Homebrew About the ReactOS project and the WiiU

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blackkawa

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Hello people, i have stumbled about a interesting project about a new open source OS, the ReactOS, basead on windows. It works with most recent processors, and have some compability with windows drivers and programs. It is a OS made from the ground, made to work with windows applications and drivers, and not a linux distribuition. The devs said that they will implement PPC working with the system, and then a ideia came out. Could this OS be used with the wii u, in a similar way like the linux wii u once they got PPC compability?

Link to the project: https://www.reactos.org
 
Possible? Yes.
Will it happen? Probably not since the console's CPU is roughly what you'd find in a powermac G3.
a g4, thankyouverymuch

honestly we barely got Linux working (nobody's gonna claim it works well) so I'd be unsure about a less mature platform that's mostly made to run x86 programs. I mean the whole point is to be compatible with windows, right? and nearly all windows binaries are x86-only, including the gpu drivers, so idk
 
The official Windows NT PowerPC, thanks to Rairii, runs on the Wii U today, although without sound, networking and other misc. issues. But it does run completely solid. Work is currently being done to leverage all 3 cores found on the Wii U. Runs on vWii mode only as of today, though.

For the record, the Wii U is NOT like a G4, because it lacks the PowerPC SIMD instructions known as AltiVec (Motorola/Freescale/NXP) AKA Velocity Engine (Apple) AKA VMX (IBM).

So, yes, it's like a G3 Mac, like the GameCube and the Wii. However, unlike those, its clock speed is MUCH higher (comparable, but still slower than, clock speeds of higher-end G4 Macs), and the fact it has 3 cores. G3s all had one core previously, and at most Macs were equipped with 2 CPUs, but not more (exceptions exist, such as 4-CPU Tsunami architecture PowerPC Mac clones, and of course the later 64-bit PPC G5 "Quad" which is two CPUs with two cores each).

The main thing though is that the Wii U has a completely kickass GPU, way beyond what existed for PowerMacs at the time.

In any case, my point is that if WinNT PPC can run on Wii U today, the potential is clearly there for ReactOS PPC. Unfortunately, however, although ReactOS is unstable anywhere, it is ESPECIALLY unstable on PowerPC: the ReactOS team simply doesn't care enough about the architecture for it to happen. Of course, they will accept volunteers.
 
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