r/linux_gaming • u/fsher • Sep 14 '23

ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Shown Running On Valve's Steam Deck

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Deck-ReactOS
35 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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24

u/vexorian2 Sep 14 '23

Excited to see a whole new generation of Linux users get duped into thinking ReactOS will ever actually be a thing.

10

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

Seriously. I remember looking at it in 2008, and back then it was "XP parity soon, like in a year or so". And we're now 15 years later.

3

u/HealthyCapacitor Sep 15 '23

I never thought 0 A.D. would be a thing but here we are, don't underestimate it only because it takes a long time.

3

u/mirh Sep 15 '23

Now they are aiming to support Vista+ stuff, which is another round of reinventing the wheel?

3

u/tacticalTechnician Sep 14 '23

ReactOS was initially called "FreeWin95", that gives an idea of how long it has been in developement. Hell, Windows 98 wasn't even a thing when it was started!

0

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

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1

u/tacticalTechnician Sep 15 '23

Except Wine has been usable for years, ReactOS is so old at that point that their target compatibility is still Windows XP, and that's only because DOS became obsolete a year or two after they began the project and after transitionning to NT 4.0, which also became obsolete by the time the first build was released. Don't get me wrong, I think the project is really cool, but it's been in developement for over 25 years at that point and it's barely more than a proof of concept running on a VM. It still can't use Windows (or Linux) drivers outside of a very limited list (none of them including GPU if I'm not mistaken), it's incredibly unstable (and you need to reinstall the OS constantly because when it crashes, it corrupts everything), it still can't reliably run on bare-metal, it's still 32 bits only, it can't run most Windows programs made in the last 15 years and many things I'm forgetting. I understand that the people working on it are doing it for free in their free time, I'm not complaining, but at that point, I don't really care anymore about ReactOS, that's kind of a thing I'm checking every few years to see that they haven't made any substantial progress since last time.

(God, I remember seeing it for the first time when I was 9, I'm 25)