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ReactOS Reviewed in Depth
An anonymous reader writes "NeoSmart Technologies has an incredibly detailed (6 long pages!) and mostly positive review of ReactOS, The Open Source Windows. The review covers the goals of ReactOS and how well it meets them, system stability, application compatibility, kernel design and development, and the networking stack. It discusses the use of WINE in ReactOS' kernel and the effect on both its compatibility and development times." For the visual learners, here are some screenshots."
While I find the idea of an open source Windows facinating... is it too late? With Vista coming out soon, many new applications written will only run on Vista because of the new architecture, driver model, etc. ReactOS seems like it will be stuck in the past catering to XP applications/games while Vista goes forward. Since most people already have XP who would use this? Or will ReactOS emulate Vista? No, this is not a troll post, but a legit question.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Ars Review
They basically say it runs Firefox and Solitaire, but that's it. "Lots of promise, but needs work".
Now I call that 100% compatible;)
hilarious
If you want screenshots then you can get them from the official site... http://www.reactos.org/de/screenshots.html
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Doesn't look like their build of ReactIIS 1.0 is quite up to the load...
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
copied comment?
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166001&c id=13853454
Official ReactOS Website:
http://www.reactos.org/
Screenshots:
http://www.reactos.org/?page=screenshots
http://www.reactos.org/?page=tour
About ReactOS:
http://www.reactos.org/?page=about
http://www.reactos.org/?page=about_whatisreactos
Downloads (LiveCD, InstallCD, VM images):
http://www.reactos.org/?page=download
Compatibility Database:
http://www.reactos.org/support/
My favourite operating system is ReactOS; binary compatible to WinNT series
That seems like a really careless statement on your part. Are you saying that virtually all new applications are being written for an OS that you can't even buy for 6 more months? Boy that's sure going to put a dent in the next 2 quarters earning statements for every major software company.
Oh, and btw, are they writing for 32-bit Vista, or 64-bit Vista?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why didn't they use Microsoft's fonts?
Uhm, because Microsoft's fonts have a restrictive license that prohibits them from being included in a Free OS.
A free Windows-compatible OS which is not encumbered with all kinds of DRM, backdoors, phone home security updates, Internet Explorer, has native support for all the device drivers that Windows supports, and means that I don't have to learn Linux / migrate all of my current software practices? How can this possibly be too late?
Personally I'd far sooner consider ReactOS than any of the other much touted Linux alternatives. Will that buy me brownie points on /. ? Maybe not, but it's probably true for most people.
Kind of a rhetorical question, but I'm kind of wondering if any reviewers have actually tested it on a real machine, rather than VMware, QEMU, etc. I've been watching it since 0.2.3 or so, and I've actually started toying around with 0.3.0-RC1 on a spare machine I have – Compaq DeskPro EP6000, PIII-650, 64MB – and have found that with, say, Notepad and Firefox running it's quite stable. Kept it up for around half an hour before I just got bored and shut it off. Doesn't yet support my video card or network, but it's still pretty nice.
6
My own review is on the ReactOS forums if anyone wants to know exactly what it's like – no pictures, because I haven't installed any screenshot or image manipulation software yet, but anyway... http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2016
Anyway, just thought I might point out that it works on real machines just as well as, or in some cases even better than, on a virtual machine.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
with many applications working straight away (OpenOffice, Abiword, mIRC, Unreal Tournament, InfranView, PuTTY as some)
When I first saw ReactOS I was very interested, at the very least as a dual-boot for apps that won't run on my Linux desktop. But what runs on it is less than interesting. Take your list:
OpenOffice - runs on Linux.
Abiword - runs on Linux.
mIRC - there are dozens of IRC clients for Linux, some of which are superior to mIRC, IMHO.
Unreal Tournament - runs on Linux.
InfranView - There are better options on Linux, IMO. The only reason I've ever used this app is because 5 years ago there were no good free image tools on Windows. Now, I even use Gimp on Windows.
PuTTY - only necessary on Windows to get at ssh servers running on *nix. ssh is supported by so many things on Linux, not the least of which is the original openssh client.
So, I'm having a hard time seeing any reason to try ReactOS out. Could someone point out something that ReactOS can run that doesn't run on Linux, and doesn't have a better option on Linux?
And no I'm not going to switch to a MAC. Emagic pulled the rug from under me once (just after I'd paid for an upgrade) so I Learnnt my lesson the hard way.
Actually, Apple bought Emagic and killed the PC version. Emagic didn't really have a choice once they'd been bought. The odds of Logic working on a Mac for a long long time are better than they ever were on a PC. Not to say you should get a Mac, just trying to clarify the history.
As for me, I'm still pining for the long gone Studio Vision Pro. Gibson...now there's a company to hate.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
I do appreciate the lack of "punch the monkey" adds, but it's still a pretty fluffy review. To sum up:
- Really cool idea.
- App computability is spotty.
- Networking blows.
- The interface looks spiffy.
- Project has promise.
I'm not sure if I even need to install a copy of it to write that much. I did think the insight on the development process on page two was interesting, but overall I think "ReactOS Reviewed in Depth" is a bit of an overstatement.This sig rocks the casbah.
You obviously have used Myspace, which disqualifies you from rational argument.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
WGA?
I'm pretty sure linux users are not ReactOS's main target. Their target are Windows users who want to stop using Microsoft, but find Linux/BSD too intimidating.
Of course there are more/better Linux options. For one, Linux is vastly more mature, and has a much greater user/developer base. Second, ReactOS is still in ALPHA stage. It has a ways to go before a full release worthy OS, and they (the ReactOS developers) would be the first to tell you.
If ReactOS were only a little more stable, all these people http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/11/ 0218250 could easily make the switch almost painlessly. Compared to Linux its almost a drop-in replacement for 98.
This is great. I just got Debian installed! I used ReactOS, then installed the free version of VirtualPC from microsoft, then installed Debian Sarge. Now I can use nano instead of that crappy notepad.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Would it not be highly advantageous to allow the running of Linux binaries as well? I don't have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but wouldn't it be relatively easy to implement something like this because it's open-source code?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
There's no such things as FreeDOS nowadays, which was developped to late to be anything useful, specially it's not used by many people (including hardware manufacturer and corporate IT staff) to build bootdisks used to flash and upgrade firmwares and BIOSes(1). Neither is it used by computer manufacturer who signed an agreement with a popular OS company that forbids them to sell a computer without an OS.
Whith such an exemple of another old system, we can be sure that nobody will find whatever use for ReactOS, given the fact that Windows Vista will retain no compatibility with a legacy of win32 APPs and has nothing to do with the NT family which is emulated by ReactOS and Wine. And ReactOS and Wine have stated that they will never, I mean really never try to implement more modern API like Win64 and thus won't be able to run all the huge amount of 64bit apps that are seen everywhere (and of which most aren't open-source anyway and aren't ported to linux either (2) ).
ReactOS is likely to die and go the Linux/BSD way. Netcraft is confirming it in Soviet Russia. In Korea, only old people find usefulness to free and open alternatives that retain compatibility to commercial versions.
Har, har, har.
1 - bootdisks and -CD are specially popular in big places where you need to quickly upgrade BIOSes and Firmware non-interactively just by pluging a disc. The same can't be achieved from windows yet (there are windows-based flasher, but they can't be deployed thru usual network channels as software update)
2 - Windows 64bits is once again a proof of the supperiority of open-source. The first softwares that was the most easily ported to Win64 API were the open-source one, were the developpement is much easier because of source code availability : 7Zip, Blender&Yafray, Mame, FireFox, PuTTY, POV, VirtualDub, and many other. Where as only a couple of commercial games (because they make nice tech demos in booths) were ported, and almost no commercial multimedia package (although multimedia was supposed to benefit the most from the increased memory address space and was hoped to be among the first ported to Win64).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]