Questions

A Windows compatibility layer for Linux. It loads a Windows program and gives it the Windows it expects: windows, files, the registry, sound, graphics. Behind the scenes it does the work with what your Linux system already has.

No. Aura32 is written from scratch and contains none of Wine’s code. It does lay out its C: drive the way Wine does, so the folder structure will look familiar.

Proton is Valve’s version of Wine, tuned for Steam games. Aura32 is its own implementation, aimed at applications: the parts modern Windows apps lean on, such as .NET, WebView2, app packages, sign-in windows and GPU compute.

Neither. Windows programs are made of x86-64 code, the same as your CPU runs, so Aura32 runs them directly. There’s no copy of Windows involved.

No. Aura32 doesn’t use Windows itself. A few apps want Microsoft’s free runtimes, like the Visual C++ runtime or the .NET Framework, which you download from Microsoft.

The compatibility page shows which kinds of software work today. For one particular program, aura32 check reads it and lists anything Aura32 is still missing, before it runs anything.

Aura32 is aimed at apps, but 3D works: Vulkan runs on your driver and Direct3D through DXVK. Games with kernel anti-cheat won’t run, because Aura32 never loads Windows drivers. Store and Game Pass games won’t either: their licences depend on Microsoft’s own drivers.

No. 3D runs on any Vulkan driver, from AMD, Intel or NVIDIA. Only programs that compute with CUDA need an NVIDIA card.

Partly, and more every week. 32-bit programs run and 32-bit installers install, but a few pieces are still missing, such as COM objects for 32-bit code.

It’s meant for any 64-bit x86 Linux. It’s developed and tested on an Arch-based distribution.

No. Aura32 runs Windows code directly on the CPU, so it needs an x86-64 PC running Linux.

As safe as running them on Windows, but no safer. Aura32 isn’t a sandbox: programs run as your user and can reach your files, including your whole Linux file system as drive Z:. Run the programs you trust.

Aura32 is a clean-room interoperability project. It follows the public PE/COFF specification and Microsoft’s public documentation, and checks its behaviour against what programs do. It contains no Microsoft code and no disassembly of Microsoft’s programs, and it never decrypts protected software or extracts keys.

No. Aura32 has no telemetry and no accounts. It uses the network when a program you run does, or when you ask it to download something.

It isn’t released yet. It’s in active development; the roadmap shows what’s being worked on now.

That will be announced with the first release.