Wine 11.0 Released

BrianFagioli writes: Wine 11.0 has officially landed, wrapping up a year of development with more than 6,000 code changes and a broad set of upgrades that touch gaming, desktop behavior, and long-standing architectural work. The biggest milestone is the completion of the new WoW64 model, which is now considered fully supported and allows 32-bit and even 16-bit applications to run in a cleaner way inside 64-bit prefixes. Wine also gains support for the NTSYNC kernel module now bundled in Linux 6.14, which cuts overhead from thread synchronization and should deliver observable performance benefits in games and multi-threaded applications. A single unified wine binary now replaces the old wine64 launcher, and several system behaviors align more closely with modern Windows, including syscall numbering and NT reparse points.

Graphics and desktop integration received more polish, including deeper Vulkan support (up to API 1.4.335), hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding through Direct3D, and further improvements to Wine's Wayland driver, which now supports clipboard operations, IMEs, and shaped windows. X11 users gain better window activation and fullscreen handling, and legacy DirectX features continue to expand under Wine's Vulkan renderer. Device support also moves forward, with better joystick handling, improved Bluetooth visibility and pairing, and working TWAIN scanning on 64-bit apps. Broad multimedia updates, DirectMusic refinements, .NET/XNA improvements, and developer-facing tools round out a release that appears focused on smoothing sharp edges rather than introducing flashy experiments. As always, source is live now and distro packages are rolling out.

Does it handle WMI?

[Okian Warrior]

Does it handle Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)?

Anyone know?

(I use LightBurn for some laser cutters. It only runs on Windows and there's no viable substitute. Wine fails because it didn't handle WMI)

Re:

[Balthisar]

I wonder what functionality WMI provides to Lightburn that can't be programmed around? Lightburn runs perfectly fine on macOS, which obviously lacks WMI. Unless there's some major feature I'm missing on macOS.

Re:Does it handle WMI?

[test321]

Main developer says "WMI is required by our licensing system" https://forum.lightburnsoftwar... [lightburnsoftware.com]

Re: Does it handle WMI?

[DeanonymizedCoward]

Figures, otherwise perfectly viable thing broken because DRM.

Re:

[mysidia]

I am not familiar with LightBurn, but your best bet would likely be to tweak Wine for specific compatibility with LightBurn, or get the developer of LightBurn to tweak LightBurn's source code for specific compatibility with Wine.. WMI Support should be completely unnecessary to talk to external hardware. A Windows application only needs WMI support to query management information of your local operating system or computer... It is actually very suspicious that a desktop application is touching WMI,

WMI needed for licensing

[Okian Warrior]

According to the developer, WMI is required for their licensing system [lightburnsoftware.com].

It sucks, really. Before I bought hardware I surveyed the available software packages, LightBurn was best in class and they supported linux.

About a year later, they dropped linux support.

Re:WMI needed for licensing

[caseih]

Kind of dumb isn't it. I mean you already have an expensive dongle called a laser cutter. I dealt with that kind of garbage for years with high-end scientific instrumentation. I mean you spend a million dollars on an instrument and then they have the gall to make you use a hardware security dongle to use the instrument.

They really want to make sure they get a cheque from you every few years when they roll out software patches. And they wonder why they have software piracy issues with this sort of treatment.

Maybe there's a crack you can find somewhere. I have no issue whatsoever with a software crack to allow you to use the software you've already purchased.

Re:WMI needed for licensing

[paulatz]

Also, they will never update the software to support the next version of Windows. At work, we're stuck with computer running all the way back to 32bit Windows XP in order to keep using lab equipment that costed hundred of thousands at the time. Transferring the data in and out of it while keeping it acceptably safe is a real nightmare.

Re:

[wildstoo]

In my experience almost all lab or engineering equipment is like this. Software support is quietly dropped after a few years (usually something like "BioWonder Blue devices are no longer supported in BioAnalyze version 7" written in a small box on the download page) and eventually the software ages out of working with modern Windows entirely. Then you're left with, as you say, the support nightmare of running older versions of Windows while managing security and data access just to keep using a perfectly fu

Re:WMI needed for licensing

[arglebargle_xiv]

Years ago I worked for a company that insisted on dongle-protecting the software that ran, and came free with, the very expensive dongle that was its actual product. The software devs quietly disabled the dongle check, which reduced our support load considerably and had zero effect on piracy. I don't think the company mgt. ever found out.

Inkscape

[Grady Martin]

About a year later, they dropped linux support.

That sucks. Have you given J Tech's Inkscape plugin [jtechphotonics.com] a shot (tutorial [inkscape.org])? What hardware are you using, and can it work with Grbl? Do you see any promising packages in Grbl's list of successors [github.com]?

To hell with LightBurn.

Re:

[DeAxes]

You can run LightBurn natively. They made old versions that ran on Linux, the latest was released in March 2025. Version 1.7.08.
You may need to work with their license portal though to get it working.

Linux AppImage - https://release.lightburnsoftw... [lightburnsoftware.com]
Linux .Run file - https://release.lightburnsoftw... [lightburnsoftware.com]
Linux 7zip file - https://release.lightburnsoftw... [lightburnsoftware.com]

Their License Management Portal documentation - https://docs.lightburnsoftware... [lightburnsoftware.com]

Re:

[unixisc]

386 didn't have MMX. That was an added extension to the Pentium - even the initial Pentiums didn't have it

Altium Designer

[hmilz]

It would be nice if Altium Designer finally worked with Wine again. Does anyone know if there is something in the works on the Wine side? (Yes I know, there's Kicad and such. But Altium has some features that Kicad does not, and are cumbersome to implement. I can't, for starters.)

Does it support Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom?

[Rotaluclac]

I seriously consider moving to Ubuntu from Windows10 (have used RedHat with Gnome in the late 1990's, so some Linux experience, even if outdated).

However, I use Lightroom for photo editing. This was not supported by Wine. Not sure about real Windows emulators / boxes for Linux.

Does the new Wine version support Lightroom (and Photoshop)?

Open Source makes a better Windows than Microsoft

[illogicalpremise]

Seriously, why is anyone using Win 11 when you can get all the best bits of Win 7 for free? I can't think of a single feature added to Windows in the last decade that I actually need. Wine/Proton already runs every game I care about and doesn't have a linux port anyway.

Re:

[unixisc]

Where exactly do you get an open source Windows 7? ReactOS aims compatibility w/ XP, the last I checked: I don't know that they've updated it to be a drop-in for 7. And even today, it's still in alpha, and its progress is about as low as GNU Hurd

Microsoft has been releasing, under the MIT license, retro operating systems, like MS-DOS. They should step it up and do the same for all Windows up to Windows 7. Since Windows 8 was the point where they broke w/ the previous kernel and the interface, maybe th

Re:

[Junta]

He didn't say 'an open source Windows 7', he is asserting that wine brings the valuable bits of Windows userspace that he needs, that Windows 7 was plenty and Wine has at *least* caught up to that, as far as he can tell. Essentially that Wine has had 17 years to catch up to Windows 7, and Microsoft hasn't usefully innovated as a platform since then.

That said, it's a mixed bag, some better some worse. Wine actually has developed support for platform features newer than 7 including the big UI toolkit change

Re:

[unixisc]

Legacy is the trump card for Windows. A lot of people have either legacy hardware or legacy software that still works, and which they don't want to stop using. I for instance had a label printer, which was plug and play in any Wintel platform. I don't have that now, so don't know how it would work w/, say Windows-on-Arm. And then there are software packages that I bought previously, such as Adobe Acrobat (including the editor) or Civilization 2. It's these sort of vestiges that can hold some people bac

Re:

[Junta]

I'm looking at a ESXi platform in future

Well, ESXi is a curious horse to hitch to, seeing how broadcom has messed with that platfrom...

Re:

[unixisc]

It isn't something I'll plan to update: just host my VMs there. Including maybe a VM router there to take care of all the internal VMs. I downloaded one of their last images before Broadcom closed it

Re:

[Junta]

I will suggest you consider Proxmox as a home lab solution, unless of course you have a professional need to show VMware skills and don't have a suitable work side sandbox to muck around with.

My durable needs along virtualization are proxmox based, and my vmware infrastructure evaporates every 90 days as it's just to support the development of things with my vmware customers.