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ReactOS 0.3.1 Released
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Mar 11, 2007 06:01 PM
from the fresh-bits dept.
from the fresh-bits dept.
fireballrus writes with news of the release of ReactOS 0.3.1 — press release, changelog, download packages. ReactOS is "an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003)." The press release notes: "Please don't forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS. Also, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware."
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IT: ReactOS Reviewed in Depth 220 comments
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."
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Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 04, @07:40AM)
As mentioned, it's perfect to diddle with in a VM environment, though I have loaded it on a dedicated test machine before and that was a lot of fun too.
Re:Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:5, Funny)
(http://opengameconsole.org/ | Last Journal: Friday July 08 2005, @02:58PM)
maybe if you were running it through an emulator...
Re:Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.last.fm/user/uhlume/)
How old are you, twelve? Just because your memory doesn't reach back that far, doesn't mean it never happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported
(Also, as noted in the linked article, what do you suppose the Xbox360 runs on?)
Cool project (Score:5, Informative)
(http://davidmorgan.org/)
The legal issues are kinda scary but it looks like they have them under control [reactos.org]. All respect to them for attempting the impossible... and from the look of it, they're a good way to succeeding :)
Re:Cool project (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cool project (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, in fact, spent far more time in court suing the likes of Franklin Computer (who, in many ways, had a better product.) Granted, that may have been simply because IBM didn't perceive the personal computer as being a big part of their future, at that point in time, since big iron was still their bread-and-butter. However, if you want to get into the history of anticompetitive behavior at IBM, check out out how they dealt with anyone making plug-compatible components for their mainframe systems in the 60's and 70's. That was a very different story. There's a guy named Amdahl that would be happy to enlighten you.
Besides, the legal climate for reverse-engineering is decidedly less friendly to cloners than it was in, say, 1981.
what's in a name? (Score:1)
(http://www.atomjax.com/)
That's great and all, but does it comply with Newton's Third Law?
But I have to know... (Score:4, Funny)
Good News For Compatibility (Score:2)
Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
hmm (Score:1)
(http://freedomsforums.com/)
Awesome (Score:4, Informative)
(http://elitemrp.net/)
I installed it under Parallels, ran Solitaire and it rebooted and then disconnected my network outside of Parallels.
Seriously though, yeah it's alpha but it's pretty cool. Great work!
Please don't forget that this is an alpha stage OS (Score:1, Flamebait)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @04:31PM)
I mean, come on guys...you know it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time. Why not invest your time and money into something that isn't litigation-bait?
How to Avoid Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.threesquirrels.com/)
If React OS can keep me running my current Windows apps in a sensible, secure, and supported environment, then I can avoid Vista. That means less headaches, and less expense.
Really, these folks may have found a really nice niche.
(Honestly, looking at Vista make me think that this is the time when someone, whether Linux, Mac, or something else, could make significant inroads.)
Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @04:31PM)
Which is exactly why Microsoft will dig deep into it's legal fund and patent portfolio and nuke reactos off the face of the planet the very second that ReactOS becomes a practical alternative to Windows.
Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
In any event, the whole topic is moot. If they sue based on software patents, then ReactOS can simply move the servers to a country that doesn't recognize them (and there are will plenty of those).
Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:4, Funny)
(http://improbableuniverse.blogspot.com/)
What's the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
The only thing I'd really love to see is a way of using windows drivers under linux. I have a feeling that it is a very difficult thing to do though otherwise I'm sure it would have been done by now.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 19 2005, @08:28AM)
-uso.
I'm not trolling (Score:2, Insightful)
So it won't run (or at least won't run well) on actual hardware, so that's the driver issue nullified. I'm not running ReactOS for the drivers, it's running with virtualisation under my already free OS. So I'm running it so i can run Windows programs under my free OS? Why not use WINE? Or push for some standards compliant software that produces results under any operating system? Of course, business situations may require some specific proprietary software, so why not use the specific, proprietary OS?
I try to use only free software, but if I had to use some software under Windows, I'd run Windows. Creating an alpha environment to run proprietary software just seems wrong.
nice to see this progress but (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday February 03 2003, @08:59PM)
What I'd really like to see is some major company getting behind reactos and wine. Getting a portable win32 layer really working to the point where it's no longer just a toy is going to take a major effort, more of an effort than the open source community seems willing to put forward at this time. Working win32 is a real possibility, but it needs a lot of people to get behind it.
Re:nice to see this progress but (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory... (Score:2)
(http://www.yourfreakylife.be/)
Wouldn' it be nice (Score:1)
Did anyone notice it (Score:1)
(http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday August 17, @05:00AM)
Interesting... (Score:1)
Re:this is kinda weird (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 20, @06:40PM)
Re:this is kinda weird (Score:1)
and all the others which can be easily found on this page http://www.shellfront.org/ [shellfront.org]
i know what the goal is of ReactOS, to create an open-source free Windows alike os
and they are obviously doing an incredible job, they are kinda reverse-engineering windows if i can call it that
but ILuvRamen i really don't understand what you're saying, please explain
Re:this is kinda weird (Score:1)
(http://www.laurencemartin.org/)
Re:R-e-a-c-t-i-n-g .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it would be interesting to see if the effort allows them to fix some of the flaws and continue to run a lot of the software. For me personally I look at this sort of an effort as a perfect solution to the main thing that keeps me from ditching MS: games.
Re:R-e-a-c-t-i-n-g .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you give people other options for running those apps, that aren't controlled by a company trying to protect their monopoly, you open up a lot of possibilities for the industry to move away from Microsoft lock-in.
Re:R-e-a-c-t-i-n-g .... (Score:2)
Why? Such wasted effort to duplicate a flawed system of software.
Just like Linux was, you mean ?
Re:So what's up with these guys (Score:1)
2) Windows 2000+ does have a Unix compat [microsoft.com] subsystem. It seems more NetBSD than Linux (uses pkg_add etc, NetBSD has Interix packages that you can use), and no X server just libs. I have no idea if they also emulate fork() or not though.