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Here is an article which explains it.

There are many programs designed to be run on Windows. Developers usually only design for this operating system because it is on such a huge percentage of desktops. These programs cannot run on linux, so people have been working on emulators and/or compatability layors to get them to run on linux. Wine is a program that is used by people to run programs on linux, but is not perfect. With the Windows source code, they should be able to get programs to run much better.

There is also a problem with getting peripherals running under linux. You need drivers to get them working on your OS, but usually the company that made the device will only release drivers for it on windows. There are programs like NdisWrapper for getting certain devices to run on linux, that could also profit from having the windows source code.

These have been the main stinky points for Linux.

ReactOS is an operating designed to be fully compatable with windows drivers and programs. They are currently at version 0.2.9.

On the down side, the lack of crackers having the source code to windows means that it is difficult for them to find vulnerabilities. Even with the code secret, Windows has had a lot of problems with security. It has also developed in an enviroment were the only real security vulnerabilities would be ones that can be found without the source code. The type of people who would be interested in getting through windows's security won't mind downloading the source from some warez site. I hope that it isn't leaked to these kinds of people. Fortunatly, they probably won't release the source code of IE(wich is supposedly part of windows)

Another bad thing is you will most likely be hearing a lot of people making comments about how poorly windows is written.

You mean like this?

The question is, who would try to clone such an impossible to understand and bad developed SO [sic]???

These guys would.

By the time this service pack is released, Linux will be far more user friendly so more people can install it without hassles. With any luck ReactOS will have reached a stable state.

I really think that with every delay, Microsoft is digging its own grave deeper and deeper.

If Wine implements it, then what does that mean for the likes of ReactOS...? Maybe this is one of those places where an open-source, Windows-based system would make more sense. (Even though I still prefer Linux myself, I have to say that these guys do have a pretty nice thing going; I can remember back in the days of 0.2.3 when almost nothing worked...)

Grub and Lilo need to supply an remove feature at the initial bootload prompt or os selection splash screen so to easily remove the bootloader from the mbr when it's no longer needed, because unless you have a windows rescue disk (which I don't have, I don't even have a working floppy drive), and type "fdisk /mbr", you're permantly stuck with Linux.

This happened when I removed Ubuntu from my daughters computer and tried to install a Windows clone called ReactOS. To rid Grub from the mbr, I've tried reinstalling Linux and moving the bootloader to the front of the partition, I've tried using Partition magic and deleting the partitions and formating the drive, I've tried using Redhat's fdisk and I've tried standing on my head spitting wooden nickles, and nothing worked at removing grub. Frustrating thing is other operating systems won't remove it when they're installed on the drive either. I'm about ready to bust out a big magnet and really erase the drive.

Linux needs to makes it as easy to remove these bootloaders as it is to install them.

Because it had SP2 slipstreamed in, a variety of other updates, product activation disabled, WinRar included, Acrobat reader included, Sun's Java included, Firefox, and Macromedia Flash included.

I was impressed. It was almost as functional as a Linux install. No Office suite, or any of the other stuff that comes with Linux, but still, much, much better than a standard Windows install, far less updating to do, and only took about an hour.

They should start bundling OOo.org, The Gimp, Thunderbird, and Inkscape on that image, then it'll solve most productivity tasks, and the only illegal component will be Windows itself. Wouldn't that piss Microsoft off! Better yet, why not go with ReactOS, then the entire image will be Windows-compatible, will look like windows, and be 100% legal, and still more secure than Microsoft Windows out of the box.

You can use NtCreateProcess to create processes that aren't Win32 clients, so have no GUI overhead. You can even use it to get a real copy on write fork (this is how SFU does it). The catch is that the new process can't use Win32 services: it can't link to kernel32, user32, gdi32, advapi32 or any other libraries that depend on them, since Win32 is required to use any of them. You have to use the functions that ntdll exports directly for IO, IPC, syncronization, etc. All the primitive functionality the kernel provides to user processes are there, but some things like sockets can be a pain, since you have to interface with TDI directly. Most of the standard Win32 programming doesn't apply for such a process.

Microsoft doesn't document the native API, so you have to find third party docs.
The Windows NT/2000 Native API Reference by Gary Nebbett (ISBN:1578701996) is an excelent reference.
Reactos is an open source clone of Windows NT, and it documents and implements almost all of the same internal functions.
Sysinternals also has a short native example program.
The books Inside Windows 2000 and Undocumented Windows NT are also quite useful.

An easier way might be to just write SFU apps. SFU processes aren't Win32 clients (SFU is its own subsystem) and it provides a UNIXy programming environemnt.

If you don't know what ReactOS is, it is a replacement for Windows which aims to get 100% binary compatible. http://www.reactos.org/
Just like Wine does on Linux, but with the advantage that there is no Linux underneath it. It is a fully working OS on it's own.

One of the initial motivations for this project was to brake this MS enforced cycle, and so far they made good progress. They are already capable of running some serious stuff like Unreal Tournament (Serious in terms of implementation not neccessarily for companies :) ). Of course there is a long way to go still, but since the aim is to stay binary compatible, if they progress as good as in teh last two years, then this could become a serious thread if it would be adopted by companies to avoid hardware changes when they don't even need them. And of course, since it is an Open Source OS you still have room for improvement and fixing of exploits that may be discovered. Which is more than you can expect from a Microsoft Windows.

That's a very insightful article. You know, I'm always amazed by people that sit down and start writing a new OS. I was impressed by BeOS and am very impressed by ReactOS. I'm using a Mac, and I only run Win98 inside Qemu, but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure! I just wish I had time to contribute to such wonderful projects!

To resolve this issue make sure you can run on http://www.reactos.org/

Withdrawal doesn't work. Some little windows will get out and soon you will have lots of illegitimate windows running around.

They don't have to be illegitimate. Just compatible.

It does exist, and yes, it uses some Wine code:
http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

Support and test http://reactos.org/.

Already been done (well, with a Linux kernel, anyway). It's called ReactOS.

People who don't or can't run Linux for whatever reason could consider ReactOS, which is a Windows clone. Right there on the main page... screenshots of it running OpenOffice.org. ReactOS could end up being a better choice for people who want a "windows" system, running windows software, but don't want to support Microsoft.

(Disclaimer: I've never tried ReactOS myself. WinXP at work, SuSE 9.1 at home. No windows at home.)

Will ReactOS save us?
http://www.reactos.org/
http://test.reactos.org/

Will ReactOS save us?
http://www.reactos.org/
http://test.reactos.org/

Zeta also faces free competition in various forms:

Haiku (BeOS clone)
Syllable (BeOS-alike, fairly mature)
ReactOS (clean Windows clone)

The BeOS user community is largely behind Haiku. Syllable and ReactOS are fairly advanced in their state of development.

The only reason Microsoft would ever do that, would be if they wanted to try this path to kill OSS worldwide (which, granted, may be in their agenda). But I don't see this happening, because so far, OSS has been surviving thanks to the developers more so than thanks to the mooing end-users. Therefore, not the typical target for MS...

When will people get a clue? Most end-users are "customers", and customers don't care about OSS in general. They just want a product that works, sold to them at a "reasonable" price. MS knows how to do this, and their financial results show that. Why would they do any differently?

For the "freak" audience, there has been a project called ReactOS http://www.reactos.org/. I don't really see it having a future though. It's been there for years, isn't yet ready for any kind of serious use and is trying to "emulate" years old versions of Windows. It would take ages to become a viable alternative.

Anyway, other than to kill OSS, I really don't know what MS would earn from going Open Source. Open Source companies usually make their money on service, but MS is not providing any service other than selling software. Ok, it's not quite true, but I'm pretty sure they would go bankrupt pretty quickly if they concentrated on service only.

to become famous if its development does not come to stagnancy.

From ReactOS Frontpage:
ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Microsoft Windows(R) applications and drivers.

It's been like this for the whole last decade with Linux. It's never going to happen. Linux isn't a desktop OS, it's a geek and server OS. We wouldn't try to run Windows 95 as a server would we? The solution is to look elsewhere instead of trying to make Linux into something it's not and never will be.

Then start contributing to ReactOS. :)

As far as aGUI based alternative to Linux/BSD, check out ReactOS,/A>. They've made a good eal of progress and I think they will be what some people are looking for in a few years: a free Win32 alternative.

D3D relies heavily on a lot of the rest of the Win32 API ... you might as well have said, "why doesn't somebody just port Windows to Linux so we can forget about all this bullshit?"

Replace "Linux" with "an open-source version". The question then simplifies to "Why doesn't someone either port DirectX or add support for Microsoft's downloadable DirectX to ReactOS, which is working towards a Win32 API anyway?"

Speaking of MS's own DirectX implementation, can't that be run under Linux in a Captive-like manner? It ought to simplify porting if developers know they can use the same DirectX DLLs under Linux.

This is actually a very good argument for the ReactOS project that was mentioned on Slashdot earlier today. Clearly ReactOS provides the ultimate combination of familiarity with FOSS.

Is it too late to contribute to the openBSOD project...?

That'd be ReactOS, then. I hear they're looking for help.

Actually, no it's not.

Yes it is.

Wine merely implements the Windows API.

Bochs merely implements the Intel 386 opcodes.

Emulation, with relation to computers, generally involves taking machine language instruction-per-instruction and emulating the physical environment

That's not the definition of "emulation". You are referring to "CPU emulation", which is a specific subset of emulation. Software can be emulated too- "emulate" merely means to copy something else; to do what it does. Humans generally have 2 arms and 2 legs; but that doesn't make it OK to say "Max Cleland is not a human"- a statement that is equally as correct as "Wine is not an emulator".

Ask yourself if Wine is just "implementing the Windows API", or imitating Windows. If there's a bug in Windows XP where it doesn't obey it's own API docs, do you think the Wine developers will follow the docs, or the real behavior?

But that's got nothing to do with actual hardware emulation.

No, it has to do with software emulation. Wine emulates Windows, but is not a clone of Windows, because it doesn't have all it's own OS kernel and video drivers (it gets those services from Linux instead). As such, Wine will always have at least one additional layer of function calls beyond what real Windows would have, and that means it will be slower. The only way Wine could meet the speed of Windows is if Microsoft had made a real error in their own implementation.

Cool. I wonder how far along reactos, an effort to clone NT4 is with this :-) Incidentally this is a very cool project and they've completed about 70% of the kernel and most of the userspace is taken from the Wine Project.

Btw... You wanted to wait on mutexes with Linux... Well you can! Kernels >= 2.5.7 have the sys_futex call that wakes up everyone waiting on the value of a certain address to change.

BTW... if you really wanted to show off some really basic VMS features Linux does not (yet) have then how about NT-APCs (Asynchronous System Traps as they're called in VMS) which is code in userspace of the process that initiated the IO that is called when that IO operation has completed. I doubt a lot of apps use them, however.

There are probably a zillion facilities one OS has that another lacks. Take IBM MVS / OS/390 /zOS jobs for example. A job in IBM's mainframe OS is a sequence of processes that run in sequence and parallel and the OS takes care of synchronizing them, connect them to the resources (datasets, network resources, etc.) they need and make sure that they run in the correct sequence and wait up on each other.

However there is one thing where the Linux-kernel is ahead and that's where it counts: It's a free highly featured enterprise-ready opensource production quality kernel under constant public review. No kernel-feature can make up for that

Now to get ahead of Microsoft in userspace, yes... I could even live with the OSS community adopting Microsoft DCOM. We already did in a way with Mozilla XPCOM.

I dont know, again, not a troll, UNIX rocks - just wondering why there isn't (or if there is?) any group out there writing completely new from the ground up without using UNIX as their model?

One word.... ReactOS

I've always wondered if we can replace the Windows NT kernel and loader with Free ones based off Linux or HURD or something...much in the style of ReactOS, but with an MS proprietary operating system, non-kernel DLLs, etc. running over the kernel. Or if the NT kernel can run a fully POSIX operating system. GNU/NT or Windows/Linux, anyone?

It's still just behavioral analysis. As we all know, it's entirely possible for completely different source bases to exhibit EXTREMELY similar behaviors.

Lots of solutions have been suggested -- VMWare, a self-signed root certificate, various driver hacks, and hardware hacks all the way down to a quality microphone.

For that matter, what about ReactOS? And what about user feedback?

Most users would not buy a DVD that required them to play it on a computer. Somehow, I'm guessing the hardware on any "trusted" DVD player will be _very_ easy to hack -- something like a modchip? Add to that the fact that we already have non-compliant DVD players, and most of us don't want to go buy a new one.

As for me, I will quietly sit here borrowing CDs from people and ripping flac files (or buying them from magnatune), and as soon as DVD burners or terabyte storage gets cheap enough and a good format is available, I'll be ripping full-quality DVDs.

Once they've got us all locked into an Orwellian DMCA scheme, I laugh and pull out my multi-terabyte archive of stuff, release it onto Kazaa, start giving away burned copies on street corners with only a license that insists that for each copy I give to someone, they must burn two for someone else...

This is not because I'm evil, and I hope that I will never end up doing that. I would rather use something like Magnatune and actually pay the artists and be completely unrestricted in how I use the music. I would rather still use Creative Commons licensed stuff, but honestly, I haven't seen The Matrix nearly enough times. Fatboy Slim, Prodigy, and Jimi Hendrix are all still damn good. I don't need to buy new music, and so I would start the piracy like mad if I ever thought that such things would be limited in their use.

I would probably choke to death on rage when I could no longer listen to classic songs about freedom, or even songs from ICP and Limp Bizkit about breaking heads for no reason in absolute disrespect of authroity, without surrenduring my freedoms to a central authority -- without playing them all on some offshoot of Longhorn.

I almost did anyway when I heard Metallica bitching about Napster -- I wanted to throw some of their own lyrics back at them. Lyrics like "So fucking what?" was my first reaction. My next reaction was somewhat longer: "All the justice pain and greed money talking" but I'm not sure that's actually what's being said. Either way, the whole song "And Justice For All" rebels against exactly what I thought of Metallica as doing.

It sort of reminds me of something ... I'm a huge Linux fan, but I also use windows. (Often tagged, albeit incorrectly, as a 'Microsoft Hater'). Anyhow, my point... what happens when someone open sources windows? Or, more specifically, comes up with an Open Source Windows clone?

They are working on it.

It's still in development, but you can boot it and run some programs on it already.