Windows aged like milk while wine is wine.
Having switched to bazzite because i was used to it from the legion go and it being perfectly fine for my stuff, all i need is for it to be MUCH more noob friendly. Like, i know several people i couldn’t recommend it to yet because it takes some effort on finding out how to do stuff.
Is it because Wine has improved, or because Windows has not?
Yes
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes, for ages. What a weird question though. How are you set up?
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 would hope every new version of wine runs windows apps in linux and mac better than ever.
Patch notes: “Made the app a little worse just to keep things interesting.”
That’s the Microsoft strategy, but they forgot to make it better sometimes too
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”
It’s been Android too at least since they stopped naming versions after sweets
Kit Kat was the last great android version for me
Rule #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
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.
You son of a bitch. I’m in.
I’d run it.
“Fastest iphone ever!” Yea I’d sure hope so being that it’s new and all
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?”
I’ve managed to run some old games on Linux with Bottles/Wine that didn’t work on Windows anymore.
With some apps/games it definitely feels like it does. Would love to see someone dedicated do proper Wine vs windows benchmarks!
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 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/
Yes. It can run classic gaming that windows outright refuses to run. Wild
Yes. Especially if said application was developed before 2010.
I misread the title at first and I genuinely thought that’s what this article was about.
Proton works nicely in steam
Non steam games is an entirely different complicated issue (for some games)
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
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.
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.
on average that’s the expected outcome, but sometimes there’s a regression here and there for specific apps
Yeah, I think that’s the entire point of having a new version lol
The next headline is going to be that they run better in wine than in windows.
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 :)
Bugs and forced regressions?
I mean, isn’t that kinda the goal…?
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. Mostly has to do with their “saving the user from themselves” restrictions in their operating systems. I’d 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 love the duality of saying “in the last 10 years” and “FutureShop” in the same sentence.
I forgot how long ago that died… BestBuy?
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?
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).
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!
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.
This is what I mean. You can absolutely cycle windows with your keyboard. “Out of the box.”
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.
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.
You can do the separate desktops without using a touchpad, there are keyboard shortcuts to do that.
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
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!
Ooh, those are some lovely features. If only Nvidia hadn’t dropped support for 10xx cards as per 590.xx locking me on kernel 6.12, I might even have been able to enjoy using ntsync!
(Fuck Nvidia)
580xx on arch forever I presume then. Gonna be rough in a few years
Think Nouveau will catch up by then?
No. I don’t. Fingers crossed for arch supporting for many years
Yup :(
I’m glad I don’t really have any apps that require windows any more; apart from Affinity, which doesn’t run in wine that well, and foobar2000, which genuinely works so well in wine that I might as well forget that there’s no native Linux release.
https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux
There’s a Wine fork tweaked especially for Affinity that works amazingly well.
I tried an Affinity-specific for of wine before, not sure if that’s the one, but it was very slow and crashed a lot. Although that was a few years ago, I’m sure it’s gotten a lot better.
Yeah this one is much more recent.
highly recommend checking out mpc+rmpc. bread on penguins made me try. https://youtu.be/oTOu7VfXnl8
I’ve replaced fb2k with DeaDBeeF entirely.
Tried that and it’s good, but foobar is so much more customisable.
If anyone has experience in running Fusion 360 on wine plz shout up, that’s the last thing I need to work out before switching to Zorin…
It’s better with something like Winboat (virtualized windows container) within your OS than something like Wine. This is the same case for other “We don’t support Linux officially and actively block it because fuck you” productivity applications like Adobe’s suite.
Personally, I moved from Fusion360 to FreeCAD instead, but I haven’t heard anything negative about the Winboat method.
Do you have any good resources for learning FreeCAD coming from Fusion 360? I’ve taken a couple runs at it but it’s just not clicking for me. Feels like I’m trying to operate Fusion with my feet every time I try to use it.
The FreeCAD team have a series of video tutorials on their website alongside a wiki/documentation for individual functions if you’re searching for those.
Also, there is an interface style called “OpenInventor” in the settings that changes the layout of the toolbars into a near-mimic of AutoDesk Inventor, and if you enable the “Blender” 3d modeling style (warning, does take dedicated graphics hardware to run at good speeds), things like plane layouts and rotating the object should match Inventor as well.
Fusion works flawlessly for me in winapps (and I’m sure winboat), but it is s-l-o-w. I probably need to figure out GPU passthrough and it might be bearable… But I haven’t had much time to dedicate figuring it out.
There’s a couple of Lutris scripts, but the one that kinda worked for me was this https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux/
Depending on what you’re doing, check out Freecad. It’s still a bit buggy but ever since it hit 1.0 it’s been a lot better, and it runs natively on Linux
Yeah maybe this is the push to finally learn freecad!
Is there some reason you haven’t tried it yourself?
I only have one machine, so I wanna be confident it’ll work before messing around with new OSes
Run it on a usb stick
