A new branch of the Hangover project has been published, which allows you to run 32-bit Windows applications built for x86 (i386) and ARM32 architectures in environments based on ARM64 (Aarch64) architecture. An implementation of the Hangover variant for the RISC-V architecture is in development. The release is based on the Wine 9.0 codebase, which is reflected in the version number. The project's developments are distributed under the LGPL-2.1 license.
The project allows you to achieve significantly higher performance compared to running Wine entirely in emulation mode, since when using Hangover, the emulator is used only to execute the code of the application itself, and all system calls, libraries and Wine components are executed outside the emulator in a native version for the current platform ( Hangover breaks the emulation chain at the level of calls to win32 and wine). The emulation layer can use QEMU, FEX and Box64 emulators, depending on the user's preferences. Work has begun, but is not yet completed, to support the Blink emulator.
Among the changes in version 9.0:
- The ability to use QEMU together with the WoW64 layer (64-bit Windows-on-Windows), available in Wine, has been implemented, allowing you to run 32-bit Windows applications on 64-bit Unix systems. Support for x86_32 and ARM32 architectures is provided.
- Added support for using the FEX emulator in PE format and in Unix builds. In the future, there are plans to discontinue the use of FEX Unix assemblies in favor of PE format assemblies.
- Full integration with the Box64 emulator is provided.
- Ready-made deb packages for Debian 11 and 12 have been collected. In the future, it is planned to publish packages for Ubuntu and Alpine Linux.
- Work has begun to ensure the launch of Windows applications in environments based on the RISC-V architecture.
- Work is underway to return support for x86_64 architecture emulation for running 64-bit Windows applications (in the 0.8 branch, only i386 support was left due to the unavailability of using ARM64EC in Wine).
Additionally, we can note the formation of the release of the Wine Staging 9.0 project, which provides extended builds of Wine, including not fully ready or risky patches that are not yet suitable for adoption into the main Wine branch. Compared to Wine, Wine Staging provides 505 additional patches. The new release of Wine Staging synchronizes with the Wine 9.0 codebase and updates the vkd3d-latest patch.
Source: opennet.ru