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Ask Slashdot: Is ReactOS A Serious Alternative To Windows? (reactos.org)
dryriver writes: So I just discovered the ReactOS 0.4.4 Alpha... It seems like this is basically a free, open source Windows replacement in the making. Does anyone have serious experience with ReactOS?
Do you think that ReactOS will ever reach the point where you can basically say "bye bye" to Microsoft Windows, but keep using all your favorite Windows software under ReactOS? Will this be able to run Windows Games and DCC software that taps into the processing power of the GPU? Or will ReactOS wind up being "mildly compatible" with Windows software -- e.g. basic Office productivity type software works, but professional-grade 3D software like Maya/CATIA does not?
Do you think that ReactOS will ever reach the point where you can basically say "bye bye" to Microsoft Windows, but keep using all your favorite Windows software under ReactOS? Will this be able to run Windows Games and DCC software that taps into the processing power of the GPU? Or will ReactOS wind up being "mildly compatible" with Windows software -- e.g. basic Office productivity type software works, but professional-grade 3D software like Maya/CATIA does not?
simple answer, NO, long answer FUCK no, following legacy designs is a way to ensure you will never be a viable alternative.
It's unstable as hell even if you manage to run it on your real HW/VM.
If you need to run Windows software but you cannot afford a Windows license or if you don't want to run Windows for some reasons, use Wine instead - if your application runs under it, most likely it will run well.
But maybe someday. dryriver, it looks like you have just discovered ReactOS but did you also realize that it has been alpha software for 20years? I 100% support their efforts—and have even given them money—but simply put, it is nowhere near replacing Windows in any meaningful way and unless someone wants to give them a $300 million grant, then they will not be any time soon and probably never.
My experience running it on VirtualBox, is NO. The last version I tested was 0.4.2 IIRC. Excepting pendrives, keyboards and mouse, no USB device I tested worked, even pretty simple ones like USB to RS232 converters. Most applications crash unexpectedly, and getting pretty simple hardware configured, like the sound card, can lead to lots of crashes and even BSOD easily. I appreciate the great effort that ReactOS team is doing, but nowadays, if you need to run Windows software, you have pretty much better chance to get it working with GNU/Linux+Wine, that in ReactOS.
When I first heard about it years ago (15ish?), I thought it was an interesting idea, and it'd be nice to have something that could reliably run Windows software without actually needing to have Windows, but was disappointed that at the time it could only run basically the same handful of things WINE could.
More recently - within the last year or so - I investigated the idea of using it at work to run some of the software we need without having to either continue using Windows XP or pay to upgrade. The runtimes needed for the software wouldn't even install.
There's really no advantage to it over Linux in any kind of practical terms, and some key disadvantages. With Linux and WINE, you can run a smallish subset of Windows software, and you've also got the rest of the Linux software ecosystem. With ReactOS, you've only got the smallish subset of Windows software. If it had 100% Windows compatibility or even much greater compatibility than WINE, an argument could be made in its favour, but as things stand it's little more than a novelty. And if it was at all plausible for it to achieve either 100% Windows compatibility or close enough to be worth it, it would have done so by now.
If you want a Free operating system, go with Linux and live with the selection of software that works with it. If you really do need professional-grade 3D software or other things that are Windows-only, bite the bullet and use Windows. As nice as it would be to have a useful middle ground, it's not happening.
ReactOS was a promising tech demo... like 10 years ago. Considering where it has gone from then till now? It seems to be moving along quite slowly, and has an interface that isn't even comparable to Windows 98 yet in terms of usability.
Need to keep legacy applications alive? Best bet is still VMWare with PCI Passthrough for any legacy hardware you need.
It was easy to miss if you haven't heard of ReactOS any time in the last 19 years, so I don't blame you for missing it, but ReactOS is an alternate implementation of WINDOWS. The summary only mentioned that six times, so it was easy to overlook.
Of you've used FreeDOS (or more properly, if you were AWARE that you were using FreeDOS), it's like that. ReactOS has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux. The only relationship I can come up with there is that it's for people who don't want to use Linux, or can't, and don't want to use Microsoft Windows (or can't). It's non-Microsoft Windows.
I think that most people that would be interested in ReactOS or Wine are not because they would not want to pay for a Windows license but because they have concerns about Microsoft's present and future shenanigans. There could be many reasons: from national security to just wanting to keep the machine safe and stable for what they are running.
That begs the question, what about cracker groups? Are there no cracked versions of Windows 10 out there with telemetry and other back doors switched off, that could only receive screened updates?
If that is an option for people, why isn't Microsoft concerned?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I have seen it used on a few machines on my companies plant floor that are used to run some very old designer software, that produces a set of instructions that is then sent to machines running 'real windows' but highly isolated. Files get copied to a 3.5" and walked over! The design software won't run on anything newer than XP. The control software is running on WFW3.11 and Win95 in some cases.
ReactOS seems to be fine for this. The software runs and its basically the only thing the PCs are used for. Prior to this they were running WFW3.11 in DOSBox. ReactOS makes it a little easier for less than tech savy machine operators to get the file onto the floppy disk etc. They were struggling with the virtual/emulated machine concept. Ie I saved the file to the floppy drive, no you saved it to the virtual floppy drive now you need to copy it to the actual floppy. I said I saved it to the floppy. NO! So ReactOS is not without its use case, its just rare.
As far as the OP's question though. The answer is mostly "No", ReactOS is not going to be a reasonable platform for gaming, and really any kind of media. There is simply no hardware support. It shares a lot of code with WINE but lags behind what even WINE implements. WINE on Linux on the other hand can give you a pretty darn good gaming experience if you do your homework and pick well supported hardware, and check the app database on winehq before you frustrate yourself. Its also good to install apps in their own wine bottle, for best compatibility, and flexibility around libraries and such. If you do that I have found most software will run acceptably, unless you insist on the cutting edge latest games. Stick to titles for a few years ago for best results.
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ReactOS is a project I've followed for a long time, and this alpha is not perfect, but it's brilliant, in the sense that a viable alternative to M$ Windows is under active development and maturing at a reasonable speed.
I've been following it, and have played with it, since it's inception. It is NOT ever going to be a viable Wiindows alternative. While I applaud the effort from a geek/hobbyist standpoint, thinking it will ever be a viable option is delusional.
This question has come a number of times in one form another for well over 15 years. If you can't answer yes to at least three of these four questions your chosen OS isn't a suitable replacement to windows for most people.
Can the average person use it for typical tasks (internet, printing, office etc.) without friction? If your OS makes someone feel like an idiot they'll lose all interest.
Can the average person use it without being to be told RTFM? This attitude has done more to keep people on windows than Microsoft's FUD ever has.
Can the average person run their existing games on it? You don't want to buy a second computer just to play some games.
Can the average person run routine maintenance tasks at the GUI instead of the command line? The lay person doesn't want to deal with command lines.
Mac OS largely meets these requirements (games are a weak spot) and is certainly a viable alternative for most people. Android and Chrome are progressing and likely will become viable if Google ever merges the two and improves hardware support. Certainly Chromebooks have become viable for limited educational settings.
No one else has a product that is remotely viable for the lay person. Professionals and business users have additional requirements that go far beyond these.
I joined the ReactOS team a few years ago. And left again in a matter of days when I realized that ReactOS is just a shell with virtually no functionality. The code quality is beyond description - I have never experienced so poor code anywhere else during a period of more than 30 years of coding.
For instance, when I tried out ReactOS, you could format the system partition without any warning. Simply issue "format c:" and it happily formatted your Windows partition. Most of the code of ReactOS is like that. It appears to work but nobody tested it, nobody uses it, and it doesn't make any sense when you try it out.
No, ReactOS is NEVER going to be usable for anything but wasting a few nerds' time.
It'll be an uphill battle. Windows is barely compatible with itself.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Short answer: NO!
Long answer: For running Applications, you are better of with WINE. Hell, at some point even the ReactOS team realized it as such, and did a redesign to use more of the wine code and better align with the wine team.
But, since ReactOS is a re-implementation of windows, there is the niffty issue of driver support. As in: you can use old win2000/xp drivers with reactos.
It means that all those applications that use custom HARDWARE/drivers (CNC cutting SW, byte bangers, weird ISA/PCI cards) can run in a somewhat more "modern/supported" os.
Come 2019, when support for WindowsXP like systems dries out (that's when support for even Windows POS runs out, as well as those support contracts for large organizations), some (but not all) users of said hardware may consider to move to ReactOS, instead of firewalling/mitigating/baind-aiding the olden XP boxes to death.
But, judging from past experience, I doubt it. ReactOS had XP laying there as a sititng duck for 6 years, while longhorn/vista was delayed, and guess what? they were not able to catch up. Yes, chances are that by 2020 they are to the level of XP, with a little (but not all) of Win7 thrown in the mix, but do not expect more than that...
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You don't want to buy a second computer just to play some games.
I'll assume for the moment that you don't claim to speak for millions of people who buy a Sony or Nintendo computer just to play exclusive games.
If you are relying on React to run older versions of MS Office, I strongly recommend you move to some FOSS office package like LibreOffice and ditch the Windows camp alltogether.
Unless the application you need to run is a pile of macros for an Office application. For example, in my day job, I have seen Stone Edge, which was an order processing application for online sellers written as a set of Access VBA macros, and the client-side prevalidation of product listing feeds in Amazon Seller Central, which is Excel macros.
I actually use ReactOS quite regularly, mostly within KVM. I find it's a pretty good alternative to Windows. Like most open source software there's a few missing features which are holding it back from being a lot more useful, but overall it's getting better with each release and the future looks bright enough. I think if ReactOS wants more enterprise adoption they need to improve the domain login support, and add support for being an RDP Server/Client. This would allow a lot of companies to drop Windows Terminal Server installations from being used. They charge a full server license for something which is not that complex. The same is true for SAMBA and fileserver support. If ReactOS can improve it's Domain Controller functions, there's not much reason why it couldn't be used instead of Windows Server for a lot of the same tasks. Most businesses just like the ease of GUI administration, SAMBA already gets controlled via Remote Server Admin Tools so it could be a useful drop-in in those use cases whcih frees up Windows Server licenses for SQL/Application servers. Will ReactOS take off in enterprise? Maybe/probably not, but a lot of SMBs that are lazy/cheap will probably dabble with it at some point with varying degrees of success. It mostly depends on what server implementations run on it. Stuff like Filezilla server already runs. Now in terms of desktop OS, it really depends on the use case. It's not quite ready for desktop because of driver/control panel support that's missing, but it already runs older versions of 3D Studio Max, Caligari Truespace, and even Skyrim. I think it's a lot like wine in how it progresses, so at some point it will pickup a lot of functionality. What people forget is that wine has 74% of the Windows API reimplemented. That last 16% is hard but not insurmountable. IMHO there's too much focus on reverse engineering the newer parts of Windows, which is silly. The newest parts of Windows won't help bring in users. Think about it, a Windows user running current software is going to stick with Windows which works 100% for those cases. But a person who just wants their legacy tools to run, would be more open to running a windows alternative as long as their old apps are supported. By ignoring the older sections of the software stack and focusing on just the new stuff. They're always playing catch up, never getting reaching parity, and users who would switch get frustrated that their legacy tools don't work, think wine is crap and stop bothering to switch.
Likewise; I first booted it in a VM probably 10+ years ago. It's a nifty idea but it's far, far behind Wine. It's probably great if you're the sort of person who gets excited about the NT kernel and know about subsystems other than Win32 (though I don't actually know how NT-style the kernel of ReactOS is).
It turns out making a Windows compatibility layer as well as the kernel, sound, print, network, graphics, etc stacks is kind of a lot of work and there's a good reason for taking an existing fully-featured OS and adding just the compatibility layer. If you like Windows, you might be better off working on a Windows-style desktop environment for Linux.
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