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It's called reactOS. It's basically windows (it's NT architecture based), but free. Quite frankly, I don't know why Linux has gotten so much attention in comparison to reactOS. The thing is, it's still a under-funded garage-project. If you could get 50 Indians and a good budget to help them out, I'm pretty sure that it would be better than starting from scratch.

Here's the link if you're interested:

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

Don't forget ReactOS.

I would have great interest in an OS that can run windows binaries without all the windows-shit.

Then maybe you can join the ReactOS team. If you're really interested, you might be allowed to become the project leader.

Erm.
Isn't that the goal of ReactOS?

I may be wrong, but it's a shot.

Yeah. Whatever. I'm waiting for someone to clone NTKernel. Just think, Windows XP - Open Source version. Hey - they did it with NTFS, just a little more work, and we can have the kernel.

Seriously - XP might be a decent system, if it were released OPEN SOURCE, so that people are motivated to contribute vulnerabilities and fixes.

That already exists: ReactOS.

Or as it says on http://www.reactos.org/en/about_whyreactos.html

"ReactOS offers a third alternative, for people who are fed up with Microsoft's policies but do not want to give up the familiar environment, architectural design, and millions of existing software applications and thousands of hardware drivers."

This is exactly why ReactOS interests me.

Cross-Platform on Win, Mac, GNU/Linux: Firefox, Chrome (maybe just beta?), Opera

Firefox is everywhere man.

It's been ported to ARM phones, OS/2, ReactOS, etc.

Opera is also all over the place, but Chromium is just on the big three.

Either set Linux and GNOME to look like XP yourself or use ReactOS instead as an alternative to Windows XP.

Plus it's ironic that Microsoft, the "king" of software development is having all those problems with subcontractors writing code for them.

This is the second time it's happened to MSFT recently, the other was a windows 7 tool that used GPL'd code. If Microsoft begins using Chinese shops for Windows development, it wont be long before they have to audit their Windows codebase for GPL'd Reactos code. Now that would be ironic!

If we could combine the transparency of Linux system and its expert friendliness, with the user friendly GUI characteristics of Windows and Windows backwards driver and app backwards compatability, it would be a winning combination.

Windows drivers rely on services provided by the NT kernel. So the only way to ensure compatibility with Windows drivers is to reimplement the NT kernel. ReactOS attempts to clone Windows NT 5.x thoroughly, but it's nowhere near ready for prime time. So let me sum up your rant: "I'm disappointed that development has concentrated on Linux rather than ReactOS."

OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.

OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.

Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.

FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.

ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.

OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.

OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.

Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.

FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.

ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.

This might be a good place for ReactOS to step in. They introduced the beginnings of ARM support way back when. Sure x86 software still wouldn't run on it, but it could at least still present an interface familiar to Windows users.

ReactOS is still being developed. Some day (maybe in five years) it will reach the golden 1.0 standard. It should replace Windows XP and then we can forget about those WGA updates.

WGA has too many false positives and can ruin wallpaper settings (turning the screen to black) and do other annoying things. Plus I keep seeing it installed even if updates are turned off. Currently my system is genuine but if a Firewall software blocks Internet access it thinks it is not genuine. Until I allow the firewall and then hit validate, then everything is OK.

I doubt a majority of Windows users will migrate towards Vista or Windows 7 because of legacy software issues and legacy hardware that cannot run Vista or 7. ReactOS will fill that hole quite nicely when it is done with Windows XP compatibility and no WGA gotchas.

"... and the Linux distros and Mac actually have a chance."

Neither has any real chance as a mainstream OS. Mac's been willfully overpriced and is sold as a luxury product. GNU/Linux, on the desktop, is an also-ran — a nice try but the small demographic who cares about running commercial apps on Unix systems are migrating to Mac OS X. The lumbering bohemoth that is X11 on Linux hasn't been tamed, even after all these years, and many are essentially sick of the unfulfilled promise.

The only real hope for the open source/free crowd taking it to the mainstream is ReactOS. The more contributors that project gains, the quicker the FOSS will bury Microsoft and the expensive proprietory vendors. The Windows platform will be with us for many years to come, if only because of the specialist app dependency — but the Windows vendor doesn't need to be Microsoft with its bloated, vastly overpriced offerings.

ReactOS. Sorta.

I was thinking not to give them any ideas for GPLv4.

I only hope you were joking:

• It's best to get users hooked on cross-platform copylefted applications so that when they do take the plunge into a Free kernel, the lack of immediate retraining makes a better first impression. I know it wouldn't have been practical for me to try Puppy and later Ubuntu without having first used the Windows versions of OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GIMP, and the GCC/Binutils/Coreutils/Make toolchain.
• Both GPLv2 and GPLv3 contain a special exception for "System Libraries" that implement a published or de facto standard API. This is because the GNU userland was always meant to run on non-free operating systems such as Solaris so that it could be developed in parallel with the HURD kernel.
• Besides, even if GPLv4 requires apps to run only on top of Free "System Libraries", people are trying to make an NT-compatible kernel whose userland is Wine.

Reactos may actually catch up providing a suitable replacement

You can find such a project here: http://www.reactos.org/

As far as I can see, Microsoft's track record at supporting legacy software is better than most.

...We could make a Linux that worked and looked almost exactly like Windows:

http://www.linuxmint.com/

Or we could release an open source alternative to Windows:

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

I think Windows or it's design will be with us long after Microsoft has failed as a corporation, which is likely sooner than most are currently guessing. Their huge reserves of cash aren't going to matter when more is not coming in, which I think is inevitable. I know not one person willing to pay for Vista, OR Vista 2.0, which MS is calling Windows 7.

The snake oil is obvious now. Nobody's buying it.

Like ReactOS?

VirtualBox is not ReactOS.

Right: VirtualBox is the virtual machine that runs ReactOS inside Linux. VirtualBox can also run Windows, but my point is that you need a Windows license for that.

Insightful... really?

I understand the anti-Microsoft sentiment. Being in IT and software development I tend to share a lot of it... but if you're going to spread hate, try to make sure your facts/analogies are in the ballpark of being accurate

Windows comes complete with door locks and windows, its the $1000 Bose surround sounds with bluetooth link and iPod dock that you pay extra for. Not to mention Microsoft hasn't even come close to releasing a version of Windows requiring a yearly subscription. Sure they talked about it, but the reaction from the community was enough to stem that tide.

I don't know about you, but I don't have to break any laws or void any warranties to get into MMC or the registry or the hardware manager. This part of your analogy seems to be aimed that the idea that windows is closed source but its completely flawed. A better analogy would be that its really freaking hard to cast all your own parts to build an engine from scratch... which is true.

Kill switch that other drivers control? I don't even understand this. Unless your talking about domain controllers having the ability to forcibly shutdown or restart an AD attached computer... but then your analogy would be like to stupid go carts which the pissy little 16yr old attendants turn a rev limiter on just because you bumped your friend a bit...

15 manufacturers to get a basic car? If opera and mozilla have their way that might have some semblance of truth, but the base windows install (excluding drivers) is all Microsoft. Most cars have after marked parts from dozens of companies, why shouldn't an operating system? If you want to bitch about mismatched software and wedged in modules go take a look at a linux depot.

You have a point about the whole driving legally thing, but when a company can argue that ~30% of China doesn't use a valid copy of their product, I think they get some leeway.

When was the last time your local car shop issued a recall on your car? What? Never? You mean its the manufacturer that discovers and fixes all those problems? Oh man... what a shock. I guess that's the state of closed engineering these days...

P.S. You only have mandatory product activation if you buy a retail version of the software and install it yourself, OEM comes pre-activated. In a way, that product activation is like you getting the title to your car. If you buy from a dealership, they do all the paperwork and everything comes to you automatically in the mail. If you build your own car or buy it used, you have to fill out a few forms and get them notarized and approved before you're technically allowed to drive it legally. Again, when their software is pirated so much, they do have the right to try to protect it. That isn't greed, that is intelligent business.

You missed the point. That was hypothetical.

No, your hypothetical was an extremely poor one. Seriously, Windows 95?

It sounds like you would be OK with 99% of your potential users being unable to run your application? Good for you.

What on earth are you talking about. The apps software I write supports Windows 98-Seven (and, for what it's worth: Mac OS X, Linux, ReactOS and a boatload of other Unixes via WINE emulation). Windows 95 is dead, dude.

The Firefox team is not me, and I am not the Firefox team. Supporting only what you know you can support is a wise move in anyone's books though.

Who is to say that 15 years from now the majority of people won't "still" be running Windows 7 for perfectly good reasons instead of upgrading to Windows 8/9 or the latest Windows 10? It could happen and developers will have to deal with it.

My prediction is, in 15 years time, the then-mature ReactOS will completely own the Windows OS market and will have done so for close to a decade. Microsoft will, if they're smart, have moved on to other things by then.

It's impossible to have a "XP compatible OS" since the OS would have to support WIN32 API. The WIN32 API is copyrighted so if Microsoft doesn't license it to you, you can't use it.

ReactOS and WINE have already reimplimented the Windows API from scratch as open source, thus there aren't copyright issues.

ReactOS already runs a surprising number of Windows apps, and WINE's been rather successful at running Windows apps on Linux and other Unix-like OSes.

you mean like the one here: http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

http://www.reactos.org/

There you go.

It's called ReactOS.

Just don't expect it to be 'finished' for some time.

You're right. That's what this project is for.

I'd just like to take this opportunity once again to promote ReactOS (an open-source, binary-compatible NT). I encourage anyone looking for an open source project to contribute to to check out how far they've progressed in the past few years. At the rate they're going, they should have a 1.0 release by the time MS is "through" with XP in 2014.

Excellent news! This additional extension should give the ReactOS guys enough time to finish their open-source Windows XP.

I love ReactOS, but I think it's going to be an uphill battle all the way. I'm not one to spread FUD, but there is a possibility that Microsoft could go after them with patents even after the fact that they are using clean room reverse engineering. However, Long live React OS and ReactX. I look forward to a day I can use binaries from windows in linux with a real hardware layer, not mapping it to opengl.

not to mention probably lots and lots of hardware and software won't work on it

ReactOS is not a compatibility layer or an emulator. It is (or at least, will be in time) 100% binary compatible with NT (e.g., Win2k, WinXP and Win2003), thus it will support everything from device drivers to legacy applications.

I just can't logically see people moving to reactos as a first, second, or even distant third choice when XP is discontinued

Plenty of people are still tied to legacy hardware that will never be compatible with Vista or Win7. Plenty of people happen to actually like the NT series of Windows operating systems but dislike [insert common gripe here: security / non-openness / privacy concerns / craptacular "shell" / don't want to suck from the MS teet / etc.].

You can read some of the answers to common "why?" questions here.

Maybe one day the 'Imitation Worm' will install a Replica OS http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html just to completely confuse the fellow malware competition. At that point Microsoft will be 'off the hook' for inviting every form of malware possible, and the replacement/replica OS will finally get lots of user testing, and perhaps eventually get released as Beta. At that point the worm only needs to remember to blue-screen periodically and run the 'Windows Replica Advantage' utility just often enough to completely annoy the user so that they don't begin to suspect anything.

Excellent news! This additional extension should give the ReactOS guys enough time to finish their open-source Windows XP.

You mean this one?

I'm pretty sure they only finished the audit six months ago and it didn't serve to prove or disprove anything anyway.

Are you, amn108, planning to sponsor this FOSS work? This sort of thing could take several man years to implement...

Skepticism aside,

1. according to their FAQ ReactOS have begun porting a FOSS version of Windows to ARM. This would free wine from an emulation layer if the next point were pluggable into 'Windows'.
2. Next we need a dynamic translator. DEC had one to translate x86 to alpha, viz FX!32. Whether the owner of the copyright would be willing to release/update it and whether the target CPU is not alpha specific are open questions.
3. Darwine started x86-> PPC translation for wine but I don't think that was ever completed now current day Macs share the same CPU.
4. Building a JIT from scratch would require some sort of CPU agnostic framework to dynamically translate x86 calls to any target ISA. LLVM is a candidate here. But AFAIK LLVM's JIT isn't written for that platform. Porting LLVM to ARM would have side benefits such as running Java using Shark.

nor will they ever. The best you can do is ask Microsoft to open up every API call that Windows XP and below uses so that WINE and ReactOS can be made to support more API calls to be more compatible with Windows XP and people can write their own open source Windows XP compatible operating system while Microsoft moves on to Windows 7.0 8.0 9.0 using new undocumented API calls.

Why Microsoft won't open source Windows, it is not in their business plan. Microsoft is experimenting with open source with smaller projects to see if they can profit from smaller open source projects.

Microsoft still wants Windows pre-loaded with most PCs sold so that they can keep their OS Monopoly via those OEM contracts. They bundle MS-Office, Internet Explorer, Media Player, MSN Network client, Windows Live services, etc with each pre-loaded PC. This is all part of Microsoft's business plan and it works so well that they dominate marketshare and got the DOJ and EU angry at them for pre-loading software and shutting out competitors.

Unless Microsoft can figure out a new business plan that makes money off open sourced Windows, I really doubt they will go that route. ReactOS is your best bet at a Windows XP/2003 compatible open source OS, or use WINE with Linux.

actually, not too far off... http://reactos.org/

Oh but there is have you seen react os. http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html, it is still alpha but it is looking pretty good.

Disappointing that they did not test performance on Linux with Wine or Crossover Games. Not every game will run on that but for those that do, the performance comparison could be very interesting. They could also test the performance of the games under ReactOS. Comparing several releases all from the same company, always from the same one company, gets boring after a while.

because many users are asking for that Windows XP downgrade and willing to pay more money to get it.

Plus more and more file sharing networks are downloading Windows XP ISO images at new records for downloads to get rid of Vista and replace it with a pirated version of XP because they cannot buy a copy of XP except from certain vendors.

Not only that but a lot of people are waiting for ReactOS to enter Beta testing and get closer to a 1.0 release version. So they can have a free and open source Windows alternative that runs native Windows XP drivers and software.

Heck some people even want to use AROS, HaikuOS, or some other FOSS alternative to Windows just to get away from Vista. Even, gasp, Linux! Plus more and more Macs are being sold and converted from PC users.

What alternative is there? You can't stay on XP forever - eventually support will go away, patches will stop, fire and blood will rain from the skies, etc. Eventually, IT will have to move to a new OS [...]

ReactOS is getting better and better all the time. Given a couple of years (and assuming their developers list snowballs as so many other successful GPL projects do) and some donations from folks with a little spare folding, this is the OS I'd be shifting people onto.

Fundamentally, what most people want is an OS platform they can install their Windows apps onto and which looks familiar. ReactOS provides that (enough even at this early stage to support apps including Firefox and Thunderbird), currently in an amazingly tiny footprint of under 30M. Who'd want to run that resource heavy game or app on Vista or Windows 7 when they can squeeze much better performance out of a trim (and free) GPL Windows, eh?

Also, Open Source does not neccisarily mean Linux.

Surely there are no other open source operating systems other than Linux!!

Perhaps because ReactOS is "not recommended for everyday use", as indicated on it's website. I've used it. It's a cute idea, but about as stable as dynamite in a smelting plant.

You would have to have a purchased and installed copy of Windows.

...or Reactos.

I found the source code to be repulsive. I could not possibly take over that code and make my own browser out of it, except for minor GUI changes maybe.

I was looking into a problem for ReactOS where the installer would explode, and just browsing the source made my head hurt. There were nearly-identical copies of files in a number of places - so that I couldn't determine which were the files included in the build - or maybe all were... and it wasn't just an old version, these files were out of sync with each other and being maintained separately.

There is no way I would let anyone but Mozilla Foundation play with that code.

Why have a Linux distro focused solely on wine when you could have an operating system based off of it? http://reactos.org/

For that matter, there's a mature, actively-developed operating system that runs Windows applications better than any other OS out there... That one might be another option if you want to run Windows programs...

I'm going to assume you're not being sarcastic and know nothing about ReactOS.

http://www.reactos.org/

However it doesn't quite answer your question because it's not Linux.

Why have a Linux distro focused solely on wine when you could have an operating system based off of it? http://reactos.org/