The WINE tool for Linux, which is a Windows Emulator, has finally shown its first signs of Direct3D 11 support in the new 1.7.50 release.

Yes, first signs. The announcement that the developers were going to implement Direct3D 11 support came a while back, and while there is now Direct3D 11 support, it is in a very basic form. This means that there isn't full support yet, and not all the features have yet been implemented. Therefore, not all Direct3D 11 software is supported as of now. The full release notes are available here.

Additionally, the new release includes the new Gecko engine based on Firefox 40, improved font matching in DirectWrite, added support for OpenMP when run on ARM platforms, and a heap of bugfixes.

It should be noted that Direct3D does not equal DirectX. Direct3D is part of DirectX, which handles the hardware access layer. It is therefore the most crucial component of the graphics API, but even full Direct3D support doesn't mean that all DirectX 11 applications will run perfectly. In the wine emulator, for various items that are completely implemented there is software that doesn't run smoothly.

While we wait for the developers to continue their work, you can download the new version of WINE 1.7.50 here from SourceForge, and start playing around with it. If you're looking for software that runs well, or want to contribute to the WINE community, you can help out by testing different software and letting people know how it runs at the WineHQ AppDB.

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