ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware (phoronix.com)

While this is sort of laughable out of context (I mean, Steam on Linux for the last few years has run basically everything with full acceleration)...

I think what is being claimed, but not explicitly in the article, is that this is running the NVIDIA driver stack (for an ancient GeForce 8 card) directly, as opposed to emulating DirectX at the API level on top of a Vulkan driver.

something I wondered for a while

do windows viruses get ported by such efforts as well?

reactos has been in development for 28 years and it can run half-life on real hardware. that is approximately how long half-life 1 itself has existed in the first place!

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Given enough time, open-source will win. Just think about how more and more people are programming and how that will draw them to open-source.

What is the benefit compared to a compatibility layer? Is it easier for future maintenance?

It's definitely a huge improvement towards "FOSS Windows."

It would be great if we could combine ReactOS with Good old Games to build a retro Windows games distribution. I could hand that out at LAN parties as USB boot stick.

That's great. I have not tested ReactOS in many years and I am rather reluctant to try it again (last time I tried, I could not connect to the internet with it, and that was a breaking point for me), but the better they are at providing a working alternative, the nicer this is as a win-win scenario. Linux kind of spoiled me though, I noticed this with HaikuOS too. If things such as ruby do not work, I am not going to bother anymore. Linux kind of raised the bar here, at the least for things that I would expect to work as-is (this is not the only example, there were more issues and I simply don't want to feel going into a downgrade-area when using an operating system; I have Win10 on a computer to my left side but whenever I do things such as copying data to an USB stick or to it, it is so slow compared to Linux. It annoys me every time I have to do so.)

we are still here lol

Windows is going downhill so fast, I fear ReactOS won't be relevant before Windows becomes irrelevant.

Maybe ReactOS will live after Windows as an option for people with critical applications that for some reason won't run on Linux.

If ReactOS had worked this well 20 years ago, I would probably have used it (I did try it a couple of times). Today I just don't need it.

I find ReactOS interesting, but I could never get anything to work the last time I tried it - which was a few months ago.

I also have a feeling that I'll be dead for centuries long before it ever becomes a viable replacement.

On the plus side, at least it'll be finished quicker than GNU Hurd will be...