Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

Today I was thinking about React OS and how it is going. I remembered that about eight or ten years ago I tried this operating system in QUEMU and I really liked it and the idea behind it.

For those who do not know, React OS is a project started in 1996 that is trying to reimplement the entire Windows API from scratch to create an open source operating system that is able to run Windows applications and games natively.

The project is still "alive" but is still in alpha stage, and the public secret is that it will never get past that stage and would never get to beta stage at least.

The system is able to boot, is able to run the desktop and supports a lot of applications today. You can run almost anything, such as Blender, Age of Empires, Live for Speed... everything... but the system is unstable and not recommended for daily use, or for any use on real hardware, as it can corrupt the data on the HDD, so it is not recommended to run it even as a dual-boot.

And it is really sad, because I liked the project so much and hoped we would get a stable version to use it on some older machines to play old games or something. Unfortunately it does not seem to be making any significant progress.

So why did I remember this project after all these years? I read an article a few days ago about another project that is trying to do something and asking for cooperation with React OS, but unfortunately I lost the link and cannot find any information about it.