552
Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Linux Gaming
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Oh, thank heavens. I remember advising some users here to look for specifically missing 32-bit host Linux library support; I'd run into that problem before.
One thing kind of interesting is that not even the Windows WoW64 allows running 16 bit applications. Officially, if you want to run 16 bit applications on 64 bit Windows, you have to get a VM or an emulator.
A decade ago, I remember explaining to management why we still had Windows Server 2008 R2 running terminal services with Citrix. Ancient 16-bit applications that needed a 16-bit subsystem!
Feels like we're getting closer to having better support of older win apps in Linux than in Windows
I think you still need to worry about multilib configs if the game you're trying to play is Linux native. But I guess those games usually have a Windows version anyways and you could just use Wine/Proton for that.
It may be heresy, but at that point, just run the Windows version over the linux one, yes.
The amount of games that:
Have linux builds,
that run noticably better than the Windows executable through Wine/Proton
yet require 32-bit linux libs,
in 2026?
Must be zero, or close to it.
Besides, I love the meme that "Wine is a better gaming platform than native linux, or native Windows." There's something so satsifying about robbing Microsoft's own API.
I don't think it's heresy, but I do think there's value in devs shipping native Linux builds. It's a Mindshare thing. If devs never target Linux they won't build with Linux in mind.
But as a user, it's fine to use whichever version gives the best performance.
Won't they?
I posit this:
Windows gaming will die. Slowly.
Devs will target Proton more and more explicitly.
...Until development is basically exclusively targing Wine/Proton, on Linux.
It's easy to laugh at that as a meme, but does Windows seem sustainable now? Is there any sane "single target" for game devs other than Proton? Hence I think that's legitimately what will happen.
No, you definitely have a point. An increasingly valid one, I might add.
And I do wonder what the "point" of Wine will be overall if we ever get to the point where the majority of users are on Linux.
This is super exciting. I never got mine working right, I gave up and installed 86Box. It was easier to do a complete installation of Windows 98 than get some of my old games running in Wine.