Wine-Staging 11.5 Released With A Few New Patches

Wine-Staging 11.5 has been released, bringing a handful of new patches to this experimental build that sits 228 patches atop the upstream Wine codebase. The release comes hot on the heels of Wine 11.5's major Syscall User Dispatch support, which Wine-Staging had been carrying for months before it finally landed upstream.

What's New in Wine-Staging 11.5

The headline feature in this release is JSON array and object parsing support added to windows.web. This addresses a long-standing issue where PowerToys installation would fail due to missing JSON parsing capabilities. The bug report dates back to July 2024, making this a welcome fix for users trying to run Microsoft's utility suite under Wine.

Another notable addition is support for the IRadialControllerInterop interface in windows.ui. This patch resolves compatibility issues with Clip Studio Paint 4, which wasn't functioning properly in Windows 10 or Windows 11 compatibility modes. The bug report for this issue is approximately one year old, showing how these staging patches can solve real-world application problems that take time to identify and fix.

Building on Wine 11.5's Foundation

Wine-Staging 11.5 inherits all the improvements from Wine 11.5, most notably the Syscall User Dispatch support for NTDLL that handles x86_64 syscall emulation. This feature, which Wine-Staging had been carrying as a staging patch for some time, is now thankfully upstream, reducing the divergence between the two branches.

The release also updates against the latest upstream Git state of VKD3D for Direct3D 12 atop Vulkan, ensuring that Wine-Staging users have access to the most recent graphics stack improvements.

Availability and Next Steps

Both Wine 11.5 and Wine-Staging 11.5 are available for download from WineHQ.org. The staging branch continues to serve as a proving ground for experimental features and bug fixes that may eventually make their way upstream, though the gap between staging and mainline has narrowed with recent upstream improvements.

For users running applications that were previously blocked by the JSON parsing or radial controller issues, this release should provide immediate benefits. The staging branch remains an important resource for users who need the latest fixes and are willing to accept the experimental nature of the codebase.