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Actually, I'm curious, but for slightly different reasons. Windows can still technically support other architectures than x86; if ReactOS is truly compatible (which it evidently is!) then I wonder how hard it would be for them to port the HAL layer to things like SPARC.

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uh, Windows does support other architectures than x86: currently, it supports x86, x64, ARM and ARM64. (and as Windows Server 2008 R2 is still supported, the IA64 version is also still suppored)

Yeah, I know. But it will never support SPARC. Or anything other than the architectures you mention. Windows can still support these other architectures, I'd love to see it happen. ReactOS might be the way that it's made to occur.

Definitely. Microsoft doesn't see commercial value in supporting, eg, a SPARC version, especially when it won't run existing x86 apps. It'd be a huge lost cost in development just to make one.

ReactOS isn't driven by the same market forces. Anybody with enough determination can port it to SPARC and fly away :)

Windows NT 4 supported x86, MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha. All but one were dropped with Windows 2000... and it wasn't until XP that non-x86 returned (initially IA-64, and x86_64 in three more years after initial release).

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