The Wine codebase, from which version 10.15 will be released in a week, now includes support for the ntsync driver, significantly improving the performance of Windows games running through Wine. This driver has been part of the Linux kernel since version 6.14 and implements the character device /dev/ntsync along with a set of synchronization primitives used in the Windows NT kernel.
A significant performance boost is achieved by eliminating the overhead associated with using RPC in user space. For instance, when using the ntsync driver compared to the implementation of NT synchronization primitives in user space, the maximum FPS in the game Dirt 3 increased by 678%, in Resident Evil 2 by 196%, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands by 177%, Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris by 131%, Call of Juarez by 125%, The Crew by 96%, Forza Horizon 5 by 48%, and Anger Foot by 43%.
To utilize the optimized synchronization primitives in Wine, the ntsync kernel module must be enabled, which is disabled by default. To activate it, you can add a configuration file /etc/modules-load.d/ntsync.conf containing the line "ntsync" and restart the system, or manually load the module with the command "sudo modprobe ntsync". A minimum of Linux kernel 6.14 is required for operation.
To verify that ntsync is indeed functioning, you must run something in Wine. For example, it’s sufficient to execute the command "winecfg", then run "lsof /dev/ntsync" and check that the output contains Wine processes using ntsync. For instance: $ lsof /dev/ntsync COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME start.exe 658466 user 12r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync services. 658474 user 11r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync explorer. 658484 user 11r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync winedevic 658499 user 10r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync svchost.e 658552 user 10r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync plugplay. 658557 user 10r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync winedevic 658605 user 10r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync conhost.e 658623 user 11r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync winecfg.e 658625 user 11r CHR 10,260 0t0 630 /dev/ntsync
Source: opennet.ru
