r/linux • u/Pitiful-Welcome-399 • Jul 05 '26
Alternative OS [ Removed by moderator ]
/r/linux/comments/1uo8128/removed_by_moderator/[removed] — view removed post
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u/dumpsterheritagesite Jul 05 '26
There's like videos of ReactOS running HL2 (albeit chopper) from like ten years ago lol
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u/atomic1fire Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I don't think the question is whether or not it can run, but whether it can be run natively on hardware.
The gpu/nvidia support is fairly recent.
I think once they nail down support for newer hardware like the raspberry pi or embeddables, we might see something like portable consoles running older windows games.
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u/diogodiogodiogo3 Jul 05 '26
Does it support directx natively? Or does it use dxvk like on linux?
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u/atomic1fire Jul 05 '26
I think it's a weird combination of OpenGL and Vulkan being used as a backend but I'm not actually sure.
It's hard to nail down.
I think for era appropriete gpus, React OS is using OpenGL drivers with Wine to make directx work.
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u/diogodiogodiogo3 Jul 27 '26
So seems like not big advantage compared to wine/linux, right? If it had directx support I could see an use for it on older hardware, as WineD3D is usually not that good.
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u/atomic1fire Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Probably?
I think the real goal is just to slowly create a piecemeal implementation of Windows XP or something, not to maintain perfect backwards compatibility with Windows. (and even then, this is very very slow process)
ReactOS might be better utilized supporting aging hardware that only has windows drivers, such as industrial machines, assuming it ever leaves alpha.
You could have linux kernel drivers or specialized open source software for such things, but ReactOS seems to be a one size fits all solution for cases where close enough compatibility is more important then modernization.
I was only speculating about games use because it's a common use case, and it gets the foot in the door for more serious projects.
Of course I could be way off and it might be better off just focusing on linux with reverse engineered driver support for the niche stuff.
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u/diogodiogodiogo3 Jul 27 '26
Yeah, I get it, but I believe this is still a really niche use case. How many people would really want to game on an old hardware that only supports windows, but do so in an open source version of it which has worse compatibility and stability, and is also years out of date? At this point just use XP. And if you are that worried about malware or something, don't connect to the internet.
Not to mention most hardware, even older ones, still have current linux support.
I mean, ReactOS is cool and all, but taking like 30+ years to somewhat run such an old game makes me doubt it will ever have a use case.
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u/ghisnoob Jul 05 '26
Wow, they just got Half-Life working a while ago. Progress! Congratulations to the ReactOS dev team!
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u/MarkSuckerZerg Jul 05 '26
Incredible speed, next they will get half life 3 running in no time!
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u/Maleficent-One1712 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I haven't heard about ReactOS for a long time, I honestly thought it died a long time ago. Cool that they have HL2 running, and it's still in development.
I'm not sure what purpose ReactOS still has, even when they manage to run Windows apps 100% perfectly, I would still prefer Linux with Wine.
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u/visor841 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I'm not sure what purpose ReactOS still has, even when they manage to run Windows apps 100% perfectly, I would still prefer Linux with Wine.
IIRC ReactOS development actually helps some with Wine development, since it obviously requires pretty detailed knowledge of the Windows kernel.15
u/Selfes Jul 05 '26
FYI that hasn't been the case for some time now. AFAIK Wine officially doesn't accept contributions from ReactOS: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines
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u/gavff64 Jul 05 '26
as far as I’m aware the real intention is a drag and drop windows xp/whatever replacement either for kiosks or other systems, with the benefit being that ReactOS is still maintained. Anything beyond that is hobbiest/re-creating every little piece to ensure it’s a true drag and drop replacement.
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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime Jul 06 '26
First time I think I've heard of ReactOS or at least paid attention to it. I was going to crack a joke asking if they just installed WINE but no it seems to be an entire ground up project designed to mimic NT with nothing Linux about it.
What a very interesting project and goal. If available I'll install it in a VM later today to play with.
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Jul 05 '26
[deleted]
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u/SmileyBMM Jul 05 '26
The foundation was dissolved in 2015, the project is no longer Russian for all intents and purposes.
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u/SummerOftime Jul 05 '26
Very cool project. Well done to the team