[sneed_chucker]

Making a reliable OS from the ground up takes a lot of work from a lot of really skilled people. I don't think people give ReactOS enough credit.

It seems a lot of people look at the success of Linux and *BSD and assume that it's easy once people put their heads together, but what they're missing is:

A. Way more people had direct experience with Unix kernels by the early 1990s due to things like source available licensing and Lions' annotated Unix V6 source code being used as a university textbook since the late 70s. In the case of BSD, the code was mostly written already, they just had to get through the AT&T lawsuit and then remove the 6ish files that were deemed to be AT&T's IP.

B. Specifically for Linux, the project got a lot of financial and manpower support from big established companies like IBM and Oracle once it became clear that Linux could be a commercial Unix killer.

ReactOS doesn't get any of this. While there have been source code leaks, Microsoft remains very secretive about NT's internals and protective of its source code. Unlike with Unix, there's no NT-family of operating systems for people to draw knowledge from. There's NT and there's OpenVMS as a sort of distant cousin, neither of which are open source.

For what it's worth, I do think that ReactOS's goals are orthogonal to what people really want, which is the ability to run Windows software without needing to deal with Microsoft. You really don't need the NT kernel in order to do that, you just need a robust userland compatibility layer. I think this is why Wine has been so much more successful (especially now with Proton and SteamOS) than ReactOS.

I still dream to one day have an OSS Windows replacement that's like a Windows 7/XP/2000 desktop but with modern kernel features, APIs, and security patches. But I think the more likely future is compatibility layers for gamers and the continuing death of desktop computers for anyone who isn't an enterprise or enthusiast.

[spencerflem]

I really like this answer.

It is cool that ReactOS can run windows drivers natively, though that seems to go against the values of open source

[hilbert42]

We're so far behind from having alternative OSes that are able to run software that's based on Win APIs that any compromise seems reasonable. Essentially, all we have at present is monopolistic, spying, ad-dropping Microsoft or nothing, so any alternative has to be better.

Linux with Wine is fine in its own right and I use the combination but it isn't a true substitute for the ordinary user who has been used to using Windows for decades. Witness the pitifully small numbers of Linux desktop installations compared with Windows and the even smaller number of Linux users who use Wine. (Yes, I know Linux's desktop share has increase recently, and that's a good thing, but the numbers are still trivial.)

Seems to me pragmatism has to reign in the way that many users install Nvidia drivers on Linux. Granted, it's not the ideal for open source but the compromise is better than the alternatives.

[spencerflem]

What would a NT-compatable kernel get you that wine doesn't already have, other than the drivers? And my point is that having that is cool, but the drivers aren't open source so a lot of potential volunteers won't care anyways because of that.

[krageon]

Actual complete compatibility, which wine doesn't have.