alt.hn

5/13/2026 at 6:20:22 PM

ReactOS

 https://reactos.org/

by DeathArrow

5/13/2026 at 8:59:11 PM

Why is this relevant today?

by WesSouza

5/13/2026 at 9:23:40 PM

I think it actually is even more relevant today than 10 years ago, as the only real production use case I can imagine for it is specialized industrial software written only for XP that no one wants to update to w10 because of the risk of breaking production but which are running on a not supported anymore OS full of vulnerabilities. If really ReactOS achieves parity then that's a possible niche.

by flaburgan

5/13/2026 at 9:29:23 PM

That was the argument back in the day too. For people/devices not looking to run Windows XP/Vista.

I don't think the metric has ever changed. What has is the scope as Microsoft continues to chug along. But, I believe, their goal is still primarily some hybrid of Win98/Win2K compatibility.

by deaddodo

5/13/2026 at 10:37:58 PM

I remember seeing laser cutter drivers which only ran on Windows XP, but the cutters themselves were still in use and worked great.

For (ham) radio programming software which often only supports windows, getting the programmer working on reactOS seems like a win.

by bb88

5/13/2026 at 9:47:27 PM

I think OP means, this project is very old, what's new about it?

by rib3ye

5/13/2026 at 10:15:29 PM

It runs btrfs, if you like to live dangerously.

by chasil

5/13/2026 at 9:38:48 PM

When was it relevant?

by oytis

5/13/2026 at 9:17:42 PM

Same as Haiku

by bananaflag

5/13/2026 at 8:36:15 PM

Note: unrelated to React.

by amelius

5/13/2026 at 8:41:28 PM

Considerably predates it I think. I’ve followed ReactOS on and off for years, since the early 00s.

Looking at the website, they celebrated their 30th anniversary recently which is pretty impressive.

by Nursie

5/13/2026 at 8:43:49 PM

ReactOS came first though.

by throwaway613746

5/13/2026 at 8:42:48 PM

Always an interesting project and some great achievements, but it’s hard to see it being more useful than Linux + Wine (or now Proton)

Does anyone use ReactOS in a production-like fashion?

by Nursie

5/13/2026 at 9:26:30 PM

Drivers exclusive for Windows.

You know your old Soundblaster AWE64 Gold, with all bundled programs [0]. Or that very special Analog Video grabber card you have.

Wine is user space. This is the full OS.

[0] Ok, that maybe works in linux, but you get your point.

by dosshell

5/13/2026 at 9:08:36 PM

Not yet but it seems like they've finally started working towards that. Driver compatibility has improved dramatically over the last few years, for one.

by grishka

5/13/2026 at 9:25:46 PM

Do they finally have a WDM compatible driver stack? For a long time, that was their biggest hamper to being anything useful as a real desktop.

If they can pass that hurdle + add WDDM, I'd be willing to take another look at them even if application compatibility remains hit and miss.

by deaddodo

5/13/2026 at 9:02:51 PM

Last i tried it a couple years ago, it was basically impossible to install natively. (On basic intel haswell system)

by gunalx

5/13/2026 at 8:29:56 PM

A windows compatible OS is a good idea but it looks more likely to be Linux.

by andrewstuart

5/13/2026 at 9:05:49 PM

As someone who very much dislikes the Linux/Unix philosophy, I'm happy to see diversity.

by grishka

5/13/2026 at 9:18:17 PM

Out of pure curiosity, what do you “very much dislike” about it?

by jachee

5/13/2026 at 9:22:22 PM

Don't get him started:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

by Leonard_of_Q

5/13/2026 at 10:16:23 PM

Heh… Wait ‘til I tell him that his beloved macOS is Unix underneath.

by jachee

5/13/2026 at 10:39:03 PM

I know and I don't like that either. But at least I don't have to touch the Unix layer too often.

by grishka

5/13/2026 at 10:18:07 PM

There have been some notable discussions here on this subject.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22076348

by chasil

5/13/2026 at 11:23:02 PM

That's an excellent talk, thanks for sharing it.

And yes that USB gadget thing. I had to use it recently to turn a RPi Zero into a parallel -> USB converter. It's impossible to debug and sometimes makes you question your own sanity. Here's my script that does it: https://github.com/grishka/miscellaneous/blob/master/AVDecod...

by grishka

5/13/2026 at 8:47:42 PM

You mean Windows subsystem for Linux.

Having a full Windows desktop with a Linux install saves me from formatting and partitioning into yet another installation mess that Linux still has and choosing a distro while not messing around with display managers or searching around why some apps do not display correctly when connecting to an external monitor.

The best Linux distro is Windows (with WSL).

by rvz

5/13/2026 at 7:39:38 PM

Not funny anymore.

by souvlakee

5/13/2026 at 8:09:10 PM

It never was supposed to be.

by Borgz