New version of the Windows compatibility layer is available to download

Wine 4.0 is now available to download, letting users run Windows apps and games on Linux and other UNIX-based systems.

The popular Windows compatibility layer — Wine stands for ‘Wine Is Not an Emulator’ — uncorks several glasses worth of new features and improvements.

It’s been in development for just under a year, Wine 4.0 features more than 6,000 individual changes.

Features touted amongst the Wine 4.0 changelog include:

Vulkan support

Direct3D 12 support

Additional Direct3D 10 and 11 features implemented

Support for HID game controllers

Updates to the timezone database

File Dialog improvements, including file size, etc

Mouse cursor support on Android

HiDPI support on Android

Various bug fixes

More than 26,000 Windows apps and games are compatible with Wine, including well-known software like Photoshop and Microsoft Office, and popular games like StarCraft, Counterstrike and Team Fortress.

Not on Linux? WINE is also bottled up for various other open source operating systems besides Linux, including macOS, FreeBSD and Android.

How to Install Wine 4.0 on Ubuntu

You’ve read what’s new, now to learn how to install Wine 4.0 on Ubuntu.

Firstly, if you’re patient, Wine 4.0 will (likely) be available in the archives in Ubuntu 19.04 when it’s released this April. So if you can wait to run that obscure Windows-only utility, that’s the less fuss way.

To upgrade or install Wine 4.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or 18.10 run the following commands in a new terminal window, but do so carefully. If you have a different Wine PPA or repo installed you should remove it before proceeding.

First, let’s download the Wine repository key:

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

And then add it:

sudo apt-key add winehq.key

For Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Linux Mint 19, and other 18.04-based Linux distributions add this repo:

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main'

For Ubuntu 18.10, run this command:

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ cosmic main'

The Wine stable repository also supports Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. To add the repo for these releases refer to the Wine download page.

Finally, run:

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

And, as you’d expect, Wine 4.0 source code is ready to download right now.

If you fancy letting the latest Wine release ripen you can wait for Wine 4.0 to be made available in CrossOver, a commercial version of Wine offering a slate of extra features and conveniences.