Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows is already there.
Sure, but it doesn't imply it's easier.
How is ReactOS easier to port than Windows, when Windows is already ported?
ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I challenge you to name an actually useful feature that was added in Windows 11 and not present in any previous release. Difficulty: QoL features added to undo the effects of bad design changes in Win11 don’t count, such as “compact view” in Windows 11 File Explorer.
Easy, one use adminstration tokens, useful to anyone that cares about security. Here is another one, enforced application sandboxing and signing, comming up in a future update this year, year another useful one for security. Yet another one, ability to actually use Windows containers without having the same kernel version between host and guest, useful for Windows developers. Three for the price of one, there you go.
Eh, the real genius of Windows 11 that Linux lags behind is the seriously first rate emoji picker :).
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy, one use adminstration tokens, useful to anyone that cares about security. Here is another one, enforced application sandboxing and signing, comming up in a future update this year, year another useful one for security. Yet another one, ability to actually use Windows containers without having the same kernel version between host and guest, useful for Windows developers. Three for the price of one, there you go.
Eh, the real genius of Windows 11 that Linux lags behind is the seriously first rate emoji picker :).
I would be happier if it really could search and pick every unicode character. I would love to be able to nab "not equals", "approximately equals", "supsercript 2", etc.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if it keeps being relevant for the computing model. Case in point, ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of, and this not taking into account the ARM and CoPilot+ PC hardware changes in modern motherboards. It is nonetheless relevant, especially in the presence of escape mechanisms to oppressive governments, and digital sovereignty.
> It is nonetheless relevant, especially in the presence of escape mechanisms to oppressive governments, and digital sovereignty. Not just for that. There's an awful, awful lot of ancient embedded hardware running machinery sometimes worth dozens of millions of dollars, and it's running even more ancient software. Siemens, for example, recently searched for people capable of (and willing to) working with Windows 3.11…
Working with Windows 3.11 isn't even the problem there though, that is only a symptom. You could get one of the original authors of 3.11 in there and all they would get told by Siemens would be "no, you can't touch anything. You can't change anything, you can't install a new piece of software, even one designed for Windows 3.11. You can't fix this obvious bug, even if you are Chesteron. The absolute only thing we will allow you to do is to salve the very shallowest possible symptom that we never noticed until this week, and you can only do that by adding a new thing completely outside of the scope of everything that already exists and make the ball of pain larger."
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy, one use adminstration tokens, useful to anyone that cares about security. Here is another one, enforced application sandboxing and signing, comming up in a future update this year, year another useful one for security. Yet another one, ability to actually use Windows containers without having the same kernel version between host and guest, useful for Windows developers. Three for the price of one, there you go.
Eh, the real genius of Windows 11 that Linux lags behind is the seriously first rate emoji picker :).
You can configure rofimoji to work really well and off a keyboard shortcut into any application.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#76It would be great if we could combine ReactOS with Good old Games to build a retro Windows games distribution. I could hand that out at LAN parties as USB boot stick.
Agreed. For this to work, though, I guess there needs to be: - a listing of all games that work well on ReactOS, similar to how WineHQ does. Or perhaps a specialized variant of ReactOS with that focus in mind. Do we have such a list? I assume many games also won't work perfectly well; see WineHQ, that also had tons of issues with some games.
"Or perhaps a specialized variant of ReactOS with that focus in mind."
Trouble is there's never been enough interest in ReactOS to get it to the point where it's stable let alone warrant fancy extras. (After three decades of trying to clone the basics and failing is proof enough.)
In short, developers see it as a dead end. Why there's so little interest I've never fully understood, but it's fact.
If it were actually stable and usable as a basic operating system it could be used for lots of offline stuff but it's not—even at this point. If it were useable I'd readily adopt it to use offline (I've tried many times and failed).
Another point, this lack of interest shows up on ReactOS's website; there's so little new news and info the site may as well be dead.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an absolute tangent (a perpendicular one if you will), but I thought the Sagrada Familia is completed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2026/06/10/bar... The article talks about construction on the exterior, the cross on the main tower, the Pope's visit and commemoration of the architect, etc. while on the official website the timeline says "Today, more than 140 years after the laying of the corn…
The exterior is done, the interior not yet
"…the interior not yet"
Right, there is a long tradition in it taking centuries to build great cathedrals, Chartres, Notre Dame, etc.
I've little issue with that, however taking so long to build something such as an O/S that it's obsoleted itself many times over before being finished is another matter altogether.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#78Given enough time, open-source will win. Just think about how more and more people are programming and how that will draw them to open-source.
Only if it keeps being relevant for the computing model. Case in point, ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of, and this not taking into account the ARM and CoPilot+ PC hardware changes in modern motherboards. It is nonetheless relevant, especially in the presence of escape mechanisms to oppressive governments, and digital sovereignty.
"Case in point, ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of, …"
More importantly, as I've mentioned, ReactOS is not stable nor reliable enough to even use as an offline O/S sans the Win 11 dross.
If these stability/compatibility issues were fixed then it'd develop a reputation for being reliable which would lead to further development work.
Unfortunately for everyone except Microsoft this is not the case.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, the real genius of Windows 11 that Linux lags behind is the seriously first rate emoji picker :).
I would be happier if it really could search and pick every unicode character. I would love to be able to nab "not equals", "approximately equals", "supsercript 2", etc.
The Unix/Linux desktop world has had compose keys for multiple decades now for that exact sort of thing. + + = ≠, + + = ≈, + + = ², etc. It's how I get em—dashes and “smart quotes” and such into whatever I type.
Only downside is that defining custom sequences is… less than intuitive.
Re: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
more people and AI
Specifications are important. The better the specs of a commercial product, the easier it would be to produce an open source version it, with coding and testing automation perhaps even a one-to-one offering.
well, you've got endless "integration testing" in the form of 3rd party software for Windows.
More reliable than any specification, considering Windows itself is a patchwork of workarounds to not break backward-compatibility.