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⇱ Arch Linux Moving To WoW64 Wine & Wine-Staging - Phoronix

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Arch Linux Moving To WoW64 Wine & Wine-Staging

Written by Michael Larabel in WINE on 18 June 2025 at 06:41 AM EDT. 33 Comments
The Arch Linux project announced this week they are working to transition their Wine and Wine-Staging packages over to pure WoW64 builds. This "Windows on Windows 64-bit" allows for 32-bit Windows applications on 64-bit Linux platforms without needing 32-bit software libraries/prefixes present and overall a big architectural win.

With the WoW64 version of Wine / Wine-Staging, it avoids the existing Wine dependency on Arch Linux's multilib repository for the 32-bit libraries. This simplifies the packaging in general and jives with the direction of upstream Wine development around WoW64.

Arch Linux developers are aware of the current WoW64 shortcomings that OpenGL performance can be lower for 32-bit games/applications using OpenGL directly as well as existing 32-bit Wine prefixes needing to be recreated.

Arch Linux users leveraging Wine/Wine-Staging can learn more about this WoW64 change via the ArchLinux.org blog.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.