Wine (software)
| Wine | |
|---|---|
winecfg configures Wine | |
| Original author(s) | Bob Amstadt, Eric Youngdale |
| Developer(s) | Wine authors (1,755) |
| Initial release | 4 July 1993 |
| Stable release | 10.0
/ 21 January 2025 |
| Repository | gitlab |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | |
| Platform | IA-32, x86-64, ARM |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Type | Compatibility layer |
| License | LGPL 2.1 or later |
| Website | winehq.org |
Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse engineering, to avoid copyright issues. No code emulation or virtualization occurs, except on Apple Silicon Mac computers, where Rosetta 2 is used to translate x86 code to ARM code. Wine is primarily developed for Linux and macOS.
In a 2007 survey by desktoplinux.com of 38,500 Linux desktop users, 31.5% of respondents reported using Wine to run Windows applications. This plurality was larger than all x86 virtualization programs combined, and larger than the 27.9% who reported not running Windows applications.