Slashdot Mirror
ReactOS 0.3 RC1 Released
ajdlinux writes "A few days ago ReactOS 0.3 RC1 was released! After a long 6 months without a release this seems good! The ReactOS team has also started a software compatibility list for programs that are ReactOS-compatible. AFAIK the documentation and wiki hasn't yet been updated, but it should be soon. Go get it and try it out!"
More importantly, auditing of the ReactOS source is more than 90% complete.
A fully audited source will help prevent tainting of code from unscrupulous coders.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS
I guess the good news is that I can get a FREE OS that will get manipulated just by hooking up to the net.
My two cents..
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
I tried the VMWare image and I am impressed. Nice job guys!!
You still have to wait; Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.0 RC1 is still in alpha stage and is not recommended for everyday use.
First thing it did was BLUE SCREEN on me. Oh teh hilarity! I am not kidding, look here: http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/8862/reactos5ba .png
Global warming is a cube.
Even if you run Linux, ReactOS is a project worth paying attention to.
Right now we have Wine (or Cedega, if you prefer) if you want to run Windows applications on Linux. However, what's always intrigued me about ReactOS is the possibility of using it as the client OS on a virtual machine. I think this has certain advantages over Wine (sandboxing, greater application compatibility), and removes the biggest disincentive to Windows virtualization -- the requirement of purchasing a Windows license.
Also, because it's open source, it seems like it would be easier to get ReactOS working as a client OS on a paravirtualized system like Xen without having to use things like Vanderpool/Pacifica or accept the performance penalties of VMware. That, to me seems very cool: I could be running a Linux system as the server/Domain-zero OS, and then have multiple paravirtualized, Windows-compatible clients running on it, at full speed, without having to purchase any licenses or being dependent on any specialized virtualization hardware.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
(end of post)
May be they are getting ready for another round.
Ekush
The short answer is yes, any OS that is going to be Windows compatible is going to be compatible with Windows malware.
The reason that Windows is so crappy with security is the evil demon of backwards compatibility. Microsoft has to make "C:\Program Files" writeable because of all of the Windows software that expects it to be writeable. Microsoft's efforts to somehow have their cake and eat it too (by locking down those directories with hacks to support older software) with Vista is a major stumbling block in getting Vista out the door.
In theory though, someone could make a locked down version of ReactOS that did not have these problems. Such a version would only be compatible with well behaved software, but for some people that may be ok. Behaving properly in these ways is a requirement to get the "Designed for Windows XP" logo, so it isn't like such software packages are unknown today.
This is why I'd LOVE to see a "reason" for rejecting submissions. The default is "not interested / thank you". The rest could be "lame", "inaccurate", "thanks but no thanks", and the obligatory "dupe". :)
and the obligatory "dupe".
Which the editors would never use!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Hey, I know :-) I just like ReactOS.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
here's the thing: the fact that you have the source code means that you can consider adding the FLASK security model to it, thereby providing a proper MAC control over what programs can and cannot do.
.SYS drivers and .EXEs produced for ReactOS are near-drop-in-replacements for their windows equivalents.
note: i didn't say that this would be a _small_ project - i just said that it would be _possible_.
and here's the kicker: the DLLs and
there therefore exists a strong possibility of being able to run Windows NT 5.0 (aka windows 2000 and windows 2003 and windows XP) in a "secure" mode - by replacing key components with ReactOS components.
microsoft couldn't be xxxxing bothered to put decent security into their OS (they don't make money from doing that) so someone else has to consider doing it for them.
neat, huh?
there's an even better way to make ReactOS incredibly useful: add in terminal server capability.
.SYS and .DLL components _directly_ into Windows NT 5.0 (aka Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and Windows XP) and actually have it work.
then once you have a server running in the [virtual-]machine of your choice, you can then run rdesktop or other thin client to connect to it.
here's the thing: the original developers of NT 3.1 were _not_ going to add a GUI: they planned it as a DOS-like (actually VMS-like) "thing" - and were told "from on high" to get it "windowsey". what make ReactOS so interesting is that such a goal could ultimately be achieved - making it much easier to virtualise because you wouldn't need a full desktop environment in the virtual machine: just a command prompt.
the difficulty with putting ReactOS into a virtual machine like XEN - which is a hybrid VM architecture - is that you need to rewrite your HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to fit on top of XEN, not to fit on top of "real" hardware.
here's the real kicker about that: once you _have_ written a XEN-HAL for ReactOS - with complete source code available to you - there exists a strong possibility of being able to "drop in" those
Your security enhanced Windows already exists. Go to users, and turn off the option "Run as Administrator"
Once that option is off, pretty much none of these baddies run. Cool eh? The reason that more people don't do this is because certain crappy software will refuse to run. This isn't the fault of Windows; this is the fault of this crappy software. Additionally, people would have to run installers as administrators - not a big problem for you and I but it would be a problem for Grandma.
Last time I checked, and I admit that that was a while ago, ReactOS didn't support running Windows XP applications and barely supported Windows 2K. Do they really expect people to find this product useful? I mean, sure, if you're running old software (which many, many are) and don't care about incompatibilities I guess this OS is for you. But anyone wanting to run software written for XP or above will simple be SOL.
Next time use more and larger punctuation in your submission. !!!
So why would an OS be better at running windows programs than WINE is? Is it beying an OS giving it any sort of advantage over WINE ?
The whole terminal server aspect is something I'd not thought of before.
I wonder what it would take to build something that wasn't a desktop OS, but was just capable of serving up applications remotely, over Citrix, or something Citrix-like?
There could be a big market for something that let you serve up Windows applications (even older Win98 ones), without paying the really steep Windows Terminal Server per-seat licensing fees. I've worked on some Citrix stuff and the amount they pay in licensing is just outrageous. There are per-client fees for the application that you're delivering remotely (if it's not your own application), per-client fees for Citrix, and then per-client fees for the Windows-based server. Talk about getting screwed more than once.
Just replacing one of those components (the Windows-based server) would be huge, and I think you'd find a lot of companies interested in it because of the way Microsoft does it's licensing.
I don't know whether making something to act as an application server is any easier or harder than making a regular desktop OS, but if somebody were looking for a way to productize ReactOS into something they could sell to corporations (sell the support on, naturally), something involving remote delivery of Windows applications would be killer. The money that I've seen poured into Citrix farms is just mind-boggling on the corporate side, and people don't spend money because they like it, they do it because they think there's no other way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."