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

[Ironmask]

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!)

If I were Microsoft, I would not acknowledge ReactOS whatsoever. ReactOS is based off of a very old and now unsupported product, and although it probably has a lot of flaws and holes from it's inspiration fixed, it's still probably got security issues, not to mention how slow development is (and thus how slow threat reactions are). It also encourages the use of old, unsupported third-party drivers, which undoubtedly have security issues. The last thing any software company would ever want is their customers experiencing a security breach due to any action said company performed whatsoever (otherwise, lawsuits!). Suggesting people use ReactOS would be about as good as suggesting people use Windows XP. I'm sure MS' legal department would give a big fat "no" to any official business statement regarding ReactOS whatever.
Besides, this isn't 1990 anymore, Microsoft doesn't care about Windows NT nearly as much as they used to. The "OS Wars" might not have officially died, but we're really on the tail-end of it. CPU diversity, virtual runtimes, containers, cross-compilation have all made the underlying platform highly expendable. If MS didn't enter the cloud market with Azure, now their highest source of revenue, they would have probably gone out of business by now (they certainly would be nothing but an insect compared to Google). At this stage, MS really doesn't care if you use Windows, Linux, or even SerenityOS. As long as you're paying for Azure services while you're doing it. Any knee-jerk reaction about getting people to use Windows is just the marketing department trying to stay useful, same thing they do when sabotaging OmniSharp so people pay for Visual Studio proper (no that's not a conspiracy, they really are doing that and it's why I switched to Rust after being a decade-long C# developer, I was sick of the mistreatment as a VSCode appreciator)

[birdie]

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!

What's the opposite for "open sourcing" something? Frankly I didn't know which word to use

[rogerx]

If I were Microsoft, I would not acknowledge ReactOS whatsoever. ReactOS is based off of a very old and now unsupported product, and although it probably has a lot of flaws and holes from it's inspiration fixed, it's still probably got security issues, not to mention how slow development is (and thus how slow threat reactions are). It also encourages the use of old, unsupported third-party drivers, which undoubtedly have security issues. The last thing any software company would ever want is their customers experiencing a security breach due to any action said company performed whatsoever (otherwise, lawsuits!). Suggesting people use ReactOS would be about as good as suggesting people use Windows XP. I'm sure MS' legal department would give a big fat "no" to any official business statement regarding ReactOS whatever.
Besides, this isn't 1990 anymore, Microsoft doesn't care about Windows NT nearly as much as they used to. The "OS Wars" might not have officially died, but we're really on the tail-end of it. CPU diversity, virtual runtimes, containers, cross-compilation have all made the underlying platform highly expendable. If MS didn't enter the cloud market with Azure, now their highest source of revenue, they would have probably gone out of business by now (they certainly would be nothing but an insect compared to Google). At this stage, MS really doesn't care if you use Windows, Linux, or even SerenityOS. As long as you're paying for Azure services while you're doing it. Any knee-jerk reaction about getting people to use Windows is just the marketing department trying to stay useful, same thing they do when sabotaging OmniSharp so people pay for Visual Studio proper (no that's not a conspiracy, they really are doing that and it's why I switched to Rust after being a decade-long C# developer, I was sick of the mistreatment as a VSCode appreciator)

Everything you stated about security sounds like a money maker for lawyers and Microsoft!

And if Microsoft only cares about renting software now through the cloud, why not support ReactOS fulltime?

You never know, ReactOS might overtake Linux someday, if people at Microsoft wants to create well written software projects!

[libv]

I am not sure why people here are dismissive of it running in a VM. Running old(er) proprietary software is its main purpose from where i sit, and that is most conveniently done in a vm on a fast modern linux machine.

Do you really want an open source windows clone running on your daily driver all the time?

[user1]

I am not sure why people here are dismissive of it running in a VM. Running old(er) proprietary software is its main purpose from where i sit, and that is most conveniently done in a vm on a fast modern linux machine.

Do you really want an open source windows clone running on your daily driver all the time?

I thought Wine is already good at running old Windows software? And even if it doesn't work on Wine, I'm sure the person who really needs to use that software, has used it on Windows XP at some point, so he probably has a copy of XP that he can just install in a VM.

Imo, ReactOS would've been really cool if it could at least run reliably on old XP era hardware (ReactOS itself is currently very similar to NT 5.x which is what Windoes XP is based on) because it could then be used to resurrect that hardware to build a retro gaming rig for example.

Unfortunately, from what I've seen, in many, if not most cases, it fails to boot even on 2000's hardware.

[anarki2]

This project is predestined to be always 10, if not 15 years behind. A complete waste of time. If you're a developer who just can't imagine doing ANYTHING else that's actually useful, fine, do it. But if you want to actually achieve something, please spend your time on more productive projects that actually solve problems and have a market. Life's too short to spend on such wheel reinventing initiatives and your talent is much better spent somewhere else.

[Quackdoc]

This project is predestined to be always 10, if not 15 years behind. A complete waste of time. If you're a developer who just can't imagine doing ANYTHING else that's actually useful, fine, do it. But if you want to actually achieve something, please spend your time on more productive projects that actually solve problems and have a market. Life's too short to spend on such wheel reinventing initiatives and your talent is much better spent somewhere else.

Just because you don't have a use for it, doesn't mean other people don't

I know multiple people who actively use reactOS for the legacy hardware that needs to be working. I wouldn't consider it a waste of time at all. not only that, if they enjoy doing it, and people enjoy using it, it's not a waste of time, and they ARE achieving things. workloads that rely on legacy hardware and equipment, of which their are many, in the future reactOS could very well become indispensable.

I would consider that useful, unlike making retarded comments on the internet belittling other peoples hard work.

[Dr.N0]

This project is predestined to be always 10, if not 15 years behind. A complete waste of time. If you're a developer who just can't imagine doing ANYTHING else that's actually useful, fine, do it. But if you want to actually achieve something, please spend your time on more productive projects that actually solve problems and have a market. Life's too short to spend on such wheel reinventing initiatives and your talent is much better spent somewhere else.

I wish people would stop saying things like that. I understand where you are coming from, but it is super dismissive and invalidating of what others choose to do. Please stop denying people the agency of doing whatever they want. It really achieves nothing else than making everyone feel like crap.

[Ironmask]

This project is predestined to be always 10, if not 15 years behind. A complete waste of time. If you're a developer who just can't imagine doing ANYTHING else that's actually useful, fine, do it. But if you want to actually achieve something, please spend your time on more productive projects that actually solve problems and have a market. Life's too short to spend on such wheel reinventing initiatives and your talent is much better spent somewhere else.

It's not useless, though. It'll be fantastic for supporting old hardware once it actually works. No, Linux will not be good for that. I understand why people would assume that since Linux used to be great for supporting old hardware, but somewhat recently, the developers have started removing old hardware support since it's really not that useful or desirable anymore. So you could run an old, unpatched version of Linux, or run an open source OS specifically designed to support the official drivers for the old hardware you want to support. It's essentially just what FreeDOS is, and FreeDOS is far from useless.