Has anyone here tried ReactOS, which was supposed to be a Linux based drop in replacement for Windows? I had years ago, and it seems to still be making progress, but not much and slowly I gave up on it years ago too. It looks like it started in 2002, then again in 2014 of 15 and still is not ready for use yet in 2026.
In 2002, the ReactOS Foundation was established in Moscow with Maxim Osowski and Aleksey Bragin [ru] as executive officers and Vladimir Bragin, Saveliy Tretiakov, and Alexey Ivanov on the board of directors. In 2015, the foundation was liquidated.
Conclusions I try out new versions of ReactOS every few years to see how the project is coming along. Up to this point, I have felt that the warning the ReactOS team shares in their FAQ document has been accurate: "First and foremost, no-one should actually be attempting to use ReactOS as their daily driver as it is an Alpha grade operating system under heavy development now. This means that it is unstable and possibly even quite capable of damaging your data." This is a pretty strong warning and, given the stability and capability issues I’ve had with previous releases, I tended to agree with the team.
That brings us to this week’s poll on Distrowatch:
What do you use if you need to run a Windows application?