14 DAY TRIAL // The Wine development team announced just a few moments ago the immediate availability for download and testing of Wine 1.9.6, the sixth milestone towards the major Wine 2.0 release.
Wine 1.9.6 does not appear to be a significant snapshot, and the release highlights include better detection of graphics cards when using the Mesa 3D Graphics Library, support for Shader Model 5 shaders, as well as improvements to the C++ exception handling.
Of course, there's no Wine development release without bug fixes, and according to the changelog, Wine 1.9.6 resolves a total of 32 issues that users reported since the previous development snapshot, Wine 1.9.5, which brought better compatibility for the Microsoft Windows 95, 98, and ME operating systems.
Therefore, if plan on test driving the Wine 1.9.6 release, which you can download right now from our website, you need to be aware of the issues resolved by taking a closer look at the official release notes published on the announcement page (link above). Wine-Staging 1.9.6 should also be available in the coming days.
Many Windows apps and games now run better on Wine
Wine 1.9.6 further improves the support for the most requested Windows applications and games, among which we can mention Zondervan Pradis 6.0, Legrand XlPro 3, Internet Explorer 8, Pikachu Volleyball, Safecracker, Return to Mysterious Island 2, Dracula 3, Destination: Treasure Island, and Nostradamus: Lost Prophecy.
Moreover, software like Adobe CC 2015, CPU-Z 1.72, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Kontakt 5, Half-Life, A Slower Speed of Light Summer 2012, Garmin Homeport 2.2.9, EZCastPro 1.4 and 1.5, Fallout 4, 3Dmark03, 05, and 06, Diablo II, Mail.Ru GameCenter installer, 7z, EccoPro, and Adobe Illustrator CC 2015 should run better now in Wine 1.9.6.