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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Wouldn't development of ReactOS from a larger community ultimately help ALL OS's? (self.linux)

submitted 6 days ago by Lost_My_Mind to c/[email protected]

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So, if you've never heard of ReactOS, it's an alternative to Windows, except it's open source, and reverse engineered.

The end result is, if it works on Windows, it works on ReactOS natively.

Now, as you might imagine, there are some issues with this. The most glaring one being that they're currently in the year 2003. That's the level they're at with software. It's not even emulation. It's running the software natively, and it's written from scratch.

But my takeaway is that Linux running windows apps natively would improve people's hesitation to running linux.

Now since ReactOS is FOSS, any improvements made upon it could then be forked over to Linux. And if someone made a ReactOS fork, that isn't linux, that's good too (as long as it stays open source). Any advancements made by this new theoretical fork of ReactOS could ALSO be forked into linux.

Right now, development is slow, because it's a community driven effort without much of a community. If it had a large and engaged community, all legally reverse engeneering the ways of windows? That would allow basically EVERY OS to have FOSS unofficial native windows support.

So I guess my question is, for an OS that's been in development since 1998, why doesn't the linux community embrace ReactOS?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Regardless of how "clean" ReactOS is they cannot legally reverse engineer Win10 or Win11 due to the EULA (which Microsoft would enforce in court)

How would they prove the developer signed an EULA? I know I haven't been made to use Windows since the Vista era. And even then, that was a work computer so I never agreed to anything.

The rest I agree with. Windows is trash, why bother cloning it? Wine exists to run applications that are desired but don't have Linux equivalents.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

If any of the developers have a Microsoft account with their legal name and have used that to set up a Windows 10 computer (highly likley) they can be sued. Also my point is not only is Windows trash the fundamental technologies its based on are trash too, Unix Based systems will always be superior to NT/DOS based systems.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

The problem wouldn't be the developers but the reverse engineers.

Though there are of course ways to RE without looking at what the original system does.