What is wine primarily used for today?
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Linux Gaming
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Gaming, as a basis for Valves Proton.
Cool. I thought it's all Steam right now? Is that a stupid question?
You may also want to run non-steam games. I'm still new to linux and haven't tried that yet but I think I will need to for my GoG library.
+1 ,but you can always add external games to Steam. I tried it once, and it worked. However, I prefer GOG over Steam because of its DRM-free policy and also prefer clean Wine over Proton, as I can report bugs directly to Wine bugtracker. I have some Steam games installed on Wine. Yes, I had to first install Steam inside Wine prefix and only after that install the games. Additionally, there is always pirated software, which I won't add to Steam.
Steam uses Proton under the hood which is based on wine. From the repo
Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
Cheers!
Proton is a fork of wine. I believe they still use parts from each other.
I wouldn't really call it a fork from my understanding, but rather a (downstream) distribution. But maybe those are just semantics
Semantics make a difference where you least expect it to sometimes. Good to be correct, even if it seemingly doesn't matter in the context. 👌
Proton won't run BG3MM for me, so I have to use regular Wine.
I use wine for FFXIV. proton kinda works but not for my case. Certain mods use a bleeding edge version of dotnet and this version is not present in proton.
Wine still works perfectly for WoW, it always worked great with it aswell, even back in the WoTLK days
Running Windows VSTs (virtual instruments) in a DAW like reaper for making music.
Im struggling to switch to Linux for music production. I dont like ardour, reaper works fine but no Windows vsts... even with wine/yabridge getting paid ones with licence protection running is a mess. Compatibility with old projects (Studio one, there is a linux beta but needs wayland, i use Mint so another thing to change) is another difficulty. Of course none of this isnt solvable somehow but i dont think we are there yet offering Producers an comfortable switch.
even with wine/yabridge getting paid ones with licence protection running is a mess.
Honestly, because I'm not a fan of intrusive DRM anyway, I say Yarr, matey 🏴☠️
I know that's not a solution for some, but until there's more Linux native VST's, it's a viable path for those willing to take it.
Has yabridge updated recently? My version still has me pinning wine at 9.something
Yabridge is pinned to 9.21 because of changes to Wine, that broke UI interactivity for most VSTs. There is a branch where it's being worked on, but the main branch recommends to pin the older Wine