ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Manages To Run Some Battlefield Games

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Manages To Run Some Battlefield Games

ReactOS as the open-source operating system project striving for binary compatibility with Windows applications/games/drivers has made much progress over the past two decades but in some areas still lacking like still working on SMP/multi-core support and other functionality. To some surprise, some of the older Battlefield games are at least now in a playable state on ReactOS...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-Battlefield

[user1]

Great. Now try doing the same on real (at least old) hardware with some old Nvidia/Ati driver for Windows XP. Then, I will be impressed.

Seriously, I may sound harsh, but I don't see a point in this OS if it only runs properly in a virtual machine.

[DMJC]

I'm not surprised at all by this, reactos has been making huge progress in the last few years. The Twitter feed has demonstrated booting on ryzen hardware, multi cpu, monitor and 64 bit support. Much like WINE Reactos is reaching a tipping point where it will gain functionality exponentially.

[eydee]

In a virtual machine or did they finally add SATA and PCIe support? Or was it on a Pentium 3 with an MX440? The game is quite old...

[loganj]

In a virtual machine or did they finally add SATA and PCIe support? Or was it on a Pentium 3 with an MX440? The game is quite old...

it says in the article that it use virtualbox opengl. so i guess its virtualbox

[birdie]

In loosely related news CryTek is closing CryEngine: https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/...e-announcement

[rogerx]

Wow! I was running Battlefield 1942 on Linux wine during the years ~1998-2000.

So ReactOS is only about ~20 years behind Linux... Will the gap ever shorten?

If Microsoft only knew any better, Microsoft should be more actively supporting ReactOS, preventing fans of the Windows 95/XP era from jumping ship to Linux!

Would rather the click & play users migrate to using ReactOS, rather than trying to use a fundamentally higher performing and more well designed operating system. (eg. Sighting the never ending basic Microsoft Window's user pun on the Linux operating system forums!)

[Quackdoc]

Great. Now try doing the same on real (at least old) hardware with some old Nvidia/Ati driver for Windows XP. Then, I will be impressed.

Seriously, I may sound harsh, but I don't see a point in this OS if it only runs properly in a virtual machine.

i've gotten it to run on real hardware using qemu and pcie passthrough. but there are numerous confirmed working gpus and at least a couple working PCs entirely. VMs are the best platform for testing, much faster and cheaper then real hardware, if you want more real hardware tests, either do it yourself or buy it for them.

https://reactos.org/wiki/Supported_Hardware/Video_cards

[Quackdoc]

Wow! I was running Battlefield 1942 on Linux wine during the years ~1998-2000.

So ReactOS is only about ~20 years behind Linux... Will the gap ever shorten?

If Microsoft only knew any better, Microsoft should be more actively supporting ReactOS, preventing fans of the Windows 95/XP era from jumping ship to Linux!

Would rather the click & play users migrate to using ReactOS, rather than trying to use a fundamentally higher performing and more well designed operating system. (eg. Sighting the never ending basic Microsoft Window's user pun on the Linux operating system forums!)

ReactOS is a neat project for sure, but IMO right now best "retro gaming" experience is using qemu-3dfx , though sadly you have to pay for the d3d support, OGL and 3dfx works fine

[Linuxxx]

In loosely related news CryTek is closing CryEngine: https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/...e-announcement

You make it sound as if they are abandoning it altogether.

And let's not forget about O3DE, as terrible as it may sound, it's still very much de-facto open-source CryEngine for everyone!