r/linux • u/anh0516 • 3d ago

Alternative OS Introducing ReactOS 0.4.16

https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0416-released/
629 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

160 comments sorted by

320

u/Dekamir 3d ago

Imagine Windows, but with the downsides of Linux font rendering.

Jokes aside, I love this project. If you don't know its purpose, you probably don't know how valuable it is. Having a clean room and open source engineered Windows NT is huge if Microsoft drops the ball sometime, Windows is essentially lost. Yes, the last version will probably work, but we will eventually get problems.

ReactOS is for those purposes. Windows is a huge part of PC history, and we need to preserve it, whether we like it or not. You could install that old car diagnostic tool that doesn't work anywhere else but legacy Windows, to ReactOS, and edit the OS yourself so you can fix the problems for your customers, or even yourself.

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u/FaultWinter3377 3d ago

This is a valid concern. Sooner or later Windows will stop being maintained, or at least lose all compatibility with current programs. Whether that’s in five years, whether that’s in twenty, who knows. But nothing lasts forever and since Windows is basically one of two systems that can run all the big software (and the other said system would be even harder to reverse engineer), having something that is theoretically compatible with 99% of Windows programs in the future would be very useful.

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u/nickster 3d ago

This is a pretty dramatic take. Windows has backwards compatibility of almost 40 years required by governments and fortune 100 companies to function. It’s owned by a trillion dollar company. To think that short sighted that 5 to 20 years windows will cease to function is insane. I think reactos is cool and Linux is the future but to think windows won’t be around is naive.

3

u/Shot-Height-7194 12h ago

The same was said about mainframes and IBM, although it was almost exclusively used by businesses that could afford to remake systems from scratch so migration was never a money problem

3

u/nickster 7h ago

And IBM still maintains z/os with full backwards compatibility going back nearly 60 years. IBM is not dead.

1

u/Shot-Height-7194 2h ago

No but many businesses are trying to get rid of them and replace them with something cloud based. Doing mainframe migrations to the cloud 

0

u/steamcho1 11h ago

Windows is obsolete and shouldnt exist.

38

u/regeya 3d ago

I feel like that day is coming sooner rather than later. And I'm sure they're looking at how hard it was for them to port Windows to ARM versus Apple, who isn't afraid to tell people they just have to upgrade software when they upgrade hardware.

15

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

And I'm sure they're looking at how hard it was for them to port Windows to ARM versus Apple

Was it? Windows is pretty portable (at some point it supported 4 architectures) and Microsoft managed to port Windows to ARM pretty quickly. What difficulties did they encounter? Sure Windows RT was a failure but not for technical reasons.

17

u/DheeradjS 3d ago

It was mostly the inability to convince third-party devs to work with ARM.

There is a lot of major parties depending on old shit and unlike Apple, for good or bad, Microsoft doesn't randomly rip things out without a 10 year deprecation cycle.

14

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

It was mostly the inability to convince third-party devs to work with ARM.

Unlike Apple Microsoft has no reason to move completely to ARM and Windows is not limited to their hardware like macOS. For them ARM is just additional platform they support, they ported Windows to it and provide development tools to make software for it. There is not much else they can do.

7

u/jimmielin 3d ago

MS also shot themselves in the foot with Windows RT when the first ARM32 port of Win8 worked. A PC with all the legacy baggage but artificially kneecapped to run no third party Win32 apps.

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u/nightblackdragon 3d ago edited 3d ago

Windows RT (and Windows 8 in general) was their attempt to get rid of legacy baggage. WinRT (Windows Runtime that was introduced in Windows 8 as a base for Metro/Modern applications) was supposed to provide alternative for Win32 and sooner or later replace it. Obviously developers didn't like that idea very much, especially because WinRT was different and limited compared to Win32.

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u/jimmielin 3d ago

Yes, I agree WinRT was a good promise in a vacuum but most of us use Windows because there’s Win32 applications that worked for us for decades. Especially since we’re in a Linux sub…

2

u/nightblackdragon 2d ago

And that’s exactly the main problem - no one (except perhaps a small minority) uses Windows for the operating system itself. They use it because the applications they rely on run on it. The moment you take that away (as with Windows RT), no one cares about the OS anymore. Which is why Microsoft likely will never be able to get rid of Win32 - Windows simply doesn't matter without it.

2

u/FaultWinter3377 3d ago

That’s a major issue. What on earth convinced them that they needed to make it so you have to jailbreak a Windows computer???

2

u/mohrcore 3d ago

For a change of architecture 10 years isn't even that much. The last macbook generation that ran on Intel was 2019 I think. It's been already 7 years, so we might reach a 10 years tra suction period by the time they completely lose any support from Apple.

3

u/RetroGrid_io 3d ago

Apple no longer supports any x86 CPUs in OSX. The last version of OSX with any support for any x86 CPUs ends security support about Fall of 2028.

1

u/regeya 2d ago

I'm thinking specifically of Adobe, who I'm sure have loads of legacy code in apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. You'd think they'd have the whole thing ported to a portable toolkit by now, surely, and all high-level languages.

14

u/bd1308 3d ago

Between NT 3.x and NT4, it ran on PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha and x86

14

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago edited 3d ago

XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 also ran on Itanium (IA-64). With the exception of 2000 and 8.1, Windows has always supported more architectures than just x86.

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u/bd1308 3d ago

Yeah that’s also true

1

u/d3matt 2d ago

Definitely had install disk for 2000 server on alpha

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u/nightblackdragon 2d ago

Alpha was supported during Windows 2000 development up to RC version, support was dropped before release and Windows 2000 was released with support only for x86.

Apparently Microsoft planned to release 64 bit version of Windows 2000 for Alpha (existing port was 32 bit) but when Windows 2000 was still in development DEC was acquired by Compaq and they announced they will phase out Alpha in favor of upcoming Itanium so Microsoft decided to abandon that plan and Alpha architecture in general and focus on Itanium in next release of Windows (Whistler that became XP). There were Whistler builds compiled for 64 bit Alpha but they were never meant to be released, they served only as preparation for 64 bit port since Itanium hardware wasn't available when they worked on Whistler.

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u/d3matt 2d ago

Must have been an RC floating around my house then. Which was weird because we only had x86 at home 🤣

2

u/nightblackdragon 2d ago

Alpha was such a cool architecture, I wish it wasn't abandoned in favor of Itanium which ended up being a commercial failure.

4

u/wyn10 3d ago

Condering the speed and how much they boast vibe coding they would need to ask the slop.

3

u/creeper6530 2d ago

Even right now Steam for MacOS, still running on x86, is starting to get warning that Rosetta will be dropped, so your statement is absolutely correct. We can argue about whether it's good or bad, but it's true.

1

u/regeya 2d ago

I both understand why, but also don't. If Steam for MacOS continues they'll either have to use their own aarch64 x86 translation, or convince game companies to target Apple.

I don't get that, either. Wasn't Apple partnering with CodeWeavers at one point to bring Windows games to ARM Macs? What's the plan for when Rosetta 2 goes away?

As an aside, it's Rosetta 2; the original Rosetta was running Mac Classic in a VM.

2

u/Dr_Hexagon 2d ago

As an aside, it's Rosetta 2; the original Rosetta was running Mac Classic in a VM.

What? No the original Rosetta was running PowerPC G4/G5 apps on Intel

1

u/regeya 2d ago

What am I thinking of then, what ran Mac Classic in earlier OS X

1

u/Dr_Hexagon 2d ago

It was called "Classic Environment" and only existed in very early versions of OS X.

1

u/regeya 1d ago

Yikes, don't know why I got confused there. Thanks.

12

u/Traditional_Hat3506 3d ago

Sooner or later Windows will stop being maintained

Highly doubt it, unless Microsoft bankrupts.

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u/feldrim 3d ago

I like how you redefined ReactOS as a prepper's Windows for doomsday. 

11

u/Dekamir 3d ago

AFAIK it evolved that way very early.

The project was renamed to “ReactOS” as it was a reaction to Microsoft’s monopolistic position in home computer operating systems. [source]

I couldn't find the original quote about the way I wrote it, but ReactOS is essentially that. They don't have a purpose of replacing Windows. They are aiming for both API and ABI compatibility. If they just wanted to replace Windows, only API compatibility would've been much faster. See Wine and Proton.

7

u/feldrim 3d ago

I know it. My account on ReactOS forums is 21 years old. It's nor about bragging as being a long time lurker and occasional tester is not good enough. I like your wording though. Because I have never heard of anyone mention Windows may be over one day until today.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

They wanted to be a replacement for windows NT4, that was literally their goal.

6

u/_AACO 3d ago

I have seen a PC running reactos to control some machine at an ironworks, I regret to this day not asking why.

1

u/hifidood 2d ago

Tons of CNC / metal cutting etc industrial machines use ANCIENT versions of Windows. These machines can cost high six figures (if not more) and work "fine" so why would a business replace them? ReactOS is perfect for that kind of use case as you could in theory use modern hardware to run old software that is required.

0

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

No, the OS gets used. No company on earth is going to downgrade to an alpha of a failed project that doesn't even install on consumer hardware and invite insane legal liabilities for literally no reason.

0

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

No you didn't. React OS doesn't even reliably install on consumer hardware let alone a production environment. That's a giant legal liability.

2

u/_AACO 1d ago

You just listed 2 of the reasons why I regret not asking.

5

u/DaylightAdmin 2d ago

It is like the freeDOS project that in some industries is really important. Some "old" management and automation software used to run on MS-DOS, but MS-DOS runs only on old hardware and doesn't like VMs. So you put everything on freeDOS.

My first hand experience is delivering software as a ready to use VM with freeDOS....

3

u/skuterpikk 2d ago

Microsoft doesn't make any money from , nor support legacy Windows anymore, and Windows' internal architechture recieved a massive overhaul from NT6 (Vista) and onwards.
NT5 (Win2K, XP, 2003) is by all definition obsolete and thus they could opensource at least parts of the NT5.0 kernel and Windows 2000's userspace in order to help projects like this.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

Open sourcing nt5 would literally just make this project obsolete. There's literally be no point to continue react.

1

u/Shimano-No-Kyoken 2d ago

What's wrong with linux font rendering? Asking as a linux user with a design degree.

6

u/Dekamir 2d ago

Hey, I have one as well! Nice to have a fellow.

Linux (and ReactOS) uses FreeType. It doesn't handle kerning, hinting and anti-aliasing that well.

ClearType (of Windows) is, and has been the best at low DPI font rendering for years. It does a very precise pixel alignment to make sure no pixel is blurry or lost. However, it does this at the cost of morphing the glyphs, which may result in the smaller fonts not looking the same as their high sized counterparts, as it mostly makes them bolder in some areas, and thinner in others (mostly bolder).

FreeType does have RGB anti-aliasing and hinting support, but it's not that good. FreeType, with its most common settings shipped (RGB, Slight Hinting), tries to preserve the glyphs, but this causes subpixel misalignment due to bad kerning, and causes some parts of the glyphs to get blurry or lost in conversion.

You might ask:

"MacOS (or iOS) doesn't have ClearType but the fonts look good."

Apple devices have very high DPI. Apple also always uses the same DPI. They create arbitrary resolutions to keep their DPI fixed. As they don't need to do scaling, everything is already pixel aligned. They don't have to resort in subpixel anti-aliasing.

1

u/Shimano-No-Kyoken 2d ago

Right, I've always hated ClearType, and how it distorts the glyphs. I've even used mactype on windows way back in the day. So I actually prefer grayscale anti-aliasing because it preserves the typeface character, even if it's more soft.

4

u/Dekamir 2d ago

ClearType has a grayscale option too. In fact, UWP and WinUI cannot do subpixel at all so new Windows UI is completely grayscale anti-aliasing.

0

u/dnu-pdjdjdidndjs 2d ago

I recommend reading my post I go into more detail with the terminology

2

u/Shimano-No-Kyoken 2d ago

I understand the terminology very well, what was unclear to me was people’s preferences

0

u/dnu-pdjdjdidndjs 1d ago

Nah im gonna be honest none of you guys know how this shit works

1

u/Shimano-No-Kyoken 1d ago

Ok, have a good day.

1

u/dnu-pdjdjdidndjs 2d ago

This is very wrong in many ways, the apps themselves are responsible for font shaping hinting and aa. freetype is just curve format for fonts, so basically the library to extract and parse ttf files

In reality most apps now use harfbuzz/skrifa in some manner, extract the font outlines, then do some form of line rendering then position them to a subpixel grid with a shader and can apply things like subpixel aa shaders on top. This is the prior sota to what i describe at the end, do gtk3 and qt I think do something weirder.

windows cleartype im pretty sure uses dwm to render fonts which if they implemented it properly should save vram and resources but the hinting is actually very wrong and any perceived difference is actually overhinting making fonts more bold than they should be.

subpixel aa filters also to be accurate require knowledge of the subpixel grid and their coordinates, I did this with my qd oled monitor and the resulting shader had minimal fringing but the quality improvement is very minimal.

hinting is also extremely overrated, hinting by definition distorts fonts and everyone still does it. It can work and really does help with weird characters like u but all the hinting embedded in fonts is really bad.

For reference, I did an experiment where I threw out all the hinting stuff and left only the necessary hinting bits and font files go from 14mb to 200kb. 

If you want a demo of how fast font rendering can be without hinting or subpixel aa you can check here

https://harfbuzz.github.io/hb-gpu-demo/

see if you think its too blurry, but to me this looks perfectly fine.

Note this whole stack is now extremely redundant, and I have my own project where legit this just becomes 200kb baked font (generated in microseconds) -> copy to the gpu -> render and then you can do a glyph cache of sorts and suddenly font rendering goes from taking up to 16ms sometimes with the normal pipeline to microseconds, its really quite ridiculous.

1

u/Dekamir 2d ago

I, of course, oversimplified things. Client-side rendering is very common now. However, I'm talking about systems and FreeType is still used.

It's not "very wrong in many ways". I just omitted some info.

That website just crashes my browser, by the way.

1

u/dnu-pdjdjdidndjs 2d ago

freetype is still used

right, but you described it as doing shaping which it doesn't, windows uses freetype

1

u/Dekamir 2d ago

Then my bad. I might have made a mistake in my use of terminology.

1

u/Dr_Hexagon 2d ago

Except doesn't Wine / Proton already do this except its far further advanced in terms of how much it can run? Why do we need to preserve the windows NT core if everything can run on Linux with Wine / Proton?

1

u/steamcho1 11h ago

Its a cool thing to have but i dont think anybody anywhere will be effected if old windows is lost. It would be pore pragmatic to run old stuff with wine. But again, it matters little.

1

u/CashBoxBandit 2h ago

I wonder how far we are from "AI, extract the functionality of this software and make a workable version."

I also wonder how far we are from replacing actual software with the experience of using software, AI can paint UI, and it can certainly sit in the middle and pull the strings, we aren't far from making software effortlessly with nothing but imagination and conversation.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

30 years and they didn't even achieve the original goal of being an open source alternative for NT4, or the goal post swap to XP, or vista, or seven, etc.

MS can drop the and react will still be useless. People are already switching to Linux, nobody is switching to a 30 year old early alpha.

0

u/RaverDrew 3d ago

I have an old desktop with XP on it and a serial port specifically for pulling codes from my E36s. I'm feeling a bit called out by your example here.

57

u/SinnohConfirmed 3d ago edited 3d ago

As someone who likes using Windows XP era hardware for retro gaming, I think ReactOS could be an interesting open source alternative since it strives to be compatible with drivers from the era.

17

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

It seems that this version specifically improved support for graphics drivers. I would give it a try if I had some old XP compatible PC.

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u/jhaluska 3d ago

Even if I don't plan to use them any time soon, I always love seeing progress on alternative OSes.

7

u/ruby_R53 3d ago

same here i could very well try them in a VM later on as they're quite fun to fiddle with

24

u/tseli0s 3d ago

I am very happy to see this. ReactOS is invaluable in my eyes for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, we get to see a beta sometime soon. I'd love to give it a try in my main computer at some point.

52

u/MidLifeDIY 3d ago edited 3d ago

This and HURD. Neat pet projects that don't seem to be too useful. But "Just because" is also fine.

EDIT: Genuinely no shade meant. I've watched these projects for many years and hoped someone chimed with a use case I wasn't aware of. Was a quick post of a passing thought. ✌️

62

u/tseli0s 3d ago

ReactOS is EXTREMELY useful. You don't know what you're talking about. It helps with wine development (Yes, that thing that makes it possible to run your Windows games and programs). It provides a completely free reimplementation of NT that all people can study for free. It is the only hope for old and embedded systems which need an NT5-compatible operating system receiving updates. I can go on for a long time.

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u/coolcosmos 3d ago

It's legally useful too. They're breaking ground in acceptance of open source implementation of closed source software.

To me this is the most important aspect of the project. Long live ReactOS

29

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

It helps with wine development

Wine doesn't accept code from ReactOS even as reference:
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines

7

u/tseli0s 3d ago

Verbatim code? Of course not. The development effort is what's shared.

18

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

The development effort is what's shared.

It's not. Wine not only doesn't accept code from ReactOS but also code from people that used ReactOS code as a reference for their own.

23

u/ArchaneChutney 3d ago

They don’t accept code from anyone who has worked with ReactOS code, even if it’s not an exact copy of ReactOS code. So what development effort is being shared exactly?

This bug is an example of code being rejected because the author looked at ReactOS code, even though the code wasn’t an exact copy of ReactOS code

8

u/Leading-Carrot-5983 3d ago

Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

2

u/nelmaloc 2d ago

So apparently they disagree on the clean-room process? Would be nice to have a reasoning.

5

u/teo-tsirpanis 3d ago

It is the only hope for old and embedded systems which need an NT5-compatible operating system receiving updates.

I'm doubtful that ReactOS would meet the support and compliance requirements of organizations that use such old and embedded systems.

0

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

16

u/tseli0s 3d ago

  1. Half the comments here call it a useless project, dismissing the value of it. I think it's unfair to the developers.

  2. Of course it isn't. seL4 also isn't. Guess what, it's still so useful even though you probably never heard of it.

1

u/ThecaTTony 1d ago

But is far from being stable for production usage. I've been following the project for over 15 years and it's progressing at a snail's pace.

8

u/LazyCatRocks 3d ago

Yes, how dare people develop pet projects in their own time.

16

u/necessarycoot72 3d ago

who said that people cant develop their own projects?

21

u/PixelatedGiant 3d ago

Lots of people get told not to spend time on hobbies that don't make money and aren't inherently social (face-to-face) or keep you physically active. Some people get really bent out of shape about people spending time on hobbies that don't generate value. Irrationally so.

5

u/necessarycoot72 3d ago

OK, but this is a Linux subreddit and op was saying that these types of projects are neat.

4

u/PixelatedGiant 3d ago

He was being sarcastic and saying the kinds of things the type of person I just described would. I'm explaining where that is coming from.

13

u/Veprovina 3d ago

I love seeing such projects, but i wonder, what is the point of this? Does this fill some niche that needs to be filled? Maybe some older hardware that only worked with windows 95 til xp, and just won't work on modern windows?

17

u/josegfx 3d ago

I guess its the same "niche" as WINE but with a much bigger scope

-5

u/pixelbart 3d ago

Wine’s goal is to add the ability to run Windows programs to other operating systems. The best thing ReactOS could theoretically provide is 100% software compatibility with Windows, with no advantage over Windows other than OS licensing costs, which are a small fraction of total operating costs in corporate environments.

The problem with both is that no hardware or software vendor is going to offer any kind of support unless they explicitly provide (and charge for) it, for example when making software compatible with Wine (including testing) is cheaper than porting it to Linux.

There’s no reason to make Windows software compatible with a compatible non-Windows operating system if the only difference is that the other OS is free.

9

u/josegfx 3d ago

ReactOS is the one providing the compatibility with the software, not the other way around

8

u/Economy_Ad9889 3d ago

It’s great for figuring out how stuff was done

7

u/skeptical-speculator 3d ago

I love seeing such projects, but i wonder, what is the point of this?

The point of this is to reverse-engineer windows.

5

u/Yoksul-Turko 3d ago

It is an open source OS that can run Windows drivers. If you have an old device that has Windows driver, completed ReactOS would just run it. For Linux or BSDs you have to reverse engineer it.

While reverse engineering is more work, you can add new features if possible. 

4

u/Narishma 3d ago

I have one such hardware. Heck it doesn't even work with modern Linux anymore. I'm currently using NetBSD on it but I wouldn't mind trying ReactOS some time.

5

u/Buntygurl 3d ago

While the idea of encouraging empathy for a facsimile of the least user-friendly and most insecure of all PC operating systems ever invented strikes me as profoundly dodgy, right from the start, it's impossible to not respect the energy and effort of those who consistently and persistently make React OS a real thing in the world.

Vast respect.

18

u/siete82 3d ago edited 3d ago

The big advantage this project promised was full hardware compatibility thanks to native support for Windows drivers. That support never materialized, and in the meantime, Linux has improved so much in that regard that it's practically no longer an issue.

If you add to that the fact that its goal is to implement a version of Windows that's been obsolete for 20 years, I honestly don't see the point in continuing to put effort into that project.

47

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

If you add to that the fact that its goal is to implement a version of Windows that’s been obsolete for 20 years

It's not, some time ago they started implementing support for NT 6+ (Vista and newer) applications as well. It's also not like they can just skip Windows XP/2003 compatibility and start working on Windows 11 compatibility, every Windows release (well except first one) is built on top of previous.

1

u/steamcho1 11h ago

They are not getting to win11, cmon now.

-9

u/siete82 3d ago

I mean, Vista was released in 2006. Perhaps the biggest problem is the huge gap between what they've already implemented and the current version of Windows. This project has been in development for decades, and that gap isn't getting any smaller but the opposite.

20

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago edited 3d ago

I said "Vista and newer", not "Vista". Vista reworked architecture and every newer Windows is built on top of that. You can't skip that if you want to have modern Windows compatibility.

This project has been in development for decades, and that gap isn't getting any smaller but the opposite.

It is developed by small group of developers doing it mostly in their free time. It's not surprising it can't catch up to the product developed by one of the biggest companies in the world. Linux and Wine are not ReactOS replacement, they don't and likely won't ever support Windows drivers which is the goal for ReactOS.

Besides even if ReactOS can't catch up to Windows having open source OS partially compatible with Windows NT is pretty useful. There are plenty of open-source UNIX-like operating systems, but not many that are compatible with Windows and others.

-11

u/siete82 3d ago

As I mentioned in my first comment, the driver issue is practically irrelevant these days. In any case, ReactOS isn't a replacement for anything either, because it supports almost no drivers or software.

9

u/mohrcore 3d ago

Irrelevant?

Try to run pretty much any low-latency I/O processing app through several compatibility layers.

I'm yet to see anyone run any sort of Windows-only DAW with acceptable latency. Even if the drivers on Linux are decent (for most audio interfaces they don't perform as well as proprietary Windows drivers), the app still talks with them as if they were running on Windows, uses Windows abstractions and manages system resources as if they were parts of Windows subsystems.

I think the only way to deal with this is to make the operating system just work the way Windows did. But ReactOS seems to not be there yet.

-3

u/siete82 3d ago

And none of that works in ReactOS either. And yes, it's irrelevant to the vast majority of people who don't use niche hardware.

7

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

As I mentioned in my first comment, the driver issue is practically irrelevant these days

Maybe on the desktop but there are various embedded devices or devices that doesn't support anything other than Windows XP.

In any case, ReactOS isn't a replacement for anything either, because it supports almost no drivers or software.

A lot of software works fine as ReactOS Win32 implementation is based on Wine, as for the drivers, ReactOS already can run some Windows drivers, this version specifically improved support for XP era graphics drivers.

-7

u/siete82 3d ago

Maybe on the desktop but there are various embedded devices or devices that doesn't support anything other than Windows XP.

Embedded devices are an extreme niche case. Most of them don't even connect to the network. If this is the use case they're trying to address, they've gone way overboard.

A lot of software works fine as ReactOS Win32 implementation is based on Wine, as for the drivers, ReactOS already can run some Windows drivers, this version specifically improved support for XP era graphics drivers.

So what advantage does ReactOS offer me over running the program on Linux with Wine?

5

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

Embedded devices are an extreme niche case.

ReactOS is supposed to cover every Windows use case, the IT world doesn't end with the desktop. Aside from the technical aspects, there's also an educational benefit - there's no better (and legal, aside from working at Microsoft) way to examine the source code of a system based on the Windows NT architecture.

So what advantage does ReactOS offer me over running the program on Linux with Wine?

If Linux with Wine already does everything you need then none but as I said ReactOS is much more than just running Windows applications.

-1

u/siete82 3d ago

Of course it has educational value, I don't doubt that. But if that's all it is, they should stop pretending that it could one day replace Windows, because that's not going to happen.

9

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

Should Linux also stop pretending it's going to completely replace Windows as it's not going to happen anytime soon? Should Wine also stop pretending it's going to run all Windows applications on POSIX compatible operating systems as that's also likely not going to happen anytime soon?

They describe ReactOS as "Windows compatible OS" because that's their goal. What should they say about their system: “operating system compatible with Windows (but in reality it isn't and never will be)”? They are not pretending anything, they literally warn you that ReactOS is in alpha state and it might even work on your hardware at all. They never said they are already compatible with Windows or will be in near future.

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u/Ball_Analytics 3d ago

It’s right there on the page linked

> The mission for ReactOS is to “[Run] your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust.” With each release we come closer to fulfilling this goal. We look forward to sharing more developments and progress with you.

-7

u/siete82 3d ago

Well, they've failed in their mission. And that's to be expected, it was too big a task. Maybe it's time to move on to something else.

20

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

Desktop Linux failed to become more popular than Windows, some maybe it's the time to drop everything related to desktop and move on to focus on servers and embedded. /s

1

u/steamcho1 11h ago

Desktop linux only started competing with windows in a real way very recently.

-2

u/siete82 3d ago

There's a small difference: Linux actually works, ReactOS doesn't.

10

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

Linux actually works

Not for the people that need software that doesn't work outside Windows or hardware that have drivers only for Windows.

3

u/siete82 3d ago

Ok, but ReactOS doesn't work for those people either, or for anyone.

4

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah, not much difference between ReactOS and Linux for them so they could also ask what's the point of working on desktop Linux when it's not going to replace Windows for them.

1

u/steamcho1 11h ago

At this point get a new PC.

1

u/siete82 3d ago

ReactOS can't even be installed on real hardware, it supports only a handful of drivers and software, and even that is because it basically uses Wine's code. It's an absurd and misleading comparison.

2

u/ordep_caetano 2d ago

Managed to install this on a vm using libvirtd! I'll test some apps from the windows xp era, that I seldom use.

4

u/Masterflitzer 3d ago

please tell me it doesn't use reactjs like win11 does

1

u/KronisLV 2d ago

It looks so peak, the UI, the fonts. I'm certainly just nostalgic, but it's cool that projects like that exist.

1

u/rene453 2d ago

Just come out of alpha. I am ready with 100+ lga 775 pcs. Just a bit more push towards stability

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

That's too new of a platform for react, plus it's never coming out of alpha

-14

u/Green_Ad5186 3d ago

wine and proton are simply much better because they actually work

35

u/I_did_a_fucky_wucky 3d ago

This is much more than that though. They have completely different scopes.

Wine and Proton aim to be quick and accessible translation layers, while ReactOS aims to completely reverse engineer the absolute root of Windows.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

Ok but scope doesn't matter if it doesn't work. That's kinda the point.

2

u/I_did_a_fucky_wucky 2d ago

I disregarded that point completely, because neither ReactOS or the translation layers work perfectly. ReactOS is still missing modern API features and has plenty of bugs with drivers and such. Wine and Proton have much higher success rate with running things while yes, very specific apps from god knows where may not work.

The scope is a thing of itself and has nothing to do with how successfully the program is working, but what the program is meant for. ReactOS is for making a fully fledged open-source reverse engineered Windows OS for general use, while Wine and Proton aims to just run Windows apps on Linux.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago

I disregarded that point completely, because neither ReactOS or the translation layers work perfectly

You're intentionally ignoring the fact that wine and proton is production ready where as react is non-functional. Don't try and dance around that fact

The scope is a thing of itself and has nothing to do with how successfully the program is working

Youre the one who brought up scope as some sort of deflection when it was mentioned reactos can't do anything so it's weird to then make a counter point like this.

I agree the scope doesn't matter because react can't do anything

ReactOS is for making a fully fledged open-source reverse engineered Windows OS for general use, while Wine and Proton aims to just run Windows apps on Linux.

Yes and one is successful and the other is reactos.

More specifically reacts original goal was to make an open source NT4 and it failed and continued to move the goal posts while achieving nothing, it's never going to be production ready for any windows tier let alone a modern one so we're just full circle to wine/proton does stuff and react doesn't.

1

u/I_did_a_fucky_wucky 1d ago

Whatever man. What I'm trying to say is that we should not compare ReactOS and Wine as some competing software. They try to achieve different things. Is that simple enough for you?

14

u/stprnn 3d ago

Ladies and gentlemen this is what bringing in normies looks like.

Happy?

2

u/pfp-disciple 3d ago

I struggled getting Wine to run the Hyundai software to update the navigation. I haven't tried Resct, but I'm thinking that it might just with out of the box 

2

u/I_did_a_fucky_wucky 3d ago

You're better off with spinning up a VM with USB passthrough. ReactOS is still in its infancy

1

u/pfp-disciple 3d ago

That's my plan

-17

u/_Super_Straight 3d ago

Why does this os looks like windows 95?

31

u/Sataniel98 3d ago

Because it's a cleanroom reimplementation of Windows NT.

13

u/DerekB52 3d ago

It's a reverse engineered windows experience, aiming to help with software/hardware support that Windows drops.

8

u/Narishma 3d ago

Because the developers have good taste.

5

u/Dekamir 3d ago

It does come with multiple visual styles. This is similar to Windows 10, but built in Windows XP theming engine.

The layouts look old as they're simply reimplementing the legacy Win32 UI.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

Because it's a legacy chunk left over from when react started out trying to replace NT4 which it failed to do.

-20

u/Green_Ad5186 3d ago

bec they didnt make good ui for it.

11

u/crustang 3d ago

What’s wrong with the ui?

-19

u/Green_Ad5186 3d ago

looks old like old windows

18

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

And that's exactly what makes this UI good.

10

u/GoogleDisDick 3d ago

Old Win9x is peak though.

6

u/ThaMasterPepe 3d ago

Kids these days, never will understand fellas..

-1

u/SmackDownFacility 2d ago

THAT IS DAMN WINDOWS.

THAT IS THE BENCHMARK FOR LINUX

1

u/sheeproomer 1d ago

Repeat 100 times:

Linux is not a windows variant, it is its own thing. I am willing to learn the lay of the land, when trying out another operating system.

-9

u/Advanced-Issue-1998 3d ago

someone please explain why we need reactOS when wine exists

6

u/No-Spirit-9477 2d ago

why do you need arch when debian exists?

0

u/Lundominium 2d ago

Wine takes code from reactos. Some years ago some devs worked on both wine and reactos at the same time.

1

u/creeper6530 2d ago

Nah apparently not anymore 

1

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

You have that backwards, react uses wine code. Wine has no need to try and do all the other things react tries to do.

1

u/Lundominium 2d ago

I can promise you that code went towards wine. It surely also went towards reactos.

-11

u/brrrrreaker 3d ago

if there was an award for the most pointless project even made, reactos would definitely be a top candidate for it...