File:WineHQ_ratings.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Wine
Sign in to saveAlso known as Winelib, W.I.N.E., WineHQ, Windows Emulator, Wine Is Not an Emulator
compatibility layer for running Windows software on Unix-like systems
Key facts
- Original authors
- Bob Amstadt, Eric Youngdale
- Developers
- Wine authors , (1,989)
- Initial release
- 4 July 1993 ; 32 years ago ( 1993-07-04 )
- Stable release
- 11.0 / 13 January 2026
- Preview release
- 11.10 / 30 May 2026
- Written in
- C
- Operating system
- Linux FreeBSD ReactOS (for Windows app and driver compatibility) macOS ( 10.8 – 15 ) (development) Android (experimental) Haiku (experimental)
- Platform
- IA-32 , x86-64 , ARM
- Available in
- Multilingual
- Type
- Compatibility layer
- License
- LGPL 2.1 or later
- Website
- winehq.org
- Repository
- gitlab .winehq .org /wine /wine
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Official name
- Wine
- Official website
- www.winehq.org
- Image
- Winecfg in Wine 10.0 screenshot.webp
Show 8 more facts
- inception
- 1993-06-00
- issue tracker URL
- bugs.winehq.org
- source code repository URL
- gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine
- software version identifier
- 11.7
- Commons category
- Wine (software)
- official wiki URL
- wiki.winehq.org/Main_Page
- publication date
- 1993-07-04
- FAQ URL
- wiki.winehq.org/FAQ
Sources (15)
via Wikidata · CC0
~33 min read
Article
Wine is a compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine is free and open-source software and is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse engineering, to avoid copyright issues.
Wine is primarily developed for Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. No code emulation or virtualization occurs, except on Apple silicon Mac computers, where Rosetta 2 is used to translate x86 code to ARM code.