The NTSYNC Driver For Wine/Proton Is "Broken" For Linux 6.10

While Linux 6.10 is poised to merge the initial NTSYNC driver for a Windows NT Synchronization Primitive driver that can help with faster Windows gaming performance under Wine/Proton (Steam Play), the driver isn't complete. The initial patches have been in Greg Kroah-Hartman's char-misc-next branch for several weeks to expose the NTSYNC character device, it isn't the entire patch series. Greg has now marked the driver as "broken" for Linux 6.10.

The NTSYNC driver basics are in char-misc-next but the rest of the patch series ironing out the functionality haven't yet been queued. It's now too late for finding it for the Linux 6.10 merge window, so Greg is marking the driver as "broken" which in turn means the driver will not be compiled for common kernel builds. Greg wrote on the message for the patch:

"The ntsync code is only partially enabled in the kernel at this point in time, creating the device node and that's about it. Don't confuse systems that expect to see a working ntsync interface by teasing it with this basic structure at this point in time, so mark the code as "broken" so that it is not built and enabled just yet.

Once the rest of the code is accepted, this will be reverted so that the driver can be correctly built and used, but for now, this is the safest way forward."

That "broken" patch for NTSYNC was picked up a few minutes ago in char-misc-next ahead of the char/misc feature pull being submitted soon for the Linux 6.10 merge window.

CodeWeavers' Elizabeth Figura had commented on the patch when it was volleyed on the mailing list:

"I was even thinking of suggesting something like this myself. Sorry for taking so long to get the rest of the patches into acceptable shape..."

Here's to hoping that the NTSYNC driver code is in good shape then for the Linux 6.11 kernel later in the year for helping speed up Windows gaming on Linux with Valve's Steam Play and Wine.