The X11 driver -------------- Most Wine users run Wine under the windowing system known as X11. During most of Wine's history, this was the only display driver available, but in recent years, parts of Wine has been reorganized to allow for other display drivers (although the only alternative currently available is Patrik Stridvall's ncurses-based ttydrv, which he claims works for displaying calc.exe). The display driver is chosen with the "GraphicsDriver" option in the [wine] section of wine.conf/.winerc, but I will only cover the x11drv in this article. x11drv modes of operation The x11drv consists of two conceptually distinct pieces, the graphics driver (GDI part), and the windowing driver (USER part). Both of these are linked into the libx11drv.so module, though (which you load with the "GraphicsDriver" option). In Wine, running on X11, the graphics driver must draw on drawables (window interiors) provided by the windowing driver. This differs a bit from the Windows model, where the windowing system creates and configures device contexts controlled by the graphics driver, and applications are allowed to hook into this relationship anywhere they like. Thus, to provide any reasonable tradeoff between compatibility and usability, the x11drv has three different modes of operation. Unmanaged/Normal The default. Window-manager-independent (any running window manager is ignored completely). Window decorations (title bars, borders, etc) are drawn by Wine to look and feel like the real Windows. This is compatible with applications that depend on being able to compute the exact sizes of any such decorations, or that want to draw their own. Managed Specified by using the --managed command-line option or the Managed wine.conf option (see below). Ordinary top-level frame windows with thick borders, title bars, and system menus will be managed by your window manager. This lets these applications integrate better with the rest of your desktop, but may not always work perfectly. (A rewrite of this mode of operation, to make it more robust and less patchy, is highly desirable, though, and is planned to be done before the Wine 1.0 release.) Desktop-in-a-Box Specified by using the --desktop command-line option (with a geometry, e.g. --desktop 800x600 for a such-sized desktop, or even --desktop 800x600+0+0 to automatically position the desktop at the upper-left corner of the display). This is the mode most compatible with the Windows model. All application windows will just be Wine-drawn windows inside the Wine-provided desktop window (which will itself be managed by your window manager), and Windows applications can roam freely within this virtual workspace and think they own it all, without disturbing your other X apps. The [x11drv] section AllocSystemColors Applies only if you have a palette-based display, i.e. if your X server is set to a depth of 8bpp, and if you haven't requested a private color map. It specifies the maximum number of shared colormap cells (palette entries) Wine should occupy. The higher this value, the less colors will be available to other applications. PrivateColorMap Applies only if you have a palette-based display, i.e. if your X server is set to a depth of 8bpp. It specifies that you don't want to use the shared color map, but a private color map, where all 256 colors are available. The disadvantage is that Wine's private color map is only seen while the mouse pointer is inside a Wine window, so psychedelic flashing and funky colors will become routine if you use the mouse a lot. PerfectGraphics This option only determines whether fast X11 routines or exact Wine routines will be used for certain ROP codes in blit operations. Most users won't notice any difference. ScreenDepth Applies only to multi-depth displays. It specifies which of the available depths Wine should use (and tell Windows apps about). Display This specifies which X11 display to use, and if specified, will override both the DISPLAY environment variable and the --display command-line option. Managed Wine can let frame windows be managed by your window manager. This option specifies whether you want that by default. UseDGA This specifies whether you want DirectDraw to use XFree86's Direct Graphics Architecture (DGA), which is able to take over the entire display and run the game full-screen at maximum speed. (With DGA1 (XFree86 3.x), you still have to configure the X server to the game's requested bpp first, but with DGA2 (XFree86 4.x), runtime depth-switching may be possible, depending on your driver's capabilities.) But be aware that if Wine crashes while in DGA mode, it may not be possible to regain control over your computer without rebooting. DGA normally requires either root privileges or read/write access to /dev/mem. UseXShm If you don't want DirectX to use DGA, you can at least use X Shared Memory extensions (XShm). It is much slower than DGA, since the app doesn't have direct access to the physical frame buffer, but using shared memory to draw the frame is at least faster than sending the data through the standard X11 socket, even though Wine's XShm support is still known to crash sometimes. DXGrab If you don't use DGA, you may want an alternative means to convince the mouse cursor to stay within the game window. This option does that. Of course, as with DGA, if Wine crashes, you're in trouble (although not as badly as in the DGA case, since you can still use the keyboard to get out of X). DesktopDoubleBuffered Applies only if you use the --desktop command-line option to run in a desktop window. Specifies whether to create the desktop window with a double-buffered visual, something most OpenGL games need to run correctly. - Ove Kåven