ReactOS – A free Windows-compatible Operating System | Hacker News Reader

ReactOS – A free Windows-compatible Operating System

github.com

69 pointsannilt38 comments

Discussed several times on HN, including 4 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34426198

(204 points/4 months ago/129 comments)

"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, Vista, 7).

The ReactOS project, although currently focused on Windows Server 2003 compatibility, is always keeping an eye toward compatibility with Windows Vista and future Windows NT releases."

I always felt that they should have focused on one, probably Windows XP, and tried for almost 100% compatibility, rather than moving the target toward later releases.

> I always felt that they should have focused on one, probably Windows XP, and tried for almost 100% compatibility, rather than moving the target toward later releases.

But isn't that what they are doing by focusing on 2003 (which is almost the same as XP)?

More and more software has quickly lost XP compatibility. I'm already finding myself struggling to download software I want to try on ReactOS itself because modern browsers are essentially unsupported.

If it wants to remain relevant, it'll need SOME Windows 7 APIs at least. It doesn't need full compatibility like I think it should with older releases, but it needs to be compatible enough to run a few nice to haves as well.

Not necessarily useful/suitable for use in ReactOS, but there are a few modified "recent" browsers that do work (mostly) on XP.

Mind you it's a mess of various browsers and versions and modified ones and patches to the modified ones, but if you are interested, here is a good entry point to the rabbit hole:

https://msfn.org/board/forum/201-browsers-working-on-older-n...

I was invited to join the ReactOS project about 10-12 years ago. I was part of it for, say, four days, then I left. I realized I could format my system drive with no warning or error. Then did a code review and realized that this project will never fly. I appreciate the motivation and goals, but I don't think you'll ever see a usable release of ReactOS. I am not against ReactOS, but the guys have way too few resources to ever be able to compete against Microsoft.

Isn't it a bit ironic that you left the project because it had too few resources?

I suppose that’s the chicken and egg problem of wanting to participate in something that you think will / has a chance to go where you hope it will.

In a way, yes. But I left because I could see no future for the project due to the fact that I could format my system partition without getting warning and other similar issues. I have to say that I wasn't a coder or anything, only invited to test. And I quickly felt that there was no way this thing could be made to fly.

I admire the people behind ReactOS for their perseverance, I really wish I had just 1/10th of what they have.

> the guys have way too few resources to ever be able to compete against Microsoft

Really? Are you absolutely sure, Sherlock? Did you know that the water is wet already or are you going to announce that in your next comment? ;)

The project has many other reasons-to-be and it would probably be very hard to find anyone seriously believing that "competing against Microsoft" is one of them.

You should check your attitude. I didn't offend you, so don't offend me.

No offense intended, I meant to playfully point out that you're stating the obvious, which has little relevance to the project and its goals.

Okay, sorry, I misunderstood you :-)

As a matter of fact, I think it is a shame that so few support ReactOS. The idea is grand and think about how many resources people are willing to invest into using, say, Linux as an alternative to Windows (I love Linux, by the way): If those resources were spent on ReactOS, the project would be flying in 5-10 years or so. Then we could perhaps have a well-designed, compatible, free "Windows".

They don't need to be able to compete. But they need to be able to keep up with the moving target that is "Windows on which you can run applications that many people want to run". And they don't have the resources for even that.

I agree to that. I probably should have used the word "deliver" instead of the phrase "compete with Microsoft".

I was interested in helping, too, and I set out to fix some obvious UI bugs, which turn out to be bugs in Wine. The Wine devs are not the same people, and they take a long time to review patches, if at all.

I thought the kernel aspects would be interesting, but they were really trying for driver-level compatibility with Windows NT, which means that they have to have essentially the same operating principles, etc. For some reason, I didn't want to make a line-for-line clone of Windows itself. After all, OSS people are always talking about how we would do it better.

If the goal is to be able to use the proprietary drivers supplied with some kind of hardware on a mostly OSS base, that's a decent goal. But if you want to be able to run it with complicated software that uses a lot of Windows APIs, etc., it's a fools errand.

However, I found it interesting how ReactOS could be used to teach Microsoft devs about Windows internals, even if it wasn't exactly the same. That sort of blew my mind. When you have a bunch of trade secrets, you don't really want the whole company to have access to the code, I guess, and so you benefit from having an open source clone to point to when you want to say how something like a Mutex is really implemented.

> the guys have way too few resources to ever be able to compete against Microsoft

I don't believe they're competing against Microsoft.

Gaining compatibility is as much a cooperation from ReactOS'es side.

But it's a losing battle to gain compatibility with Microsoft, because it's against Microsoft's ethos.

More than 10 years, i'm waiting a installable ReactOS version, not virtualized.

I don't thinks it will be one day...

I wonder if one of these would work for you. It's not the same as a normal installer, but you should be able to migrate out once you're installed.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/32499/migrate-from-a-virtual...

It's mostly because bootstrapping code depends heavily on the target code, and while the target system code is changing often, committing to an installer architecture would be a serious hindrance to the architects' productivity on the core

I remember it being installable on Pentium-3 level hardware before. You may have arrived too late.

They stopped releasing, I think the project dies.

They have a release from a few hours ago?

They specifically meant release, not commit. Latest release Dec 16, 2021.

So these builds happen even if there's no change?

https://reactos.org/getbuilds/

There are A LOT OF changes!

I'm so confused! So there are changes, there are releases, there are builds, but "they stopped releasing" is still accurate?!

They did NOT stop releasing. The are preraring the next release with version number 0.4.15. The changelog of this version will look really huge! There was a delay because of regressions to be fixed

There are daily commits to the repo. But in terms of tags in git (or mailing list announcements), there hasn't been a release for a couple years (AFAICT).

They do have nightly builds, so they are continuing:

https://reactos.org/getbuilds/

https://iso.reactos.org/livecd/

Though I would agree with the sentiment that the project needs to speed it up to reach a point of greater usability or needs more help in doing so, to remain relevant and be seen as a viable alternative.

And no news on the main page since March 2022: https://reactos.org/

Eh? how can it be dead with daily commits? Just because there's not been a release in a while doesn't mean it's dead. They could probably be releasing more often but you can also build it yourself if required. https://github.com/reactos/reactos/commits/master

It is a weird niche. If you want no Linux and no Windows but want to run Windows applications it is for you, or maybe if you need a legacy-compatible system without (hopefully) the same security issues?

Otherwise it is either Windows, or Wine on some flavour of Linux.

I think this is a great project I have followed for a while. Havig multiple types of operating systems as open source I think is vital for further progress towards a next generation operating system. (Whatever that might be, I have lots of ideas)

I've tried ReactOS quite a few times.

But I still have to rely on running real Windows 7 as a VirtualBox guest to run my HP MFP Scanner Software about 10 times a year.

What works better to run everyday Windows apps? Wine/Crossover or ReactOS?

I have really wished for Wine to support recent releases of Microsoft Office.

It's good that this project is used to help learn and understand operating system principles, but never expect it to be used formally.

The problem is that even windows isn’t a fully windows compatible operating system

Reply on news.ycombinator.com