Wine, the Windows API for Linux is moving towards the first stable version, 1.0, in its history of 15 years of development.
According to the roadmap, this version will probably hit the mirror servers June 6 this year. Before this happens, there will be a release candidate which will merely include a couple of improvements to avoid endangering key applications.
Key applications are four programs which are guaranteed to run stably in version 1.0.0: Photoshop CS 2, Microsoft Powerpoint, Excel and Word Viewer in the 97 and 2003 versions. Version 1.1.0 will be a major bugfix release; minor releases with version numbers starting at 1.0.1 will probably fix minor bugs.
On the website with the roadmap announcement the developers explain the limit of four key applications; every additional application would entail enormous testing overhead, and this is extremely time-consuming. At the same time, the project encourages Wine users to test even known platinum programs with the new 1.0 version and to return feedback to the developer list.
Right now, the list of Platinum programs includes 1229 applications and games that run out-of-the-box on Wine. Less perfectly supported software has either gold, silver or bronze status. Programs that have not run at all on Wine previously are listed as "garbage" by the project. The AppDB on the WineHQ website gives users the ability to check how well Wine supports the Windows applications they need, and how to avoid installation issues.
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