"Open source Windows" ReactOS finally has an update, and it's not that good

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."

Later on in a separate tweet, it went on to confirm that there is limited sound support on

For the record: there's limited sound support in #ReactOS for now - shown by previous tests.

It also looks like the ReactOS team has been working behind the scenes for quite some time despite not being active on social media. We could be getting more glimpses sooner rather than later:

We will update this article or post newer stories later based on how much and how quick of a progress ReactOS is able to make:

Finally, the ReactOS team also confirmed that LiveUSB or USB booting will work very soon.