Wine 7.4 changes the default theme and more PE conversion work

Another couple of weeks and even more work has been done on the Windows compatibility layer Wine in development version 7.4 that's out now.

This is the compatibility layer that allows you to run games and applications developed for Windows - on Linux (plus also macOS and BSD). It's a major part of what makes up Steam Play Proton and enables a ton of games to work on the Steam Deck. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

Highlights:

• 'Light' theme enabled by default.
• Bundled vkd3d library.
• WineD3D, D3D12 and DXGI modules converted to PE.
• More large scale cleanups to support 'long' type.
• Various bug fixes.

As we explained previously: the continued conversion of various modules to PE is another change that will gradually increase compatibility in many ways over time for certain expected behaviour needed by Windows applications. Previously Wine has built its Win32 libraries (like DLLs and EXEs) as ELF but for many reasons (like better compatibility) they've started to move them over to use PE instead.

Only 14 bugs were noted as solved with this release and no notable games were listed in the notes on it.