The Wine Project has released Wine 3.0 for Linux and Android. Wine provides Linux users with an emulated Windows API, allowing many Windows applications to be run from directly from the Linux desktop without the need for virtualisation software or even a Windows licence.

Version 3.0 adds support for numerous DirectX 10 and 11 features, improves OpenGL core contexts and supports more graphics cards through the Direct3D graphics database. There’s also provisional support for Android on devices running Intel chips.

DirectX 10 and 11 features that have been implemented include a number of shaders, buffers and arrays. There’s stream output, format capability queries and support for large numbers of shader model 4 and 5 instructions.

Wine 3.0 broadens support for newer applications, in particular games that require DirectX 10 and 11.

The multi-threaded command stream feature serialises Direct3D rendering commands into a single rendering thread – disabled in this initial release, it should provide opportunities for further performance improvements down the road.

OpenGL core context support in Direct3D has been improved to the point where it is now the default setting for Direct3D 10 and 11 apps on AMD and Intel graphics cards. Numerous Direct2D features have also been implemented.

Android users will be pleased to learn that Wine can now be built as an APK package to behave like a proper Android application. Full graphics and audio drivers have also been implemented, but only full-screen desktop mode is supported. Support for OpenGL has been added, but no Direct3D support is yet available – it’s planned for the next development cycle.

Kernel changes see the default version of Windows set to Windows 7, while user interface changes include redesigned built-in mouse cursors, available at higher resolutions for High DPI displays.

Other High DPI improvements see support for higher display resolutions, along with proper scaling for Shell Explorer, common dialogs and the RichEdit control.

Numerous other features have also been implemented or tweaked – see here for a full list of changes.

Wine 3.0 is rolling out now as an open-source download for most Linux distributions. An Android APK will hopefully follow shortly.