this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Privacy
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All the hardware in my life is Linux or FreeBSD . . . with one embarrassing exception. For years I've kept an Acer laptop on Win10 for a single task - running a windows application to update the firmware on a Garmin satellite SMS device (we do long distance hiking well off grid in Scotland). Micro$oft's ongoing bullshit shamed me into finally sorting out even that one edge use case. After several hours of playing . . I was able to overwrite Win10 with . . . ReactOS!
If you've never heard of it . . and most people in the FOSS community never have . . it's an attempt at reverse engineering Windows NT, using a combination of WINE plus a written from scratch open source Windows like kernel. It will never be "done" and it's FAR from ready to be anyone's daily driver . . but still a fun project to follow.
https://reactos.org/
And yes, after hours more of tweaking, I was able to get the Garmin app to update on React!