{"id":225833,"date":"2026-03-20T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/wsl-wine-updates-speed-cross-os-app-performance-the-register\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T21:30:10","slug":"wsl-wine-updates-speed-cross-os-app-performance-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/wsl-wine-updates-speed-cross-os-app-performance-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"WSL, WINE updates speed cross-OS app performance \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

WSL, WINE updates speed cross-OS app performance \u2022 The Register<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/03\/20\/linux_directx_and_opengl\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-20 12:40:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theregister.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever OS you run, you have a better chance to run non-native apps. Running Linux virtualized on Windows is set to speed up slightly, and so is running Windows apps on top of 64-bit Linux and macOS.<\/p>\n

Two very different types of graphics driver stack both received updates this week, and although they are unrelated, both are pursuing the same goal: better graphics performance when running non-native\u00a0apps on top of a different OS.<\/p>\n

The first of these is one that The Register has mentioned before \u2013 albeit quite a long time ago. Six years ago, we covered Microsoft’s new dxgkrnl driver, which allows Linux running under WSL2 to access the DirectX functionality of a GPU belonging to the host\u00a0OS. Microsoft was keen to promote this at the time, and even now the driver has its own section on the Microsoft docs site.<\/p>\n

Dxgkrnl hasn’t been touched in almost exactly four years. After its introduction in 2020, it got a significant rebuild in 2022 \u2013 effectively version 2 \u2013 and a few months later Microsoft refactored the code for clarity and ease of review, labeling it PATCH v3. A new patch on the Linux kernel mailing list introduces version 4 of the driver.<\/p>\n

This version supports compute-only GPUs, for running those painfully trendy \u2013 or just plain painful \u2013 LLMs, plus multiple virtual GPUs per VM, and driver buffer sharing via dma-fence. Of course, DirectX itself remains closed source, and the driver is no use in any other context except running under Hyper-V on top of Windows.<\/p>\n

WINE continues to drive new development<\/h3>\n

WSL2 runs a single real copy of Linux inside Windows, with containers impersonating different distributions. It’s a big contrast to the original WSL a decade ago. Now referred to as WSL1, it provided a translation layer to convert Linux API calls into Windows ones, derived from the long-gone Project Astoria runtime for running Android apps…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WSL, WINE updates speed cross-OS app performance \u2022 The Register https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/03\/20\/linux_directx_and_opengl\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-20 12:40:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/regmedia.co.uk\/2018\/06\/04\/shutterstock_penguin_and_baby.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-225833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225835,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225833\/revisions\/225835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}