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ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Reaches The Milestone Of Being Able To Run Half-Life on REAL hardware with 3D-acceleration (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Interesting. I applaud the efforts ... though I do find myself wondering if that energy could have been focused on a more unified front for those compatibility layers instead. Backwards compatibility certainly would be useful but I feel like modern compatibility (parity) is a sisyphian task. You'd be eternally chasing a standard that a company is setting for you. The exact company with a history of file format and code changes to fuck with efforts identical to this. You'd never be able to pull ahead.

I'll have to go read up on the project. I'm interested in the project itself - but deeply curious if they have addressed that elephant.

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  • [–] 30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    TBF this project started decades ago before proton and a lot of compatibility layers became mainstream.

    Also, ReactOS is closely tied to helping WINE and always has been, so it's not a complete waste. It'll just never actually emulate Windows in any stable way.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Ive had some time to look at the timelines and that was definitely in the "era" of Microsoft making poor choices for the end user. Apparently lindows rebranded (who knew lol) and also crawled into existence around the same period.

    I think, for good reason, people should be concerned with the direction of any consolidating market. I believe the devs were correct to have the foresight to anticipate this eventual reality.

    Also, ReactOS is closely tied to helping WINE and always has been, so it's not a complete waste. It'll just never actually emulate Windows in any stable way.

    Exactly what I was curious about considering the goals are similar and could benifit from shared knowledge. Very cool.

    As far as the emulation layer discussion goes - I'm not so sure it will matter in the years to come. It needs to simply provide a 'good enough' bridge to other platforms to allow a critical mass to form. After that point those platforms can stand alone as a viable alternative and grow from there. Example: VMWare debacle.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    People who do stuff like this often can't redirect their focus at will. They get passionate about one specific thing and do great work for that. You try to steer them towards something more useful, they end up losing the passion completely.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    First off, as others have said, Wine and ReactOS benefit each others' development.

    But second, for those folks, particularly less-tech-savvy ones, who feel like they "have to" use Windows for one reason or another, "Windows except FOSS" seems a much easier and more tempting option than "Linux but tries to be like Windows". I do think that argument is a bit less compelling than it once was, but for sure, if ReactOS was "done" and fully compatible with Windows 11 or whatever, my mother, for instance, would be beyond thrilled to switch to that. As it is, she's kinda sorta starting to come around to the idea of using Linux maybe at some point, but she fears the learning curve. (And I very much don't blame her for that.)

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