Comments on: ReactOS: Open source Windows

By: Sameer

Sameer — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:58:56 +0000

@Brian : i think i will have to agree with you ;)

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:35:10 +0000

@Sameer:
Yeah, but then it’s best to go to a Linux server rather than an alpha version of some project software. I would bet that anything that will run on the current version of ReactOS will run seamlessly on Wine (which ReactOS is affiliated with).

By: Sameer

Sameer — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:06:12 +0000

ReactOS may be buggy and not very advanced but it can be a really nice alternative to windows in a corporate environment or somewhere people don’t need to use extensive windows functions and just run a webserver or omething

By: ct2193

ct2193 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:53:46 +0000

Hmm… ReactOS is still sketchy and not all that stable… Not recommended for practical use yet…

Sounds like they’re right on track for simulating a real installation of Windows. I suppose they’ll have to bloat their code before they’re near identical.

Of course I only joke about this because of all the unstable systems I’ve dealt with over the years – I do think XP Pro was one of the best systems MS put out and now they’re abandoning it for Vista & Win 7 which suck like Windows ME.

By: Odd Operating Systems

Odd Operating Systems — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:31:03 +0000

[...] has already covered ReactOS; a free and open source version of Windows, but there are many other operating systems out there [...]

By: some1

some1 — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:50:57 +0000

@Brian: Hey , Its still alpha…
The release cycle is about 2 months , not 6.
Next ahead among other things is usb support!! ;)
The release build includes “Downloader” which installs Firefox 1.5 or Firefox 2 and they works ok.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:17:48 +0000

@DjFlush: I wrote that, not Martin! Also, I think it is ‘free’. Any files which were unfree have been audited for.

‘The ReactOS Project releases almost all of its code under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org). Each developer maintains his or her copyright in the developed source code, but licenses that code under the GPL for use by the ReactOS Project.

Some portions of ReactOS may be licensed under other licenses, including the GNU Lesser GPL, or placed into the public domain. This is generally done only when necessary for compatibility with other projects. ‘

By: Avatar

Avatar — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:25:56 +0000

Linux-XP from Russia must be the Linux Distro that got the closest to its goal of replicating Windows. it was quite remarkable. i wonder what happened to that project?.

By: DjFlush

DjFlush — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:08:51 +0000

Nice find Martin! after doing a little research I found that it is a free operating system but still not open source.

By: Dotan Cohen

Dotan Cohen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:59:06 +0000

While ReactOS is interesting, I must stress that has very little usage as a real OS. I may soon install it on an old library computer that must run some Win98 application if I cannot get it to run in wine on Xubuntu, but then again if Wine fails to run that binary, then I do not have much hope for ReactOS. I fear for Wine’s terrible implementation of Hebrew (RTL) support, whereas the ReactOS team may have taken a different route.

By: doit

doit — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:55:37 +0000

Well, nothing that much compared to this – http://moogha.notlong.com

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:53:52 +0000

I’ve been following this for a couple of years now, and the progress is SLOW. They release minor version updates (0.34–>0.35) every three to six months, and it won’t hit the Beta phase until it gets to version 0.5. that’ll be another two years at this rate. currently, the interface defaults to a “feel” that’s somewhere between Windows 3.11 and Win95, even though it has kernel compatibility with Win32 apps. And, man is it buggy. The LiveCD builds won’t boot on every computer, and have almost nothing to test drive within them. The VM won’t install a web browser to test even the lowliest functions. it will install AbiWord, and that actually looks fairly nice. but it’s slow.

I’m not knocking the effort, because I like the idea of a free (or at least cheaper) version of Windows. Kinda like I rooted for AMD and Cyrix when they were heavily competing for Intel’s throne. Only Cyrix dropped out of the running early on. And I fear that’s what’ll happen to ReactOS.