Windows NT Synchronization Primitive Driver Updated For The Linux Kernel

For years Wine developers have been after a better synchronization API for the Linux kernel to better match the semantics of Microsoft Windows. Posted back in January was a request for comments on an "NTSYNC" Linux kernel driver to implement Windows NT synchronization primitives for the Linux kernel. At the start of the month a post-RFC version was posted of this open-source driver and today the latest iteration of that work has been published to the kernel mailing list.

Elizabeth Figura with CodeWeavers has posted the latest revised "v2" patches of the NT synchronization primitive driver. The updated driver code fixes a broken rebase of the earlier patches, improves documentation, and overall revises the earlier v2 patch attempt.

This NTSYNC driver to expose /dev/ntsync for implementing Microsoft Windows NT synchronization primitives amounts to three thousand lines of new code in its current form.

Implementing these NT synchronization primitives have shown to offer the potential for significantly faster Wine Windows-based gaming performance on Linux with this driver:

Let's hope these latest patches are reviewed well and that there is some clear path moving forward for getting the NTSYNC driver upstreamed into the Linux kernel for bettering the Wine / Steam Play Linux gaming performance.