14 DAY TRIAL // The Wine development team announced the release of Wine 1.9.7, the seventh milestone towards the next major version of the open-source project designed for Linux users who want to run Windows apps and games.
According to the release notes, Wine 1.9.7 brings additional support for Shader Model 5 shaders, which has been introduced in the previous snapshot, Wine 1.9.6, released two weeks ago, on March 18, 2016, along with support for Windows-style static import libraries, and C++ exception handling for 64-bit (x86_64) hardware architectures.
Additionally, it looks like more work has been done to improve the WineD3D command stream functionality and the XML writer, which should perform a lot better now. As usual, the Wine developers managed to fix many of the bugs and annoyances that have been reported by users or discovered by them since Wine 1.9.6.
A total of 42 bugs have been squashed, which means that more and more Windows applications and games will work much better now on various GNU/Linux operating systems which use the latest development version of Wine. So, if you're using Wine a lot, we strongly recommend updating to Wine 1.9.7 as soon as possible.
Many Windows apps and games will work better with Wine 1.9.7
Among the Windows applications that received improvements in today's Wine 1.9.7 release, we can mention PowerPoint Viewer 2003 and 2007, Microsoft Publisher 2007 and 2010, CSPro 4, Internet Explorer 8, ElsterFormular, Ableton Live 9.1, Adobe Cloud apps, Canon PIXMA MP495 driver installer, Allied Telesis Smart Switch Management Utility 1.0.0.7, GoodSync, Camtasia Studio 8, CLM Explorer, EveHQ2, and VerbAce Dictionary.
On the other hand, the Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb, PURE, Settlers: Heritage of King demo, Civilization II, Head Over Heels, Alien 8, MotoGP 3 demo, Elder Scrolls Online, and The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky SC Windows games received various improvements and should work a lot better now in Wine 1.9.7, which you can download right now from our website.