There have been quite a few potential Windows alternatives that have popped up from time to time over the years. In our Look Back column, we had revisited some of these. For example, we published some stories on
Corel Linux,
BeOS, and
Lindows. Another one of these projects is ReactOS often popularly referred to as "open source Windows". The project has been around for a very long time and set off to achieve a Windows XP-like OS experience albeit in an open source manner.
Over the last few years, it has been making some slow but steady progress with the rollout of improvements and updates. For example, in late 2023, the ReactOS development team implemented UEFI booting on a variety of devices like Nokia's Lumia, Apple's iPhone, and Valve's Steam Deck, and interestingly, the requirements were
lower than that of Windows 11.
Following that, a few months later in February, ReactOS received a GUI or graphical user interface-based setup
called "USETUP" for the simple reason of being more intuitive and being easier to navigate.
However, since then there have not been too many updates from the team until today. On its official X handle, the ReactOS development team has finally shared a progress report on its effort and it is not quite the positive one would have hoped for. As to turns out, audio is problematic due to "bugs elsewhere."
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