The Arch Linux project announced this week they are working to transition their Wine and Wine-Staging packages over to pure WoW64 builds. This “Windows on Windows 64-bit” allows for 32-bit Windows applications on 64-bit Linux platforms without needing 32-bit software libraries/prefixes present and overall a big architectural win.
With the WoW64 version of Wine / Wine-Staging, it avoids the existing Wine dependency on Arch Linux’s multilib repository for the 32-bit libraries. This simplifies the packaging in general and jives with the direction of upstream Wine development around WoW64.
Arch Linux developers are aware of the current WoW64 shortcomings that OpenGL performance can be lower for 32-bit games/applications using OpenGL directly as well as existing 32-bit Wine prefixes needing to be recreated.
Arch Linux users leveraging Wine/Wine-Staging can learn more about this WoW64 change via the ArchLinux.org blog.
