this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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Wouldn't development of ReactOS from a larger community ultimately help ALL OS's? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
  1. Microsoft hasnt sued ReactOS only because its not significant enough for them to care about (a few Windows devs have confirmed that some ReactOS code looks stolen)
  2. Companies have no reason to fund it, wine does everything they need plus enterprise software is being produced for Linux
  3. Regardless of how "clean" ReactOS is they cannot legally reverse engineer Win10 or Win11 due to the EULA (which Microsoft would enforce in court)
  4. Even if ReactOS has 100% compatibility (highly unlikley) it doesn't means Linux will as well. In addition companies would add checks to drm to ensure a legitimate Windows kernel is used so we would just end up where we started.
  5. The only thing we would gain is an open source nt-based system, this would be immediately rejected by the POSIX purists if anyone tried to add it to Linux. Linux isn't Unix based because NT is proprietary, people like the Unix standard.
  6. Not only is the means flawed the ends are arguably worse. Linux does not need to be like Windows/MacOS, Linux does not need complete compatibility Windows/MacOS software, and tbh Linux doesn't need more Windows/MacOS users because objectively Linux is not Windows/MacOS. We arent helping older users bg watering down Linux, we arent helping new users by tricking them, and we arent helping future users by convincing them on lies.
[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 7 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 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)

Its possible for them to clean room reverse engineer Windows 10 or 11 it minimizes the risk down to only patents.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago

Theoretically but practically impossible