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."

Ars is less positive

[ZachPruckowski]

Ars Review [arstechnica.com]

They basically say it runs Firefox and Solitaire, but that's it. "Lots of promise, but needs work".

react, to their servers...

[joe 155]

If you want screenshots then you can get them from the official site... http://www.reactos.org/de/screenshots.html [reactos.org]

Re:ReactOS and WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

copied comment?

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166001&c id=13853454 [slashdot.org]

Official ReactOS Website

[frik85]

Official ReactOS Website:
http://www.reactos.org/ [reactos.org]

Screenshots:
http://www.reactos.org/?page=screenshots [reactos.org]
http://www.reactos.org/?page=tour [reactos.org]

About ReactOS:
http://www.reactos.org/?page=about [reactos.org]
http://www.reactos.org/?page=about_whatisreactos [reactos.org]

Downloads (LiveCD, InstallCD, VM images):
http://www.reactos.org/?page=download [reactos.org]

Compatibility Database:
http://www.reactos.org/support/ [reactos.org]

Non-Slashdotted Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/screenshots.html [reactos.org]

Re:The fonts!

[jesuscyborg]

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.

Re:Ars is less positive

[kimvette]

It may run firefox and solitaire, but have you tried to install drivers on it? It's not a fun process. :(

Some (many) drivers consist of:

  - install driver on a Windows box
  - Track down all dependencies, registry entries, COM component registrations, etc.
  - Move all those components to the ReactOS box

I started working on an AiW install on ReactOS but it was too time-consuming to finish for a system I just wanted to play around with a little bit.

What they need to work on is making sure that drivers can be installed using the native installers, then more people will come and get involved in the project, even if only to provide feedback.

Re:Too late?

[smallpaul]

With Vista coming out soon, many new applications written will only run on Vista because of the new architecture, driver model, etc

Many applications only removed Windows 98 support this year. Applications can't target Microsoft's latest and greatest immediately. They have to target the installed base for several years.

Re:The fonts!

[venir]

He didn't say they were using MS fonts, but asked why not. Read the post before you reply to it.

Have they tested on actual hardware?

[martinultima]

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.

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=20166 [reactos.org]

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.

History

[dpaton.net]

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.

Re:ReactOS and WINE

[mabhatter654]

Windows + Apps -> Windows + OSS Apps -> ReactOS + OSS Apps then then off to a Linux or *BSD varient if you want.

The first "step" isn't really a step at all, it's migrating your current PC from Windows-only, proprietary software to cross-platform Open Source Software. Then when you're tired of dealing with "the Man" (or when windows activation refuses your legal code, again) you can just switch to free React OS that will be able to run the few Windows-only things you have left.

As a side note, Windows 2000 compatible is more than enough. There are still very few XP only applications out there on the store shelves. Getting ReactOS up to speed may be just the push OSS needs. Now developers can QA against something relatively similar to windows, and OSS benifits because they share the code with WINE. I think the very best course of action would be to start building distros that can virtualize Linux and ReactOS without dual booting. Then you'd have an even better version of what OSX has in Parallels. ...But FREE !!

Re:Too late?

[TheRaven64]

ReactOS started as a win95 clone, and yet it incorporates features in Windows XP

Not really. It started as an NT4 clone. Then they started adding features only found in NT5 (Win2K) and now they're also adding things in NT5.1 (WinXP). Note that they still don't have a full drop-in replacement for NT4 though. Not to knock the ReactOS team; there aren't very many of them, and what they have achieved is incredible.

Cloning operating systems seems to be a popular pass time in the F/OSS community. We have UNIX clones, a Windows clone, an Amiga clone, and even a BeOS clone. It's a shame no one is working anything VMS or QNX-like though...

Re:The fonts!

[lee7guy]

What part of being included is hard to comprehend?

Downloadable after installation doesn't qualify as included.

Re:Too late?

[rts008]

True, but the XP version of MSCONFIG can be copied to W2K and will then work just fine. Usually MSCONFIG is found in c:\windows directory in XP, just copy to removeable media, go to W2K box, insert media and copy to C:\windows directory- don't even have to reboot amazinly enough- it just works!
(can also be moved across network, whatever)

Re:Code Audit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the progress is linked to prominantly on the main page.

I give you an A for good memory, and a D for follow-through.

Re:Too late?

[drinkypoo]

It also doesn't do anything you can't do yourself trivially with regedit. IIRC the various places programs are run from are all called "run" (the keys) and they're stored under something like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (or _CURRENT_USER, etc etc) Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run ... might have been \Windows NT\... or something, I forget. Also Spybot S&D has a tool to disable startup services, though of course it doesn't allow you to create new ones. You can make non-service programs into services with a program which (again, IIRC) is called Fireburner.

Re:Too late?

[TractorBarry]

When I use Logic I regularly use 20 audio tracks (all with eq), several effects (on individual tracks plus some used as bus effects), several virtual instruments plus anything up to 20 MIDI tracks.

And this is all done on a machine with an Athlon XP2100 processor, 1Gb RAM, a 45 Gb system disk and a 250 Gb data disk. If memory serves me well the largest project I created had something like 30 audio tracks before I start to get glitches. Bouncing tracks is also not an option as I occassionally need to take projects into a "proper" studio where we run it over into a Mac running Pro Tools (it's easiest to do a real time dub of 8 audio tracks at a time as the loss in quality from the analogue bounce is so small as to be practically unnoticable)

And it's not so much that I've had problems, it's just that there's nothing currently on Linux that seems to do the whole integrated MIDI/Audio/Effects as well as Logic.

Re:Too late?

[middlemen]

It's a shame no one is working anything VMS or QNX-like though...

FreeVMS exists at http://freevms.free.fr/indexGB.html [freevms.free.fr].

Re:Too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are looking at the wrong place - there's multiple copies of the FreeVMS pages and mailinglists, incuding the above (very out of date); it seems that they're really badly organized in that aspect. You should be looking at http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/indexGB.h tml [systella.fr] . The newest FreeVMS (0.2.11) is just a month old, and *is booting on real hardware*. Check the freshmeat entry, it's usually up to date.