Wine Staging 2.15 released with more Direct3D 11 improvements

Lately, I wanted to make some tool like that myself, after realizing that POL is basically a dead project. But I'll probably stick to some basic scripts :)

POL (PlayOnLinux) is far from a dead project:
https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-15403-POL_5.html

POL (PlayOnLinux) is far from a dead project:
https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-15403-POL_5.html

Ah, good to know that something is going on still. But I thought they were using Qt? This one is using Java (quite upsetting).


Last edited by Shmerl on 25 Aug 2017 at 7:10 am UTC

The new POL is written in JAVA:
View video on youtube.com


Last edited by legluondunet on 25 Aug 2017 at 7:23 am UTC

The new POL is written in JAVA

Poor choice for UI I think.

Well, to be fair, Vineyard is also GTK2. I have a feeling there are a few people running statistical Windows programs on Puppy Linux who'd be rather upset with me if I upgraded to that bloated new GTK version ;P

Sure, and then they whine about every other modern feature they personally don't happen to need at this particular moment. They can always stick to an older version of the software. But obviously you should build a curses UI for them.

I don't like GTK in general. GTK2 is simply dead upstream as far as I know, and won't work with Wayland for instance. I expect some distros to start purging it in the future. Debian already plan to purge Qt 4.x for example.

Dead is a strong word. It's old, superseded by GTK3 and purely in maintenance mode, but it is well maintained. Too many large companies (like Red Hat for example) depend on it still.

Of course GTK2 won't get new features like Wayland support, and every active project should upgrade ASAP. Or switch toolkits if that's what they prefer, I don't really mind. QT is nice as well.

bla bla [Vineyard](http://vineyardproject.org)

Seems nice. Can we run programs and games with "primusrun" or "optirun", if so how?

Sort-of. If you use the "Programs" page to create a Desktop launcher, you can put a shell one-liner in the "Command" entry, so instead of just the path to the Windows executable, you can use something like "sh -c 'optirun $WINE whatever was originally in the entry field'" and Vineyard will run the command with the proper environment variables set.

Thanks. I installed the program from testing repo but unfortunately vineyard settings does not work properly for me. I cannot create a new prefix. Dialog says it is creating the prefix for a while and disappears but there is no prefix but default and drop down for selecting prefix is greyed out. Also most of the settings that I change goes back to default when I restart the app such as windows version. Anyway this app has so much potential, I wish you the best.

Oh, yikes. Could I get you to submit a bug report on [GitHub](https://github.com/Cybolic/vineyard/issues) for this with the terminal output included?

Ok, I created a new issue entry on github, hope that helps.

Well, to be fair, Vineyard is also GTK2. I have a feeling there are a few people running statistical Windows programs on Puppy Linux who'd be rather upset with me if I upgraded to that bloated new GTK version ;P

Sure, and then they whine about every other modern feature they personally don't happen to need at this particular moment. They can always stick to an older version of the software. But obviously you should build a curses UI for them. [...]

Well, I'm mostly basing it on my own experience, where I had to run a specific piece of graphing software for Windows for a math course on my previous aging laptop and there was no way I would ever be able to get it to run anything as new as GTK3.
Times may have changed though; I might need to run a poll at some point :)


Last edited by Cybolic on 25 Aug 2017 at 10:32 am UTC

Well, I'm mostly basing it on my own experience, where I had to run a specific piece of graphing software for Windows for a math course on my previous aging laptop and there was no way I would ever be able to get it to run anything as new as GTK3.

Hmm... I don't get why that should stop you from improving Vineyard. I'd imagine an older version of your software would work just fine in this case. Just leave GTK2 support in a low-effort maintenance branch or something.

Another interesting DX10 title works in this wine staging version is grandia II anniversary edition

View video on youtube.com

^_^

Not for gaming.

Especially for gaming, simply for the fact that most games produced for PC are still only available and produced for Windows. I’d say that for someone who always wants to play the latest and greatest titles on PC Windows still is the operating system of choice.

But really, even though I’m an avid and long-term Linux user I find the whole operating system discussion pretty tiresome. I think there are different operating systems for different needs and tastes and everyone should just choose the system that he or she likes the most and suits his or her needs best.


On topic: I think WINE is a great piece of software that has come a long way but like others I’ve made quite different experiences with it. Some games work out of the box, others have significant problems or don’t work at all or stop working after an update; and that can be quite frustrating.

I have to admit though that I never dived into the depth of WINE configuration. I can’t be bothered to fiddle around with all its different configurations and settings just to make a game work. Either a game runs out of the box or with only little intervention or I leave it be. I still keep an old pre-2.X WINE version around to be able to play LEGO Harry Potter properly. :-)

Not for gaming.

Especially for gaming, simply for the fact that most games produced for PC are still only available and produced for Windows. I’d say that for someone who always wants to play the latest and greatest titles on PC Windows still is the operating system of choice.

Shmerl is absolutely right. Windows is definitely not "a must for gaming". I enjoy gaming just fine without it. You're moving the goal posts.

Not for gaming.

Especially for gaming, simply for the fact that most games produced for PC are still only available and produced for Windows. I’d say that for someone who always wants to play the latest and greatest titles on PC Windows still is the operating system of choice.

But really, even though I’m an avid and long-term Linux user I find the whole operating system discussion pretty tiresome. I think there are different operating systems for different needs and tastes and everyone should just choose the system that he or she likes the most and suits his or her needs best.


On topic: I think WINE is a great piece of software that has come a long way but like others I’ve made quite different experiences with it. Some games work out of the box, others have significant problems or don’t work at all or stop working after an update; and that can be quite frustrating.

I have to admit though that I never dived into the depth of WINE configuration. I can’t be bothered to fiddle around with all its different configurations and settings just to make a game work. Either a game runs out of the box or with only little intervention or I leave it be. I still keep an old pre-2.X WINE version around to be able to play LEGO Harry Potter properly. :-)

Sadly windows give money to devs

In my case most games works (i use retrogaming) however as your said some updates can be trouble

Curiously lego harry potter dont work in your case with wine 2.x ?, in my case works last time with wine 2.4

View video on youtube.com

^_^


Last edited by mrdeathjr on 25 Aug 2017 at 9:08 pm UTC

Another interesting DX10 title works in this wine staging version is grandia II anniversary edition

View video on youtube.com

^_^

Grandia II is a DX10 game? What the hell? Glad it works, but What the Hell?

Lately, I wanted to make some tool like that myself, after realizing that POL is basically a dead project. But I'll probably stick to some basic scripts :)

POL (PlayOnLinux) is far from a dead project:
https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-15403-POL_5.html

Thanks for the info. I also assumed it was mostly dead. I haven't seen any noticable changes in a long time and they haven't fixed any of the annoying little bugs it had for years. My distro seems to have stopped updating the package for some reason.

Seems like the new one will remain a pop-up clickfest. Their UI looks like javaFX, which should be better than swing at least.

However, I think that conceptionally PoL is a dead end, and lutris copied that concept. Install scripts that are maintained by the community may sound like a good idea on paper, but PoL has shown that the result is garbage. Why?
Wine evolves quickly, so even if a user writes a good script with all the workarounds required this script is going to be outdated very soon. Then, with a newer wine version, it may well be that none of the workarounds are required and the game runs even better. Yet the script will still install the old wine version with a ton of workarounds. Given the vast number of games and hence scripts most of them will remain out of date.
Lutris has the same issue, except that it restricts itself to steam installers. They also probably are taking away manpower from each other, because there are only so few people willing to write or maintain scripts. Then there are security implications, because who's reading the scripts before running them? (You are of course, but no one else is). I don't see that ever working well.

What am I proposing? Just put your test results into wineHQ appdb instead. Do the few things required manually. Use your tools to make that manual process more convenient (e.g. A manual game install wizard like PoL has, just not as crappy. A sane GUI for winetricks., ...).

Curiously lego harry potter dont work in your case with wine 2.x ?, in my case works last time with wine 2.4

Interesting indeed. In my case I have graphical anomalies and the controller stopped working with WINE 2.x. With WINE 1.9.x I don't have these problems.

When I was testing 2.14 I filed a bug against [Wine](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43530) and [Arch](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/55128). It seems it's still present with 2.15.

Try nvidia-full-beta-all from AUR

Since there are several comments about the difficulties in setting up Wine prefixes, I'll just do a quick plug for my own little Wine management tool, [Vineyard](http://vineyardproject.org). With that installed, you can just double click a Windows executable, select which existing prefix to use or select "New prefix" (and if needed, select the Windows version to emulate, the virtual desktop size to use and which Winetricks packages to install) and click run; easy-peasy. It also comes with an indicator showing the running Wine applications (if they're launched through Vineyard) so you can check their output and it'll automatically suggest which Winetricks packages you might need to install based on the error messages.

Hm seems to be crashing for me on launch;
(vineyard-preferences:9291): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita",

(vineyard-preferences:9291): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita",
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/vineyard-preferences", line 1195, in <module>
run = Run()
File "/usr/bin/vineyard-preferences", line 1188, in __init__
main = Main()
File "/usr/bin/vineyard-preferences", line 177, in __init__
icon = icon_theme.load_icon(page[1], height, gtk.ICON_LOOKUP_USE_BUILTIN)
glib.GError: Icon 'harddrive' not present in theme

However, I think that conceptionally PoL is a dead end, and lutris copied that concept. Install scripts that are maintained by the community may sound like a good idea on paper, but PoL has shown that the result is garbage. Why?
Wine evolves quickly, so even if a user writes a good script with all the workarounds required this script is going to be outdated very soon. Then, with a newer wine version, it may well be that none of the workarounds are required and the game runs even better. Yet the script will still install the old wine version with a ton of workarounds. Given the vast number of games and hence scripts most of them will remain out of date.
Lutris has the same issue, except that it restricts itself to steam installers. They also probably are taking away manpower from each other, because there are only so few people willing to write or maintain scripts. Then there are security implications, because who's reading the scripts before running them? (You are of course, but no one else is). I don't see that ever working well.

I think that argument is a tad moot and can be applied to anything. One could say "Windows is moving too quickly so developing and maintaining Wine is pointless, everybody will just lose interest eventually and then it'll be outdated forever". When the reality is 75% of all APIs has been implemented. Lutris scripts may end up outdated, they might not. I'd argue in favor of optimism though because 1. surely it's easier to go back and remove workarounds that aren't necessary anymore than to write them in the first place which has already been done in that scenario? And 2. the use case of Lutris will be forever relevant (to gaming enthusiasts at least) and is worth trying to do right.

Try nvidia-full-beta-all from AUR

I heartily and sincerely appreciate the tip but running beta drivers from AUR isn't something I want to do.

Another interesting DX10 title works in this wine staging version is grandia II anniversary edition

View video on youtube.com

^_^

Grandia II is a DX10 game? What the hell? Glad it works, but What the Hell?

Yeah wine in lastest months advance so much (various DX11 titles begin to work)

Actually runs just cause 2 (another DX10 title with some graphics issues like vegetation but stable)

^_^


Last edited by mrdeathjr on 26 Aug 2017 at 6:14 pm UTC

Curiously lego harry potter dont work in your case with wine 2.x ?, in my case works last time with wine 2.4

Interesting indeed. In my case I have graphical anomalies and the controller stopped working with WINE 2.x. With WINE 1.9.x I don't have these problems.

Sadly i use only keyboard for play and wine in lastest months have many changes in xinput area (this can be affect gamepads)

But in graphics works ok in my case

^_^