890
Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
890 points (99.7% liked)
Linux Gaming
25110 readers
1662 users here now
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.
Resources
Help:
- ProtonDB
- Are We Anticheat Yet?
- r/linux_gaming FAQ
- Fork of an earlier version of the above
- PCGamingWiki
- LibreGameWiki
Launchers/Game Library Managers:
General:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What is often overlooked
Ntsync is great and there will be performance improvement. But not exactly
massiveThese don't sound massive to you?
You won't see those because most probably you are already using one of other *sync
XDA was not always this sensationalist. With that said, I always welcome performance improvements.
My old ass remembers when XDA was a place where you learned how to put Android on your windows phone
Or hacked up your own android rom because even knowing jack and shit you could.
Yeah I remember getting the G1 weeks before it came out because the local TMobile store was just sick or me asking every fucking day. I remember rooting it, loving it, then moving to the n900 and thinking "I want this forever" only for fucking Microsoft to buy Nokia and tank Meego
I'm still hunting for leftover stocks of the N950... would love that phone.
Imagine if we got a refresh of that - tilt screen, full QWERTY, modern, large, high resolution display, modern hardware and battery tech, bundled with open bootloader and pick your poison OS...
This would be lovely. I loved the Nokia phones, it’s such a shame it was all ruined by Microsoft.
It's my dream phone honestly. I really should have grabbed one years ago.
As much as I HATED the way the company put out this phone, you're describing the FXTEC pro 1
That was the XDA forums, I never found their site very usefuly, but maybe that's just me.
Yeah the forums are a treasure for old phone hacking
Oh I know, but for a long time that was the only reason to visit the site.
putting Android on the HTC HD2. Man college me wanted that phone so badly. And a lot of HTC's phones tbh
The HD2 was a game changer.
HTC Incredible was my first. XDA was my place shortly thereafter.
seriously. their stuff now is borderline clickbait! so. many. listicles.
Not borderline, they're literally a clickbait farm now. There's an almost daily release of the exact same articles rehashed (e.g. "these are the main Docker containers I run on every server" title changed up a little and it's literally always the same 4-5 containers).
i mean this article about wine 11 and ntsync is at least relevant and somewhat technical, not just "i tried out 5 different self-hosted ai butthole identifiers on proxmox - number 4 will surprise you!"
XDA will write articles these days like:
Okay this just unlocked a random memory. Back when I worked at a call center, on a slow day a lady called about a product that we no longer directly supported, and she went on a huge tangent about how everything she buys is bright red to remind her of the fires of hell. Bright red purse, bright red clothing, bright red phone, bright red computer, etc. she also told me quite a bit about a children's book series she wrote about a Christian dog
Orks approve
We were using the flying toasters screensaver before you were even born
What’s massive is the need for clicks
Well said
That's not the only thing that's massive.
How about their gigantic ego?
I don't think that's overlooked at all. 99.9% of people using WINE/Proton aren't going to have any idea what fsync is, and almost nobody not using
proton-cachyosis going to use it. fsync, itself a workaround, is niche within what's already a niche.From what I found online, Steam enables esync by default, and fsync if your kernel supports it.
Lutris has both options nowadays in the runner settings. Idk if they’re both enabled by default, but in my case they’re enabled. ymmv there.
source
any idea how this would compare to starting steam directly from a display manager using gamescope as the compositor?
I’m imagine gamescope is the best-case, since there’s no other apps or visual effects.
What are the kernel requirements? Is it something any random Debian user is likely to have, or do you need to be compiling it yourself?
From the article:
So since Jan 2022, it’s been in the stable Linux kernel. For Debian and its derivatives, it would be included beginning with Bookworm.
So basically, both esync and fsync are enabled by default for almost everybody.
Assuming that most non-technical users (who wouldn’t research and enable it) are probably using Wine/Proton through Steam: yeah.
Speaking, although I've heard the term thrown around a lot. Can I get a layman's overview?
I think it's pretty well described in the article of the post
You're right, it is.
You can try all you want, but you will never get me to read the articles before commenting.
i use ntsync whenever i can, but i've only had linux (cachyos) on my gaming rig since like august. that said, i believe one of their recent updates made ntsync the default for proton-cachyos
Fsync maybe not but AFAIK esync is widely used. On some protondb pages there's a hint to disable esync, not the other way round. And while esync is not as performant as fsync, it is still much better than vanilla
It's worth noting that the new sync implementation shouldn't cause any of the compatibility problems esync and fsync ran into, so it's a worthwhile upgrade from a stability viewpoint even if a user won't see huge performance gains.
It should still fix minor stuttering that some gets get on Linux, which will be pretty huge.
I remember hearing that Ntsync isn't even faster than fsync in general use, just in some rare corner cases
It fixed the lag spikes I experienced playing some of the older Call of Duty titles so it's overall been a huge upgrade for me.
This is true and expected, the point of NTSYNC was to be a more faithful emulation of Windows synchronization primitives, so increased compatibility and correctness. If it's ever faster than esync or fsync it's just a bonus. It's on par generally, though.
Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Okay. Parts of WINE emulate parts of Windows in order to function. The NTSYNC driver emulates NT synchronization primitives.
People on Lemmy are fucking dumb, wow. The word WINE literally stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”. It’s a translation layer.
I'm aware. You seem to be equivocating on the word "emulate." Nobody called WINE an emulator. The design and behavior of NTSYNC is meant to mimic that of NT synchronization primitives.