After almost ten years, Wine 2.0 is released with support for 64-bit apps and another 6,599 changes!

The compatibility layer for UNIX Wine already exists and saves the skin of countless Mac and Linux users, amazingly, almost 24 years ago (the initial version was released in July 1993). In 2008 (!) Came version 1.0 of the software, and now, almost ten years later, proving the “slowly and always” philosophy of its developers, the Wine 2.0.

Wine 2.0 for Mac

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Wine is a software used to run Windows applications on UNIX systems, such as Mac or Linux. It is not an emulator which, incidentally, its recursive acronym makes absolutely clear: Wine Is Not an ANDmulator (in Portuguese the acronym does not work, but it means “Wine is not an emulator”); instead, it allows applications to be run natively through the application of Microsoft's operating system APIs. CrossOver, for example, is a commercial and simplified implementation of Wine that in its pure form can be very complex for the use of basic or even intermediate users.

Wine 2.0 presents, according to its developers, 6,600 changes compared to the previous version. The most notable of these is support for 64-bit apps for Windows on the Mac, which was not possible before. Also new is a rendering mode for Retina screens, which will no longer make apps look horrible on your beautiful iMac or MacBook (Pro). A number of new software have gained support in this new version, such as the Office 2013 suite, while in the hardware field support has been added to several new graphics cards.

The executable binaries and source code for Wine 2.0 can now be downloaded from the project's official website.

(via AppleInsider)