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Comment by pjmlp

11 hours ago

Only if it keeps being relevant for the computing model.

Case in point, ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of, and this not taking into account the ARM and CoPilot+ PC hardware changes in modern motherboards.

It is nonetheless relevant, especially in the presence of escape mechanisms to oppressive governments, and digital sovereignty.

19 comments

pjmlp

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loloquwowndueo  9 hours ago

> ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of

lol I guess, it doesn’t annoy you with endless ads and pop ups, doesn’t try to steal your data and passwords, doesn’t force you to buy an entire new computer just to run it. Far behind indeed.

  • pjmlp  8 hours ago

    You joke, yet there are plenty of missing actually useful features, some of which even Linux lags behind with exception of Android/Linux.

    • DaiPlusPlus  6 hours ago

      I challenge you to name an actually useful feature that was added in Windows 11 and not present in any previous release.

      Difficulty: QoL features added to undo the effects of bad design changes in Win11 don’t count, such as “compact view” in Windows 11 File Explorer.

      4 replies →

justinclift  7 hours ago

Heh, wouldn't it be funny if some of the EU gov's decided to sponsor ReactOS for another/future pathway away from Redmond. :)

mschuster91  10 hours ago

> It is nonetheless relevant, especially in the presence of escape mechanisms to oppressive governments, and digital sovereignty.

Not just for that. There's an awful, awful lot of ancient embedded hardware running machinery sometimes worth dozens of millions of dollars, and it's running even more ancient software. Siemens, for example, recently searched for people capable of (and willing to) working with Windows 3.11 [1], presumably to deal with the HMI displays for locomotive/train drivers.

When dealing with hardware or software that has lifecycles measured in half-centuries, bridges to allow modern tooling to work with it are really, really important.

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/Deutsche-Bahn-sucht-Admin-fuer-Win...

  • HappMacDonald  2 hours ago

    Working with Windows 3.11 isn't even the problem there though, that is only a symptom. You could get one of the original authors of 3.11 in there and all they would get told by Siemens would be "no, you can't touch anything. You can't change anything, you can't install a new piece of software, even one designed for Windows 3.11. You can't fix this obvious bug, even if you are Chesteron. The absolute only thing we will allow you to do is to salve the very shallowest possible symptom that we never noticed until this week, and you can only do that by adding a new thing completely outside of the scope of everything that already exists and make the ball of pain larger."