with nothing on, I’ll try this latest release
Any idea about USB drivers if it will ever be possible? I have synths and gear that needs firmware upgrades with flashers that only run on Win/Mac and I haven’t been able to get them to work with Wine.
It’s always possible, the bulk of the hardware Linux supports is proprietary stuff that someone had to reverse engineer at some point.
Whether a given niche piece of hardware, gets support for a non-essential-to-normal-operation feature such as firmware update support, is down to if someone is interested/motivated/determined enough to do the reverse engineering, write the driver and get it merged into the kernel.
You can hand over a USB device fully to a Windows VM. That’s how I update my Yamaha stuff.
Yeah, thanks. I did it a couple of times with the free web dev vm of Windows 10 but it is only valid for 30 days so it gets annoying quickly. After identifying the chipset in some devices I’ve tried to get the Linux toolkit or just the flashing tool from the manufacturers but for whatever reason they will not give it out unless you are a customer of their chipset.
I use qemu/kvm with vm manager. There’s a lot of other options too. Most of them are valid indefinitely.
I use the Win11 LTSC IoT Enterprise Image, because it cuts out most of the usual windows bloat. Maybe have a look at massgrave.dev.
AFAIK there is no reason why vst companies wouldn’t produce linux builds, vst has been opened for Linux for a long time now, they just need to port it. iLok should also be possible, though I personally hate it, but I’m not a pro.
Yeah I think there are a few Linux compiled VSTs out there but IIRC there’s very little host support for them in native Linux, let alone into a host running under Wine. CLAP is probably what we should be banking on tbh since it was designed with Linux support in mind from the start.
I’m also not a big fan of iLok or any similar DRM, but if they’re going to enforce draconian licensing restrictions anyway, being able to move my key between machines and use all my licenses is actually a pretty valuable feature. Compared that to (let’s say Waves) stuff that will only let me license it on a single machine, and limits the number of times you can remote-revoke to a couple of times a year.
To anyone suggesting I don’t use Ableton or my VSTs that don’t work…
I hear you. I’ve been using Cubase and other older tools for over 20 years. I get that DAWs like Reaper or Bitwig would work better, but I really don’t want to retool as much as I want to avoid Windows. I’ve been meaning to to test out WinBoat whenever I have time, but not sure how DAWs perform in a VM either.
I’d really like to run a newer version of Cubase myself. I’ve gotten older versions running on WINE, but 12+ has display issues and won’t even launch.
Very interesting comments. Does anybody know of a good linux alternative for FLStudio? I’ve seen LMMS, but I’ve also read it wasn’t quite there yet
I mean, isn’t that kinda the goal…?
This is great, but does it handle GPU acceleration yet? The main thing I still need Windoze for is SketchUp and I have never managed to get it to work because I get a GPU acceleration error. Any hints would be welcome.
In case you didn’t know, there’s a web app version of sketchup
Yes, for ages. What a weird question though. How are you set up?
Yes, for ages. What a weird question though.
Ok, but my question is does Wine run on Linux?
Yes, it does.
OK, my question is - is wine just a windows emulator
No, Wine Is Not an Emulator.
What does the WINE in WINE Is Not an Emulator stand for
It’s recursive for Wine Is Not An Emulator. The program is a translation layer - including translating Windows specific function calls into something Linux can understand (IE: DirectX to Vulcan).
This is distinct from emulation - primarily because it allows programs to utilize native functions of the machine and has much less performance overhead compared to true windows emulation (which is just a VM with extra steps).
It seems like SketchUp uses OpenGL, which should be supported just fine by a linux GPU driver. I haven’t tried it myself, but you could maybe try running it through Proton (idk if there’s a way outside of Steam?)
I misread that as “Win 11 runs Linux and macOS apps better than ever” and was ready to sarcastically point out that Linux runs Linux apps better too.
Contrarily, Win 11 does run Windows apps worse than ever
I am just hoping the Steam Frame provides the foundation so that in the years to come I can get off Windows for VR development. Feel trapped right now.
All I want is to be able to run Adobe software on Linux properly. My work requires me to work with premiere and after effects all the time so the moment they run ok on linux I’ll be the happiest person!
All I want is to be able to run Adobe software on Linux properly.
Never going to happen. They are a horrible company that actively refuses to port anything to Linux.
There are other far superior options that do run natively on Linux. DaVinci Resolve is one, it works as both a NLE and a compositor and is objectively better than anything Adobe has to offer.
I totally agree with you. The problem is that the companies that I work with have all their pipeline built on Adobe ecosystem. Guess I need to find a new job.
Windows 11 might be usable if it gets a wine port so it can run windows apps.
