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Errr, the only thing on the status page is a link to to http://svn.reactos.com/api/ which is 404-compliant.

I Am Not Impressed.

If you just want an open-source Windows, there's always ReactOS

http://reactos.com/en/index.html somebody is already trying to do just that.

maybe you'll eventually have both an acceptable (in terms of licensing and absence of drm bullshit) and supported Windows-compatible operating system in ReactOS.

Does anyone else see this as an incredible boost to projects like Wine and ReactOS? Given that up until now they've had to use Chinese Walls and so forth to figure these things out, it seems to me that this court order is going to save them a *lot* of effort.

Ignorance is strength
Freedom is slavery
War is peace

Stay ignorant and repeat the lies, or learn and make your own oppinion. Your choice.

Package management and dependencies used to be a problem for me, then I learned of debian, games used to be a problem for me and then I learned of winex(cedega), I had a problem with MS office and then I found crossover, I had a problem with outlook and then I found evolution, I had a problem with single sign on and windows transparency over server message block then I found winbind... There are frustrated users, and then there are self educating *nix users.

In reality, the biggest failing is education, not cross compatible software.

I know it's not strictly speaking Win95, (plus the fact you were clearly making said comment in jest) but ReacOS?

The entire computer industry has been stifled for years. We need competition, and we need it badly.

Yeah. Because Microsoft has no real competition at all in desktop operating systems.

ReactOS has been around for quite sometime, and is now getting quite useful. Originally it was designed just to replace NT4 but this has changed recently and now they are getting features like in 2k and xp.

Looking forward to the day when I can replaced Microsoft system files with opensource equivelents.

That's funny, only because I'm having a heck of a time getting IE to run on my SuSE Linux 10 machine.

Try crossover office. It works really well. Well worth the price. Seriously though, linux on the desktop is a pretty small minority. ReactOS is the key to an open source desktop for the masses.

It's clear I drink the kool-aid when I ask: are ReactOS and Mono/DotGNU viable alternatives which would allow you to continue using this hardware?

...I'll already have ReactOS installed in my PC. Oh, btw, this week ReactOS reached version 0.2.8.

Of course, ReactOS will be installed in a dual-boot with the latest Linux, which I hope, will be user-and-hardware friendly by then.

It's just platform chauvinism, plain and simple. It stems from a very simplistic world view, a sort of If you aren't 100% against them, you must be against us.

The irony is, it's often those who whine and complain the loudest about Micro$oft that do the least to support actual Open Source development.

Ooops, that was almost well thought out and reasoned... I should have just said: "You're new here, aren't you?"

In case anyone doesn't know. The ReactOS project works closely with WINE. They are implementing the API from WINE on a replica of the Windows 2000 kernel.

This means that both Windows drivers and applications will work natively without any changes. They seem to have come on leaps and bounds in the past year with many applications working straight away (OpenOffice, Abiword, mIRC, Unreal Tournament, InfranView, PuTTY as some). Once they start implementing some of the security features then there will be another viable alternative.

In the future I can imagine ReactOS coming on a CD with OpenOffice, Apache etc, much like Linux distributions do, which creates an easy migration path:

Windows + Apps -> Windows + OSS Apps -> ReactOS + OSS Apps then then off to a Linux or *BSD varient if you want.

As a Linux developer myself, I'm rather pleased to hear that my suspicions have been confirmed. All the features that Vista's offering are already available in Linux (along with a great deal more), and besides that, the system requirements are definitely insane. If you still haven't heard of just how many systems Linux runs on, I just installed the latest version of my distribution on a Pentium-166 machine with 32MB RAM and a 2.5GB disk. All security updates as well. And it runs beautifully, even better than a Celeron-1.8G with 384MB RAM and Windows XP, if you can believe it.

Anyway, despite what some people insist Linux is slowly moving onto pre-installed systems. Emperor Linux sells laptops pre-configured with just about all the major distros, and there are companies (and even individuals like me) selling pre-loaded Linux desktops. And I'm pretty sure that others will eventually catch on.

I'll be honest, though, the project I'm really hoping to see succeed is ReactOS. Linux is a good system – and I'm definitely a loyal user / developer who's not likely to quit using Linux any time soon – but I think that for users more used to Micro$oft's system, ReactOS would probably be a better solution. Plus it's got a cool logo. :-)

Micro$oft's starting to flood the world with more poorly-written but still ridiculously expensive software. So obviously this can only mean one thing. Time to switch to Linux! And if Linux doesn't work, help the ReactOS [site currently down, not my fault] people finish their system so they can free the world from Gates' tyranny!

Luck in say 5 years or so. Take a look at their current status. It is somewhere between 95 and NT 3.1 but nowhere near even their full capabilities. Forget 2k or XP.

"There's a real fine line between doing something that no one else is doing versus doing something because you don't like the way other people did it. I'd be open to switching my OS if a new OS did everything that my existing OS did *and* added a bunch of new stuff that made the effort worthwhile. My (admittedly limited) experience with alternative OS projects is that they're trying to solve problems that others have already solved. A new OS probably won't make that much of a difference to me."

Well, if you're using Windows right now, then you're in luck:

ReactOS.com
ReactOS.net.tc - Application Compatibility List (incomplete)

Basically, ReactOS is a clone of Windows NT-based OSs (NT, Win2k, WinXP), and thus aims to provide full compatibility with virtually all applications and drivers currently available for these OSs.
Since it's released under the GPL, lots of interesting stuff can be done to it if someone is so inclined, including adding features many people want, but MSFT doesn't consider important enough to add.

The next big release (0.3.0) will finally make networking easy to use, as well as many other improvements. To give an idea of its capabilities, one can run Unreal Tournament hardware-accelerated with the standard, unpatched version of UT and the standard nVidia drivers.

The more Microsoft products run on it ,the more it's a real threat to them.

If they get games and business software working on it then watch out.
They need to get NTfs filesystem working so it can be used for an emergency boot disk. It's only Fat32 now.

http://www.reactos.com/

http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/62

Maybe if more had supported this project then gamers and others dependent on windows only software would have switched.

At least ReactOS users should be able to compile it happily. :)

Does the development of a Win2K clone called ReactOS have any bearing on this discussion? (And is ReactOS genuinely a Win2K clone? I can't find links on their website to pin this part down.)

A GPL clone of the software that Microsoft no longer supports would allow internal fixing of broken things -- as long as the clone correctly runs the software in use.

WINE is not an emulator

With the most (arguably) liked and stable version of Windows now unsupported, will more interest be switching to the React OS http://www.reactos.com/project? Increasing userbase and gaining traction?

Apparently you've never heard of http://www.reactos.com/ Does a fairly close job.

Keep an eye on 4.0. Like a baby, we won't really appreciate its value until it's matured a bit.

Question is, should they be upset at the compiler?

Recently, I found this thread on the reactos forums. It is about compiling reactos with gcc 4. Sure enough, there were problems. One thing that caught my eye is this:

Also a mountain of Warnings in the reactos code mainly to do with signed and unsigned. Yep people have been mixing them all over the place some files have 10-20 Warning each just to do with signed and unsigned.

Keep an eye on 4.0. Like a baby, we won't really appreciate its value until it's matured a bit.

Question is, should they be upset at the compiler?

Recently, I found this thread on the reactos forums. It is about compiling reactos with gcc 4. Sure enough, there were problems. One thing that caught my eye is this:

Also a mountain of Warnings in the reactos code mainly to do with signed and unsigned. Yep people have been mixing them all over the place some files have 10-20 Warning each just to do with signed and unsigned.

How many open-source graphics packages are there? One (Gimp).

Actually there are two others that turned up in a simple google:

http://www.inkscape.org/
http://www.sodipodi.com/

Without OSX and Windows, there is only one operating system left.

There are in fact several open source OS's besides linux, some based on unix some not:

http://www.reactos.com/
http://www.freedos.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/

It is true that certain packages tend to dominate if they are clearly better than the others (such as Gimp or Apache) However in some areas their is still no clear 'winner' such as the battle between KDE/Gnome. This is just natural evolution in progress.

All of these have achieved some commercial success and are popular, well supported, operating systems. Something tells me you need to stop running Windows and come out into the real world.

That's why http://reactos.com/ was born: if you can not beat your enemy...

It's no real surprize that people want to get rid of it. If not for Linux we'd have a choice of two OS (Windows or OSX)

Really? What happened to all the other free alternatives?

I'm getting a bit tired of Linux fanatics who think the OS world is limited to Windows, OS X and Linux.

--
Glass, t0tal pwnag3

"Maybe someone can come out with something better 3 years down the line. Fast, flexible, easy to use, relatively bug free - think Firefox, but an OS this time."

You mean something like ReactOS?

You won't even have to leave behind all of those beautifully plentiful Windows applications and drivers :)

Well, Wine is currently quite actively doing just that: porting various sub-DLLs over to Windows.
http://www.reactos.com/, you know... ;-)

I guess you've used ReactOS

It's not GNU, but ReactOS is open source Windows (namely, NT4, with bits of NT5 thrown in as they get to it. There's a screenshot of it running Quake II, so it can't be that off.

Are you kidding? They aren't nice about it. They assume that you are pirating and you have to convince them that you aren't. Plus, the last time I did this it reset my client's display settings to a resolution that their LCD monitor didn't like, and I had to guess where the ok buttons were. Hell, it might even be more convenient to buy a legitimate copy and crack the activation just to not have to deal with these jerks. That's why I dual boot Linux and Win2k on all of my machines, and hopefully when ReactOS is finished, I won't even have to have Win2k.

I just wonder when ReactOS will be ready... that'd save us a lot of headaches.

By going this route, one could be Microsoft Free (tm) without running any Linux on their machine. Granted, it'll probably be another year or so until ReactOS can run major applications, but it'll be an interesting option.

Currently, ReactOS is running Windows GUI applications thanks to code shared with the Wine project. The networking stack was just implemented, and some simple web applications are running.

I'm not sure but there may be OS X support for some tax preparation software.

Easy solution: ZipSlack.

No spyware, no ads, no bloat, no speed issues, no need for Windows to be running, no need for partitioning... (you have to run Windows 9x but probably better anyway, XP is bloated ;-)

Seriously, though, I'd have to list Ranish Partition Manager in this category. And I second the nomination for PuTTY (I actually set up a shortcut, puttyssh.cjb.net, I use it so often - you can actually run it straight from the Web btw) if it hasn't already been seconded.

And don't forget ReactOS - screw Windows, run everything on ReactOS!! ^_^

I don't believe that there is space in the x86 market for another payware OS besides Windows nowadays. I think BeOS and Solaris x86 are proof of that.

I am a *nix zealot, but I would say ReactOS(http://reactos.com/) is coming along pretty good to BECOME that viable open-source non-*nix alternative.

It already exists...

ReactOS http://www.reactos.com/

How about clicking on the livecd link here http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/62 and run it? Worked like a charm on mine. I was just stumped for something to do with it...

probably a more useful route would be to port http://www.reactos.com/ to run under Xen. You would need to port their implementation of the NT HAL, plus write the device drivers for network/console etc. (obviously this was what the Xen developers already did for XP but can't release).

the idea behind porting ReactOS is that you end up with an NT style HAL.dll and drivers which *could* be substituted into a real XP install?

caveat: I have no idea how complete ReactOS's HAL.dll is... but they have been trying for API compatibility in most stuff...

The rest of ReactOS. Sure, it's not philosophically pure, but it'll help a long way in OSS adoption to have a Free operating system that's binary-compatible with MS Windows. E.g., in our school system, we've standardized on a particular gradekeeping software, and I cannot forsee the adoption of Linux partially for this reason, that InteGrade won't run on Linux (and WINE seems, by its basic premise of pseudoemulation, too potentially unstable for the administration to trust with grades). Someting that can run InteGrade directly has a much better chance of getting adopted.

Oh, and with MS's free-as-in-beer DirectX drivers, it may possibly play Windows games without rebooting into a spare Windows partition. Eventually, we'd want to reimplement the DirectX API, but ReactOS is at an advantage here as it will be able to run MS DirectX itself.

I won't be redundant to add that Sony already has stores in Montreal, Canada (which are very sucesful...who wouldn't want FireWire cable for 60$?), but that during the last 6 months, we've also have Dell stores in malls, selling computers and huge LCD screens for outrageous prices.

None of the retailers seem worried, everyone is doing business and life goes on...

Best regards,
Alex Ionescu
President, http://www.relsoft.net/
Kernel Developer, http://www.reactos.com/

In other news, the opensource native windows compatible ReactOS 0.2.4 was released a few days ago:
http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/6056

Just in case anyone is interested, I managed to find a link to this guy's project. Damn, uberfruk, you work fast.

Say what you want about FreeDOS, and Free software in general. But FreeDOS has won. No one need ever pay for MSDOS, DRDOS, or PCDOS again. Those programs are dead. Surprisingly, a 25 year old operating system (even older if you count predecessors like CP/M, TRSDOS, and VTOS) still has uses.

While not 1000x better, as a previous AC posted, ReactOS is taking up where the FreeDOS project left off. If completed, it will replace more Windows and OS/2 systems than it's nearest free competitor.