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It's free, it's open-source, it's Windows-like, and it can run Windows applications. It's very lightweight and has a live CD.
by TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
It's free, it's open-source, it's Windows-like, and it can run Windows applications. It's very lightweight and has a live CD.
- alkonaut 11y agoThose are all good of course, but how long before it is significantly better (faster, more compatible, easier) than e.g. doing the same with Wine? is it already?
- cookiecaper 11y agoIt doesn't do the same thing. ReactOS is a full reimplementation, including the Windows kernel. You can boot your system with it. One of the main goals is to provide for the loading of Windows drivers. ReactOS and WINE share code for userspace to the extent possible.
- alkonaut 11y agoI see. Is the reason it wants to use Windows drivers that it hopes to get better performance in comparison to Wine or VMs?
- userulluipeste 11y agoThe hardware vendors used to pour more effort into the Windows drivers than into the other ones. (I think it's not about being unfair or against FSF ideology, it was just that the market so far was still heavily in the Windows' courtyard, so they were kind of forced to give in and have the other platforms only on lower priority.)
- ConceptJunkie 11y agoI would think a big reason is that the version of Windows that ReactOS is based on hasn't been supported in about a decade or more, and there are people who could be perfectly-well served by it. Windows' biggest competitor in the past decade or more has always been the previous version of Windows. The early versions of NT were incredibly stable and did a great job while using 1/100th of the memory and disk space of what Windows requires now.
- magpi3 11y agoReactOS uses some of WINE's code: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE