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Comment by t8sr | Hacker News Reader

I'm still not completely sure who or what ReactOS is supposed to be for. If you want to run Windows applications, Wine on Linux works better. In fact, Wine and ReactOS exchange a lot of code in the user layer anyway, IIRC. Meanwhile, Linux is probably the best optimized, most ported and most customizable kernel we have.

The only thing you get by running ReactOS instead of Linux is... worse performance, worse hardware support and possibly a kernel based on leaked copyrighted code. What's the point?

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For me, I still look forward to ReactOS one day becoming stable for the reason that I like the Windows programming model from the era ReactOS is targetting.

It's a fairly coherent system that is willing to not be *nix and really offers some serious power just under the hood.

Having something like that open-source would be a step closer to my dream machine.

Nowadays, not much except for legacy embedded use. (Though in practice, the stability of ReactOS isn't great and also there's the untested licensing situation of ReactOS. Allegedly some of the code might have been lifted from Microsoft code. This issue alone may have made companies stay clear of it.)

But way back when, before everything computing metastased into a fluffy Javascript cloud world, and when Linux wasn't as mature, an "Open Source Windows NT 4" would have been a great off-ramp off Microsoft. You know, "Year of Linux on the Desktop" which was such a coveted thing, could have been "Year of Open Source Win32" instead.

Instead, the Desktop waned in importance, we got cloud services and smart phones instead, and Linux grew up to be a force in its own right.

Drivers. The promise is that ReactOS will work with the Windows XP drivers for your ultra niche custom hardware for an industrial control system from an out of business supplier ( or point-of-sale system or whatever ).

ReactOS is still targeting 32 bit Windows at a time when even Linux is dropping support for 32 bit hardware.

ReactOS is FreeDOS whereas WINE is DosBox.

There is the complete and explicit answer what is ReactOS is supposed to be for: https://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ

ReactOS is supposed to be able to use Windows drivers, IIRC, which definitely could be are advantage over Linux.

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