# Wine 329 Hacker News commenters recommended Wine and 88 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (11 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Free compatibility layer that runs most Windows programs and games on Linux and Mac, sometimes better than on Windows; expect tinkering and occasional performance or stability problems. ## Why people recommend it - Most Windows software just works (7 comments): "Linux has gone from a product that is kind of shaky with Windows, to "I can throw a windows program or game at it and it usually works"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45894483)) "Through wine ive been able to transition many colleagues accross because software they need will work as they expect it to in linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47522981)) "the programs that do work, usually work very well, sometimes even more reliably and faster than under Windows itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46764774)) - Old games run better than Windows (5 comments): "software, particularly games of the DX9-11 eras to perform better on Wine/Proton then they do under native Windows on the same hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916696)) "My experience of running Win95-Era Games, especially more wonky one like Cavelands on Linux with Wine is far better than on Windows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49777264)) "the programs that do work, usually work very well, sometimes even more reliably and faster than under Windows itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46764774)) - Stable target across Linux distros (4 comments): "Proton and Wine means there is a single target now, instead of the fragmented mess that is Desktop Linux today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799158)) "because wine and proton are so good and so much easier to support than each individual distro natively" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567479)) "A Win32 binary that runs in Wine is likely to work on more Linux distros than a native Linux binary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47993870)) - Steadily improving over decades (4 comments): "I ran some games through Wine even twenty years ago but it was certainly not always possible, and usually not even easy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46827853)) "I really respect so much about the Wine project. It's been going on for decades, each release gets a little better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46351553)) "Everything has gotten so much better as the years have gone on, that this is a perfectly acceptable solution." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513936)) ## What people warn about - Still requires tinkering (3 comments): "Wine/Proton has gotten really good, but still requires tinkering, and still sometimes has really bad performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700462)) "Vanilla Wine is a bit of a rough experience, I'd only recommend it for advanced users who know what they're doing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100446)) "making it work in Wine is troublesome enough that I end up giving up before finishing anything of interest" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517274)) - Performance issues in some games (3 comments): "There are a lot of things that work remarkably well, but I have some issues with GPU performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086772)) "Wine/Proton has gotten really good, but still requires tinkering, and still sometimes has really bad performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700462)) "there were significant performance issues originating from wine's reliance on translating dx to opengl" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45924004)) - Crashes and broken apps (3 comments): "If anytime I save a project running via Wine has a non 0% chance of it crashing and bringing down my entire work, it's not going to happen." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717264)) "a number of applications I had previously been using without issue stopped working due to the change they had made to those dlls" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46172100)) "something in WINE manages to interact so poorly with the window manager that it crashes X altogether" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974155)) - Slow progress, experimental features (3 comments): "the Wine developers have had reasonable (if tediously slow) success in making it possible to express the same semantics to Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473066)) "While WINE is impressive, it seems the only real progress for anything past Windows 7 is on paid versions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47690649)) "Wine is just getting there, but only with scary messages that say that it's an experimental feature." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46578108)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windows-subsystem-for-linux.md): 159 recommend - [WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wsl2.md): 115 recommend - [Cygwin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cygwin.md): 25 recommend - [WinApps](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winapps.md): 19 recommend - [Rosetta](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rosetta.md): 18 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Wine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/wine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).