Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

https://www.xda-developers.com/wine-11-rewrites-linux-runs-windows-games-speed-gains/

Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive

Wine 11 is the biggest jump for Linux gaming in years.

XDA
Before anyone gets too excited about ntsync, the performance gains are (with few exceptions) mild, usually in the lower single percentage range. These extreme gains are the result of benching against vanilla wine without fsync, anyone playing demanding games on linux would have been doing so using fsync. This is mentioned in the article but treated like a side note. I've been running benchmarks between both and while the performance increase is real, please temper your expectations. A few titles might also run slightly worse.

>These extreme gains are the result of benching against vanilla without fsync, which is what anyone gaming on linux uses

Not for anyone using a kernel without these patches. Which would be most people.

Most people? What mainstream Linux distros ship without fsync or esync support?

Well I can tell you that if it didn’t make it upstream Fedora didn’t ship it.

It looks there was a copr for a custom kernel-fsync and projects like Bazzite or Nobara are adding patches.

From my understanding the fsync patches were never upstreamed.

The common gaming-focused Wine/Proton builds can also use esync (eventfd-based synchronization). IIRC, it doesn't need a patched kernel.

The point being that these massive speed gains will probably not be seen by most people as you suggest, because most Linux gamers already have access to either esync or fsync.

Maybe you are right about esync but anyway I would also gather a lot of people don’t have that either. At least personally I don’t bother with custom proton builds or whatever so if Valve didn’t enable that on their build then I don’t have it.

> if Valve didn’t enable that on their build then I don’t have it.

The Proton build is Valve's build. It supports both fsync and esync, the latter of which does not require a kernel patch. If you're gaming on Linux with Steam, you're probably already using it.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/?tab=readme-ov-file#...

GitHub - ValveSoftware/Proton: Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components

Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components - ValveSoftware/Proton

GitHub
I thought you meant Proton-GE or such other patched builds of proton.