Who's left standing at the altar? Windows users, that's who.

Windows has now become the only proprietary operating system without a free-software or open-source equivalent. Apple has Darwin. Solaris has Open Solaris. Unix has Linux and BSD. Even the extinct systems whose surviving fan base can count themselves in the triple-digits have a free alternative that they're working on. BeOS has Haiku, and Amiga has AROS. DOS has FreeDOS. CP/M has CP/M, after Lineo threw up its hands and released it. Ditto for Lucent and Plan Nine From Bell Labs.

And Windows has... nothing!

Yeah, sure, ReactOS. Look, I've been unfailingly optimistic, but even I'm ready to give up on ReactOS. It's never going to happen. They've been picking at it for 12 years, now, and the last time I tried it (less than a year ago) it couldn't stay going more than a few minutes without choking unless I left it completely alone. Linux is 17 years old, and at one-third that age had progressed farther than ReactOS has in its entire lifetime.

I'm tired of pointing people to it, I'm tired of hoping for it. The problem with this parrot is that this parrot is dead. If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies.

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