Wine-NSPA Wiki; https://github.com/nine7nine/Wine-NSPA/wiki
Wine-NSPA focuses on the integration of performance enhancements and RT related features that help proaudio apps run better. Currently, Fsync/futex_waitv is the prefered method for improving synchronization primitives support, which requires kernel-level support (linux-5.16+). I have implemented improved Scheduling and RT support via out-of-tree patchwork, and my own modifications to Wine. This fork also integrates the out-of-tree Wineserver Shared Memory patchset, a Multi-threaded Wineserver implementation (shmem per Thread patch), the Wine Low Fragmentation Heap patchwork, and a number of other out-of-tree patchsets. Some of these other features do require kernel-level support. (but Wine-NSPA will work without them too).
Wine-NSPA has two branches 7x (7.5 based, getting old) and 8x (based on 8.14+). wine-nspa-8x-git is what sould probably be used, as going forward - that is where active development will happen.
Note: 8x buils are still mssing a few bits, but nothing too critical... I currently use my typical setup of NI Komplete, UHE, AAS, etc plugins all running with Kushview Element ~ which works reasonably well with 8x builds. Ableton Live is also running alright too -- although, given that I'm still working on 8x builds (and Wine-8.x has only recently stabilized for my use:), mileage wil vary.
- NSPA-Specific Wine-RT Implementation
- Improved multi-threading / scheduling support
- Various Locking, Atomics & Membarrier Optmizations/Improvements
- Kernelbase linux-thread RT hooking for TIME_CRITICAL threads*
- Wineserver Shared Memory support
- Wineserver SHMEM Per Thread (Server Requests/Replies)
- Esync / Fsync Proton 8.0-experimental implementation
- Wine Low Fragmentation Heap Patchwork
- Keyed Events Linux Futexes Implementation
- Numerous Performance Optimizations
- Significant backports and Bugfixes
- Winserver + Ntdll backports
- MSVCRT backports/updates
- Hacks to improve Wine for NSPA usage
- Loader/vDSO performance Optimizations
- Proton's CPU Topology Overrides
note: too many other bits to list here
As mentioned above, some features in Wine-NSPA do require kernel support. For that reason, I maintain my own Archlinux PKGBUILDs. You can find my archlinux package (sources) and kernel sources repository linked below;
- Linux-NSPA PKGBUILD - https://github.com/nine7nine/Linux-NSPA-pkgbuild
note: This is a Customized Realtime Linux kernel.
I HIGHLY suggest that you use Linux-NSPA with Wine-NSPA over any other kernel. Vanilla distribution kernels are often not configured for optimal performance and more often than not: poorly configured for proaudio / realtime workloads. On top of that; I have patchwork that may not only improve performance, but actually resolve issues that may be wine-specific (such as the rwlock/rw_semaphore issues on RT that may crash some wine applications).
Preview: Ableton Live 11 running in Wine-NSPA-7.5 with a number of patches/fixes to better support it.
Currently, I'm working with some experimental patchwork to improve multithreading, scalability and my RT support. This should get heavy applications like Ableton Live 11 working nicely in Wine-NSPA. This work is partially complete, but I'm also tracking Ableton Live support/documentation here: #4 ...
DPC Latency Checker is used in older versions of Windows to verify if your system is suitable for realtime performance. Assuming you have decent hardware (higher specs, well-designed mobo, interrupts layout, good drivers, etc), AND you've configured your system very well. You can use DPC Latency Checker with Wine-NSPA. ( you can google and find DPC Latency Checker v1.40, if you like )
The above is from my Microsoft Surface 7. It's a decently designed PC, running Linux-NSPA on a well-configured Arch Linux system. NOTE: this isn't a substitute replacement for rt-tests (cyclictest, hackbench) for testing a linux system: but will help indicate if your Wine-NSPA / linux system setup is actually usable for ProAudio.
- WineHQ: https://www.winehq.org/
- Wine-Staging: https://github.com/wine-staging/wine-staging
- Wine-TKG: https://github.com/Frogging-Family/wine-tkg-git
- RBernon's Wine Repo: https://github.com/rbernon/wine
- Openglfreak Repo: https://github.com/openglfreak/wine-tkg-userpatches
- Valve's Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
- Realtime Linux: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/realtime/start
- Jack Audio Connection Kit: https://jackaudio.org/
- Pipewire: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire
- WineASIO: https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio
- FalkTX: https://github.com/falkTX/Carla
- Robbert-vdh: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge
- Arch Linux: https://archlinux.org/
- Linuxaudio: https://linuxaudio.org/
Other people of note: Jack Winter, Paul Davis and the whole Linuxaudio community.