For years now , Valve has been slowly improving the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets thousands of Windows games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS . But Valve’s Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games written for Direct3D 8, the proprietary Windows graphics API Microsoft released in late 2000.

Now, a new open source project is seeking to extend Linux interoperability further back into PC gaming history. The d7vk project describes itself as “a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7 [D3D7], which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine.”

More options are always welcome

The new project isn’t the first attempt to get Direct3D 7 games running on Linux. Wine ‘s own built-in WineD3D compatibility layer has supported D3D7 in some form or another for at least two decades now . But the new d7vk project instead branches off the existing dxvk compatibility layer , which is already used by Valve’s Proton for SteamOS and which reportedly offers better performance than WineD3D on many games.

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