Alpha or not, is it usable? Because by all accounts windows 9x systems were alpha quality as well and millions of people were depending on it and accepting the shitshow.
So if ReactOS is still rated as alpha but has a similar stability as XP it is something I believe some people praising the windows 9x/NT UIs would be happy to use them.
I only tested it on a VM once in a while out of curiosity, tried some apps I knew but since I have been primarily a Linux user for decades and wasn't particularly fond of the windows UI those were all opensource apps I could run on Linux so I had little incentive to spend much more time on it. From the little I explored it was working.
It hangs for me pretty easily when I run my own code on it. Feature wise, it's definitely XP or better. I just wish it was rock solid. There are constant bugfixes, at some point it should tip the balance and stop crashing. For it to crash, it must be in the kernel code, so while large, it's not an inhuman task to fix it. "Not crashing" is a lower bar than "perfect compatibility".
There aren't that many developers working on it though. I wish some company would adopt it and run with it, like how Wine really took off after Codeweavers.
So if ReactOS is still rated as alpha but has a similar stability as XP it is something I believe some people praising the windows 9x/NT UIs would be happy to use them.
I only tested it on a VM once in a while out of curiosity, tried some apps I knew but since I have been primarily a Linux user for decades and wasn't particularly fond of the windows UI those were all opensource apps I could run on Linux so I had little incentive to spend much more time on it. From the little I explored it was working.