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The Free MS Windows replacement operating system ReactOS has just released a new version. They have a large and active development team.
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ReactOS is already of use now for teaching developers how to re-engineer and code a Windows-compatible o/s but it is not ready for real-life usage where o/s stability and data security is important.
ReactOS has been in development since 1996. As of February 2022, it is still considered feature-incomplete alpha software, and is therefore recommended by the developers only for evaluation and testing purposes.
All told, you'd probably be better off with a Linux distribution in terms of software updates and general capability. But if you've got an older machine and a user that just can't grok another operating system? In that case, even in its current alpha state, ReactOS is definitely worth a look.
Targeting ReactOS specifically is a bit too narrow IMO -- perhaps a better focus is to target compatibility with WINE. Because ReactOS shares so many of its usermode DLLs with WINE, targeting WINE should result in the app running just fine on ReactOS.
Of course, there will always be things that WINE can't emulate well (hence the need for ReactOS). In this way, it seems that if something runs in WINE, it will run in ReactOS, whereas the fact that something runs in ReactOS doesn't mean that it will necessarily run in WINE.
Targeting WINE is well documented, perhaps easier to test, and by definition, should make your app compatible with ReactOS as a matter of course. In this way, you're not only gathering the rather large user base of current WINE users, but you're future-proofing yourself for whenever anyone wants to use your app with ReactOS.
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