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358 points ofalkaed | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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snovymgodym ◴[] No.45553326[source]
ReactOS, the effort to create a free and open source Windows NT reimplementation.

It has been in existence in some form or another for nearly 30 years, but did not gain the traction it needed and as of writing it's still not in a usable state on real hardware. It's not abandoned, but progress on it is moving so slow that I doubt we'll ever see it be released in a state that's useful for real users.

It's too bad, because a drop in Windows replacement would be nice for all the people losing Windows 10 support right now.

On the other hand, I think people underestimate the difficulty involved in the project and compare it unfavorably to Linux, BSD, etc. Unix and its source code was pretty well publicly documented and understood for decades before those projects started, nothing like that ever really existed for Windows.

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1. dlcarrier ◴[] No.45555954[source]
The easiest way to avoid patent liabilities is to always be 20 years behind.
replies(1): >>45557379 #
2. Qem ◴[] No.45557379[source]
20 years behind get us back to Windows XP, that had a better experience than Windows 11 anyway.
replies(1): >>45557543 #
3. Austizzle ◴[] No.45557543[source]
I've heard people say this, and believed it myself for a long time, but recently I set up a windows XP VM and was shocked by how bad the quality of life was.

I think nostalgia is influencing this opinion quite a bit, and we don't realize the mountain of tiny usability improvements that have been made since XP

replies(1): >>45558599 #
4. devl547 ◴[] No.45558599{3}[source]
RTM or SP3? When users talk about XP being awesome, they talk about SP3.