Wine 11.5 is out today as the latest bi-weekly development release for this software to run Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms. Most exciting with Wine 11.5 is the introduction of the Syscall User Dispatch feature on Linux.
Wine’s NTDLL implementation has merged support for system call emulation on Linux using Syscall User Dispatch. Syscall User Dispatch is a feature of Linux 5.11+ to allow redirecting specific non-native system calls back to user-space for handling by compatibility layers like Wine. With Syscall User Dispatch allowing emulated system calls back to user-space, allows for better performance than alternatives and a cleaner design.
Yes, Linux 5.11 debuted all the way back in 2021 so there is fairly broad adoption of supported kernels by now for Syscall User Dispatch. From the start it was designed with Wine/Proton in mind albeit took longer than expected to see this usage by mainline Wine.
What this Syscall User Dispatch feature in Wine now means for end-users is addressing bugs like this bug report with multiple games/applications crashing on Wine due to direct use of x86_64 SYSCALL instruction. Detroit: Become Human, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Arknights: Endfield are among the known titles affected. That particular bug report was open since 2019 and now only closed by today’s Wine 11.5 release.
Wine 11.5 also adds C++ support in its build system, bundled ICU libraries, VBScript compatibility fixes, and other bug fixes. 22 known bug fixes were addressed over the past two weeks.
More details on all of the Wine 11.5 changes via WineHQ.org.
