windows on linux on arm Wine 10.0 released, adding Linux compatibility for Arm Windows apps Wine compatibility layer is the heart of many Windows app translation projects. Andrew Cunningham Jan 22, 2025 3:25 pm | 0 Credit: Microsoft/Wine HQ Credit: Microsoft/Wine HQ Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe open source Wine projectsometimes stylized WINE, for Wine Is Not an Emulatorhas become an important tool for companies and individuals who want to make Windows apps and games run on operating systems like Linux or even macOS. The CrossOver software for Mac and Windows, Apple's Game Porting Toolkit, and the Proton project that powers Valve's SteamOS and the Steam Deck are all rooted in Wine, and the attention and resources put into the project in recent years has dramatically improved its compatibility and usefulness.Yesterday, the Wine project announced the stable release of version 10.0, the next major version of the compatibility layer that is not an emulator. The headliner for this release is support for ARM64EC, the application binary interface (ABI) used for Arm apps in Windows 11, but the release notes say that the release contains "over 6,000 individual changes" produced over "a year of development effort."ARM64EC allows developers to mix Arm and x86-compatible codeif you're making an Arm-native version of your app, you can still allow the use of more obscure x86-based plugins or add-ons without having to port everything over at once. Wine 10.0 also supports ARM64X, a different type of application binary file that allowed ARM64EC code to be mixed with older, pre-Windows 11 ARM64 code.Wine's ARM64EC support does have one limitation that will keep it from working on some prominent Arm Linux distributions, at least by default: the release notes say it "requires the system page size to be 4K, since that is what the Windows ABI specifies." Several prominent Linux-on-Arm distributions default to a 16K page size because it can improve performancewhen page sizes are smaller you need more of them, and managing a higher number of pages can introduce extra CPU overhead.Asahi Linux, the Fedora-based distribution that's working to bring Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, uses 16K pages because that's all Apple's processors support. Some versions of the Raspberry Pi OS also default to a 16K page size, though it's possible to switch to 4K for compatibility's sake. Given that the Raspberry Pi and Asahi Linux are two of the biggest Linux-on-Arm projects going right now, that does at least somewhat limit the appeal of ARM64EC support in Wine. But as we've seen with Proton and other successful Wine-based compatibility layers, laying the groundwork now can deliver big benefits down the road.Other new additions to Wine 10.0 include improved support for high-DPI displays, which should be better at automatically scaling app windows that aren't DPI-aware. A Desktop Control Panel applet can control the configuration of the virtual "display" that apps running under Wine use. Support for various Direct3D features is improved, and the Vulkan renderer has gotten improvements meant to reduce stuttering in games.Windows-on-Arm: Its a real thing now!Though various version of Windows have been running on Arm processors for over a decade now, last year was when the project became a credible mainstream computing platform.Last summer, Qualcomm released its Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, which could compete with the performance and power consumption of Intel, AMD, and Apple's laptop processors. Microsoft put the Snapdragon chips in the mainstream, mass-market versions of the Surface Pro tablet and the Surface Laptop, rather than putting them in a secondary side-project as it had done with hardware like the Surface Pro X; the company also announced a "Copilot+ PC" initiative, which featured Snapdragon-powered PCs from most of the major PC manufacturers.Microsoft also released the Windows 11 24H2 update, which looks like another routine yearly update on the surface but included large under-the-hood overhauls of Windows' compiler, kernel, and scheduler that improved performance for Arm chips as well as some x86 chips. Microsoft also updated and branded its x86-to-Arm code translation feature, now called "Prism." The company said at the time that Prism would run x86 apps between 10 and 20 percent faster than they had run in older Windows versions on the same hardware.Finallyand most relevantly, for people using Winethe company convinced a critical mass of major app developers to release versions of their apps that ran natively on the Arm versions of Windows. That included major browsers like Google Chrome, creative apps like Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo, and productivity apps like Dropbox and Google Drive. If you want to know why the Wine project prioritized ARM64EC support this time around, it's because the Windows-on-Arm app ecosystem is finally becoming relevant.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 0 Comments