As they do every other Friday, following the release of v6.17 of "Wine Is Not an Emulator" two weeks ago, WineHQ released WINE 6.18 last night . This is another staging version, meaning it includes many changes and new features, but so many that it may contain bugs, which is why it's not considered stable. Staging versions are a good option for those who want to test whether a Windows program works correctly on a non-Microsoft system.
Wine 6.18 has fixed 19 bugs, but the changelog since 6.17 has reached 484. It's rare to see 500 changes, but Rémi Bernon played a significant role in this achievement, being responsible for no fewer than 132 of them. WineHQ highlights only a few as the most important, and those are listed below.
WINE 6.18 Staging highlights
- Shell32 and WineBus libraries converted to PE.
- Unicode data updated to Unicode version 14.
- Mono engine updated to version 6.4.0, with COM improvements.
- More work for Dwarf 3/4 debugging support.
- HID joystick enabled by default.
- Various bug fixes.
Wine 6.18 is now available for download from this link or this other link . WineHQ also provides information for downloading this and future updates by adding the official Linux repository here , but it can also be installed on macOS and Android. Adding the repository allows you to choose between the Stable, Staging, or Dev versions.
At this stage of development, we're nearing the point where Release Candidates will start arriving, but it's most likely that the next version will be WINE 6.19, to be released on October 8th . With WINE 5.x, 22 Staging versions were released, after which Release Candidates were released weekly. If the new Staging version is confirmed, it will again introduce hundreds of tweaks.