A new Wine version has been released and its makers have implemented a number of important new features, not to mention all the smaller fixes that have been added as well.

If you think that Wine is an emulator for Windows app, you would be wrong. It's actually a compatibility layer that allows users to run Windows apps and games. If you ever started Windows, you might have noticed that the .exe files can be started by trying to emulate the conditions of a previous version of Windows. That is just a compatibility layer and Wine acts pretty much the same way.

Each new Wine release comes with a few major improvements that are usually related to the application itself, and a large number of smaller ones that deal with compatibility issues reported by the community. If you are trying to run a Windows app and it doesn't work, for whatever reason, you can sent a report back to the Wine team and they will look into it as soon as they are able to do so. As you might notice, they fix many of these issues each week.

Wine 1.7.38 is now the most advanced version available

Users will usually find the latest stable version of Wine in the repositories, and if the Windows applications and games that you need run just fine with this version, then you really shouldn't upgrade. If it doesn't work, then you can try the development version. It's very likely to have an application run with the stable iteration and not with the latest development one.

According to the changelog, a new version of the Gecko engine based on Firefox 36 has been implemented, themed scrollbars are now supported, the Mono engine has been updated, and the X Drag & Drop version 5 has been implemented.

The list of supported games and apps now include Supreme Commander, Adobe Digital Editions, BitComet, Monkey Island: Special Edition, Icebreakers, DVDFlick, Planetside 2, Desperados 2, Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and F.E.A.R.

How to install the latest version of Wine in Ubuntu

Users can get Wine 1.7.38 from the source code, but Ubuntu users can install it from a PPA. Just enter these commands in a terminal (with root access):