> Is there value in having a "working ReactOS" as of 2026 _for workstations_?

The ideas behind the NT kernels are much deeper than what many Linux fans think of it. Just to give some examples:

- the NT kernel is build around supporting multiple subsystems, even though currently only "1.5" are in active use: the Windows subsystem and WSL1 (the latter has for many purposes been replaced by WSL2)

- the NT kernel is not built around "everything is a file" (a very leaky and very incompletely implemented abstraction that is used in GNU/Linux); instead the central concept is the handle

- the I/O in NT kernel is built around the idea that the API is "completion-oriented" instead of being "readiness-oriented" as in Linux. This manifests in concepts like I/O Completion Ports (IOCPs), Overlapped I/O, ... Since this is a deeply technical topic, I refer to https://speakerdeck.com/trent/parallelism-and-concurrency-wi... (the most important information is in the backup slides (slides 43-54)).