Short Bytes: After a long wait, the stable release of Wine 2.0 has arrived. This release also marks the beginning of a new time-based release schedule for this software. Wine 2.0 lets one run Microsoft Office 2013 on Linux and brings support for many new games and applications. The users can download the tool from its website.
After spending months in development, Wine 2.0 is available for download as a stable release. This utility is shipping after receiving 6,600 individual changes. It’s also being seen as the biggest ever release of this useful software.
For those who don’t know, Wine is an open source software that translates Windows API calls to POSIX calls, and allows one to run Windows apps on other operating systems like Linux, macOS, and BSD.
Wine 2.0 is the first release that’s made on the new time-based, annual release schedule. This also means that some features like Direct3D command stream, the Android graphics driver, the full HID support, etc., will be a part of the next development cycle.
The biggest change comes in the form of support for Microsoft Office 2013, and 64-bit support on macOS. Also, there is support for many new games and applications.
The other major changes in Wine 2.0 are related to text and fonts, graphics, user interface, Direct3D, DirectDraw, D3DX, sound and video, internet and networking, internationalization, built-in applications, build environment, kernel, etc.
For a detailed set of changes, feel free to read the release notes. Wine 2.0 is available for download from their website.
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