ReactOS is a rather interesting open-source project that is considered by many to be a direct and free drop-in replacement for Windows, especially if you don’t want to be locked in to Microsoft’s proprietary ecosystem. One of its goals is to allow customers to run Windows apps and drivers in an open-source environment (reminiscent of Windows XP) that they can trust, and it has made many advancements in this regard. It supports Microsoft’s FAT file system, Registry caching, native .zip handling, and is even capable of running Microsoft’s iconic Hover! in fullscreen. Now, the project is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
It’s not really suitable for production use yet. I ran it in a VM a few days ago, got a BSoD within a few minutes just from doing completely normal things.
As the other comment said, the main usefulness is the fact that there is already a lot of Windows-only software out there and it’s useful to have a way to run all of it on a FOSS operating system, even if Wine is for one reason or another not an option.
Woha, careful there, we’re on a forum full of Linux nerds and the joke writes itself.
But yeah, I guess that takes me back to my inital confusion - one would think a minimalistic Linux install with Wine would always perform better, if nothing else because there are a lot of people actively using and contributing to that software stack. But maybe sometimes there are advantages of having the software integrated directly in the system that Wine as a non-emulator on Linux cannot deliver.
The main selling point is that it aims to support Windows device drivers.
Right! Man, I’m slow today. But that makes sense, sometimes to operate some old expensive piece of equipment you’ll need both the software and the driver. Thanks for spoon feeding me haha.