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- Hacker News
- reactos has been in development for 28 years and it can run half-life on real hardware. that is approximately how long half-life 1 itself has existed in the first place!
- we are still here lolby succo
- While this is sort of laughable out of context (I mean, Steam on Linux for the last few years has run basically everything with full acceleration)...
I think what is being claimed, but not explicitly in the article, is that this is running the NVIDIA driver stack (for an ancient GeForce 8 card) directly, as opposed to emulating DirectX at the API level on top of a Vulkan driver.
by ajross - I wouldn't call it laughable. ReactOS was not created only to run half-life. It's just one of their many impressive achievements.by wolvoleo
- > While this is sort of laughable out of context (I mean, Steam on Linux for the last few years has run basically everything with full acceleration)...
Eh. It's sort of like saying FreeDOS is laughable because DOSBox exists. I think that's missing the point.
by da_chicken - I mean they reimplemented directx without vulkan, that's indeed in a league of their own. wine/proton relies on opengl/vulkan to do anything.by himata4113
- Indeed. ReactOS is to the full Windows stack what Wine is to the userland Windows API.by chadgpt3
- I find ReactOS interesting, but I could never get anything to work the last time I tried it - which was a few months ago.
I also have a feeling that I'll be dead for centuries long before it ever becomes a viable replacement.
On the plus side, at least it'll be finished quicker than GNU Hurd will be...
by Jigsy - What is the benefit compared to a compatibility layer? Is it easier for future maintenance?
It's definitely a huge improvement towards "FOSS Windows."
by eaf7e281 - You can run proprietary drivers with ReactOS since it replicates the driver layer too.
So unlike Linux systems with Nvidia Kepler cards, you can still run the most up-to-date desktop environment. Or if you have an obscure WiFi card, you can use the Windows drivers.
by okanat - something I wondered for a while
do windows viruses get ported by such efforts as well?
by NooneAtAll3 - Yesby chadgpt3
- The payload yes, the exploit hopefully not.by dmurvihill
- You can run WannaCry under Wine, with a bit of effort.
- Somewhere in the docs they state that they must also recreate whatever bugs the API has, otherwise applications written with those bugs as an (implicit) assumption could misbehave.by canyp
- Some, but not all, most don't. Ideally they would all work, ReactOS doesn't make a priority on being a "safer" option, just an open source option
- Of course. Maybe not successfully but a "virus" is just software. If it runs software, it runs software, full stop. Maybe the same APIs are not available or behave differently, so it may be buggy or non-functional, but that's true of Half-Life here too.by TechSquidTV
- WannaCry was able to successfully run on ReactOS in 2025. Most other virsuses do tend to crash, because the memory layout is just a tiny bit different, but yeah, compatibility means compatibility. Lots of malware comes along for the ride.
However, there is a permissions layer that is more nix than Windows, which means the first foothold is still better than XP - you have to choose to execute the file. Self-running things don't tend to infect systems.
Its not a panacea, and there is a risk factor. And there aren't a lot of antivirus systems that can run correctly under ReactOS, because they freak out and think the OS is the malware, because they're scanning hashes for Windows, not another system.
But for a hobby OS, keeping hardware and software accessible after the rest of the world broke access, it still works.
by shakna - That's great. I have not tested ReactOS in many years and I am rather reluctant to try it again (last time I tried, I could not connect to the internet with it, and that was a breaking point for me), but the better they are at providing a working alternative, the nicer this is as a win-win scenario. Linux kind of spoiled me though, I noticed this with HaikuOS too. If things such as ruby do not work, I am not going to bother anymore. Linux kind of raised the bar here, at the least for things that I would expect to work as-is (this is not the only example, there were more issues and I simply don't want to feel going into a downgrade-area when using an operating system; I have Win10 on a computer to my left side but whenever I do things such as copying data to an USB stick or to it, it is so slow compared to Linux. It annoys me every time I have to do so.)by shevy-java
- Windows is going downhill so fast, I fear ReactOS won't be relevant before Windows becomes irrelevant.
Maybe ReactOS will live after Windows as an option for people with critical applications that for some reason won't run on Linux.
If ReactOS had worked this well 20 years ago, I would probably have used it (I did try it a couple of times). Today I just don't need it.
by forinti - Given 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.
- this is the year of the linux desktop
- more people and AI
- IF there are people who write code.
This is not always the case. Open source projects also die.
We need to improve the funding situation. I have no idea how to do that, but we really need to tackle that problem.
by shevy-java - 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.
by pjmlp - > development for 28 years now
> given enough time
This has been a lifetime for a slice of the human population.
It’s getting into Sagrada Familia territory.
by xattt - It 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.by maufl
- I think a lot could be achieved by defining a "rom format" for windows games.by spwa4
- A Linux Distro that comes with Wine and Application shortcuts could probably achieve this. Sounds really cool actually. Retro LAN Party Distro.by dannyfritz07
- 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.
by shevy-java