In a recent development in the Wine code base, the issue of version 10.15 saw the addition of support for the ntsync driver. This driver, which is part of the Linux kernel from version 6.14 onwards, aims to enhance the performance of Windows games launched using Wine. The driver implements the symbolic device /DEV/NTSYNC and a range of synchronization primitives utilized in the Windows NT kernel.
The significant increase in performance is attributed to the elimination of overhead costs in user space. For instance, when utilizing the NTSYNC driver as opposed to implementing NT synchronization primitives in user space, there was a noticeable boost in the maximum FPS in the game Dirt 3.
To enable optimized synchronization primitives in Wine, users must activate the NTSYNC kernel module, which is disabled by default. This can be accomplished by adding a configuration file /etc/modules-load.d/ntsync.conf with the NTSYNC line and restarting the system, or manually loading the module using the `sudo modprobe ntsync` command. It is essential to have at least the Linux 6.14 kernel version to support this functionality.
To confirm that NTSYNC is operational, users can run a program in Wine. Running the `winecfg` command and then starting `lsof /dev/ntsync` will help identify Wine processes utilizing NTSYNC in the output. This ensures that the NTSYNC driver is successfully incorporated into the Wine environment.