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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).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] 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] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think the bigger issue with the entirety of Linux as a whole is, getting everyone on the same page to make a distro that everyone can use and not be intimidated by. There's a distro for everyone, but there are still obstacles in some distros that people are going to run into, that'll make them turn back to Windows.

Whether it can't run a game they played, run a piece of software natively, driver support and maybe even features they thought were best suited on Windows than Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

We have Android and ChromeOS for those "just want an appliance" users.

The rest of the distros are for those with varying needs. Arch, Gentoo, for the full control folk. Debian for stability folk. Ubuntu for cloud. ELs for data centers.

Etc etc etc

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