Summary
- Wine 11.6 adds DLL load-order heuristics so third-party mod DLLs load automatically, easing game modding.
- Wine 11.6 revives an Android driver, hinting at future Android app/game support via Wine.
- Wine 11.6 also adds VBScript fixes and many bug tweaks; Proton may adopt these improvements.
When we talk about how far Linux has come with PC gaming, we often cover the performance and compatibility aspects. After all, it’s easy to get excited when CachyOS begins taking wins versus Windows 11 on some big titles. However, there are still issues with getting mods to work with your games on Linux, especially if they require DLLs.
Fortunately, there’s good news for people who enjoy tweaking their games to their liking, but found Linux a little too restrictive. The newest version of Wine is adding support for changing DLL load orders, and if all goes well, we should eventually see it arrive on Valve’s Proton, too.
Wine has been translating Windows games to Linux since 1993, but Proton is what made it effortless
Wine is the foundation that makes gaming on Linux possible.
Wine 11.6 makes modding games with DLLs easier
Plus, Android seems to be making a return
As spotted by GamingOnLinux, Wine 11.6 has just been released. This new version comes with a ton of tweaks and bug fixes, so if you’re using Wine to run Windows-based apps on your Linux device, it’s well worth giving your app an update so you can enjoy all the new changes.
Right at the top of the changelog are these spotlight tweaks:
- Beginnings of a revival of the Android driver.
- DLL load order heuristics to better support game mods.
- More VBScript compatibility fixes.
- Various bug fixes.
The revival of the Android driver sounds interesting by itself; perhaps we’ll eventually have Android games and apps running off Wine. It seems to be still a work-in-progress, so we likely won’t see any tangible results for a little while as people work hard to get it working.
As for things we can use, there’s the second spotlight feature related to DLLs. Some mods and fixes for games require a custom DLL, which, right now, requires a little bit of finagling to get working with Wine. Now, with Wine 11.6, the app will take a peek at all the DLLs included with a game, and if it spots any that do not have Microsoft’s name on it (i.e., a third-party DLL), it automatically uses it over the default.
This should hopefully make modding games easier, and given how Wine is upstream from Proton, we may even see Valve adopt this tech for its own software too. Here’s hoping.
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