FWIW, I recently tried WINE/Codeweavers again after hearing everyone rave that it ran practically everything, and it was an absolute disaster. Literally 5/6 of the applications I tried didn’t run (and the sixth was Telegram, which actually already has a Linux client IIRC).

I doubt it’s really an option for 99% of people who need Windows for serious work.

Damn that sounds like bad luck to be honest. Or maybe the opposite -- I got very lucky and the apps I used were almost all compatible.

Off the top of my head, I've gotten:

- Ableton Live 10

- FL Studio 20

- A lot of popular Windows games

To work without any bugs (Borderlands 3 had a bug loading an asset once)

The one program I couldn't get working with WINE was Studio One 5.

Ableton and FL Studio are multi-GB programs with dozens of .dll's, really complex -- and all I had to do was:

  wine <installer-name>.exe

Then click through them

So yeah it could just be a crapshoot as far as what works. Maybe it winds up that a lot of the apps you personally use/need don't run at all, which would really suck =/

But WINE sees constant improvement, including contribution from Valve who have a vested interest in Proton for running games. Not to be cliche, but it's always improving.

(I've never used the paid Codeweavers product which is supposedly better, so can't comment on that one. Maybe someone else can chime in with recent experience if they have?)

If a full Windows/Linux ever happens, expect it to be as free beer as ChromeOS and Android are when not installed via official OEM distributions.

It will be the same driver dance and boot loader stories since Linux exists.

I am fine with this tbh, I am a pragmatic person.

In spirit, I love FOSS, though I won't cripple myself by sticking to if something that works better for me comes along/use it to my own detriment.

In fact, I would be willing to pay a good amount of money for Windows 98/Windows 2000 with a modern kernel, x64 support, and icing on the cake would be a Linux shell.

If there was "Ubuntu: Windows 2000 UI Edition" they could take my money.

ReactOS runs on old PCs that couldn't run Windows 2000 and up. It only requires 48M of RAM to install. They are getting closer to a beta build. I use the alpha builds in Virtual Box, along with HaikuOS, AROS, and Linux.

Have you ever tried to do work in it or use it as a general purpose desktop?

It wasn't really feasible (IMO) until they put out that initial x64 build in August, but in my ignorant understanding with x64 compatibility there's nothing stopping someone from running VS Code or whatnot on there right?

What're your opinions on ReactOS?

The 30 minutes I played around with it on QEMU were amazing.

We've truly regressed so much in functional UI design. I genuinely felt able to focus better because there was less "going on" on the screen. Felt like my brain wasn't overstimulated with visual information.

difference is WSL2 is more of a virtual machine than a translation layer like wine or WSL1