Collabora presented a working prototype driver that removes Wine’s X11 binding and allows Windows games to be played in environments based on Wayland. Driver code suggested for consideration by Wine developers for inclusion in the main project.
The driver allows you to ditch X11 in your Linux gaming environment and switch to a graphics subsystem based on the Wayland protocol, which provides higher security and performance. At the current stage of development, the driver allows you to run applications using GDI and OpenGL / DirectX directly in the Wayland composite server, without using an XWayland interlayer.
Operations such as window resizing and state, mouse control, input from keyboard (without changing the layout), output to one monitor, display of menus and tooltips. The driver also includes some tweaks to deal with window positioning breakout – Win32 applications, like X11, use a common flat coordinate model, while Wayland does not allow the application to control the absolute position on the screen. Specifically, the driver simulates flat space by pinning its coordinates to one Wayland surface.
The Collabora driver does not support Vulkan yet, but for this API another driver is being developed by the community – wine-wayland , focused on a bunch of Wayland and Vulkan. The driver requires a system with a GPU that supports the Vulkan graphics API, as well as the Mesa 20.1+ package compiled with support for Wayland and Vulkan, SDL and Faudio. Composite managers tested include Weston and Sway.
The Collabora driver has been tested on Windows builds of applications such as Supertuxkart, 010Editor, Firefox, Stellarium, Battle For Wesnoth, GIMP and Unigine Valley. The following games have been confirmed to work in the wine-wayland driver:
- ABZU
- Dirt 3
- Subnautica
- Rebel Galaxy li >
- Endless Space
- Age of Wonders 3
- Stellaris
- EU4
- Path of Exile
- Pathfinder Kingmaker
- Crusader Kings 2
- Mutant Year Zero
- Tropico 6
- Wasteland 2
- Torchlight 1
- Dungeons 3
