On: ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware

[ajross]

While this is sort of laughable out of context (I mean, Steam on Linux for the last few years has run basically everything with full acceleration)...

I think what is being claimed, but not explicitly in the article, is that this is running the NVIDIA driver stack (for an ancient GeForce 8 card) directly, as opposed to emulating DirectX at the API level on top of a Vulkan driver.

[chadgpt3 → ajross]

Indeed. ReactOS is to the full Windows stack what Wine is to the userland Windows API.

[himata4113 → ajross]

I mean they reimplemented directx without vulkan, that's indeed in a league of their own. wine/proton relies on opengl/vulkan to do anything.

[ddtaylor → himata4113]

Wine has had many different DirectX backends over the decades, including one before Vulkan existed obviously.

[himata4113 → ddtaylor]

All of them relied on translation (ex: opengl). Proton specifically is focused on dx->vulkan.

[da_chicken → ajross]

> While this is sort of laughable out of context (I mean, Steam on Linux for the last few years has run basically everything with full acceleration)...

Eh. It's sort of like saying FreeDOS is laughable because DOSBox exists. I think that's missing the point.

[wolvoleo → ajross]

I wouldn't call it laughable. ReactOS was not created only to run half-life. It's just one of their many impressive achievements.