12 ms·

ReactOS

59 points by ertug 16y ago

younata 16y ago
A free/Open source clone of the most successful virus ever created!</unix zealot> Basically, these guys decided they legally wanted windows, but they didn't want to pay for it.</snark> It's a cool idea, but, I'm not exactly sure on a) the legality of it and b) the usefulness of it.
- mansr 16y ago
  I don't think there are any legal issues here (but IANAL), and I can see a free Windows clone being useful to some people. However, Microsoft has a 25-year head start so these guys have some serious catching up to do. Until Microsoft goes out of business, I doubt they will ever have a system compatible with a current Windows version.
  - hga 16y ago
    That would be OK by me: I'd prefer to keep myself and my parents at the XP SP3 level quasi-forever as long as the OS was supported (I myself an still using Windows Eudora as my email client). Well, I suppose eventually Firefox el. al. will drop XP support, but that day will hopefully be far in the future.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > I don't think there are any legal issues here Just imagine how many patents Microsoft will be compelled to use against this project if it ever becomes a perceived threat. I am sure all MS's EULAs prohibit you from running Microsoft software on anything other than Windows.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Add this to the list of things you're "sure" about, but shouldn't be. Nowhere in the EULA for Microsoft Office (their most profitable product) do I find text requiring you to run it on Microsoft Windows. I read it top-to-bottom, then searched for "Windows" (which never occurs) and then "operating system" (which occurs only to warn you that they use your operating system to get to the Internet).
      - dRother 16y ago
        I wonder if that has changed recently? I recall hearing about this issue in the past in regards to Office and Wine.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        You are right about Office 2007 (the one license I found), but you are wrong about Internet Explorer. It's license states clearly you can only use IE if you have a license for Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or 2008 (the IE8 on my wife's corporate notebook has a Brazilian license that doesn't mention Windows 7)
        rbanffy 16y ago
        I see very biased moderation when it comes to mentioning Microsoft under anything but the most favorable light. Do they pay for this?
        dRother 16y ago
        I think you're seeing a knee-jerk reaction to what is seen as a knee-jerk reaction to Microsoft. The truth is, MS clearly sucks beyond any hope. People are sick of hearing it, though, so especially if they use Windows and don't know any better, they deny it and become angry.
      - ratsbane 16y ago
        This is correct on the face of it. However, some of the terms, though vague, effectively prohibit running Office under Wine, etc. The following phrase occurs in the Office 2007 EULA: "...In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways." The phrase "...technical limitations..." is present four times in total; particularly combined with some of the license verification verbage certainly could be used in legal arguments as rbanffy suggested
- etal 16y ago
  It's handy for the same reason FreeDOS is handy -- eventually Microsoft will EOL the platform, but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform. You're right that there's no point in chasing the most recent Windows version.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform. But why would that be better, or even preferable, over Wine on top of a Unix-like OS with current programs to run sde by side with your legacy app? It's they project, their motivation, but I can't share it or understand why not devote these resources to make Wine better (or a better Wine, BTW). It's pretty obvious they are fairly bright guys. I have to agree with the Unix zealot (I am probably one myself - Unix is a local maximum in the OS space, as eloquently illustrated by the failure of, for instance, Plan 9): of all OS concepts (and with so many exciting ones - like Plan 9) there are to be reinterpreted/reimplemented, why Windows?
    - zokier 16y ago
      I'm quite sure that there are some software that is impossible to run on Wine. Drivers and other stuff that touches the kernel comes to mind. And ReactOS does make Wine better as they share some code: "ReactOS works with the WINE project to share as much programming effort as possible. ReactOS depends on Wine mainly for user mode DLLs. Where appropriate, patches to Wine are also submitted by the development team, and patch contributors are often directed to Wine if it is felt that the patches would benefit them." <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE&#62 http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE>
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        You are right, of course. I remember having read about the ReactOS/Wine cooperation, but I completely forgot about it while making my comment. Still, it's not the kernel side of the driver that requires a bare OS, but the hardware side that requires the OS not to interfere. The foreign kernel can be emulated. A Windows-like OS can help you use hardware that has no drivers for other OSs but I never had this issue, nor know anyone who needs to run legacy hardware that can't also run a legacy OS.
coderdude 16y ago
ReactOS is one of those projects that has been on the net for a long time. You see it resurface every now and then and each time it looks better than it did before. I have to hand it to the their team, they have tenacity.
- VeXocide 16y ago
  For others like me who are unfamiliar with the word tenacity: "The state or quality of being tenacious", which in turn is "Holding or tending to hold persistently to something, such as a point of view" or "Tending to retain; retentive".
  - coderdude 16y ago
    When I use that word I'm conveying "doggedness: persistent determination." (It's part of my Googled vocabulary.) Either way, it's certainly meant as a compliment. :)
    - mapleoin 16y ago
      > Either way, it's certainly meant as a complement. :) While we're at it, you should also read this: http://www.google.com/search?q=complement+vs+compliment http://www.google.com/search?q=complement+vs+compliment
      - coderdude 16y ago
        Thank you, sir. I honestly didn't realize I had been using the wrong compl*ment all these years.
        richbradshaw 16y ago
        I think the right word was compliment. Complement means goes well with, compliment means a good comment.
        16y ago
volomike 16y ago
Prediction: ReactOS will be little more than an OS used for running Windows-less video games that were designed for Windows. In the time spent fiddling with it, you could have just purchased and XBox and been done with it.
TomOfTTB 16y ago
Kudos to the creators for keeping at it. But in the end I don't see if being of much consequence. If it ever does get out of Alpha and is viable than Microsoft will likely stop at nothing to bury it with lawsuits. They'd have to because it would be a free version of their core product that, by definition, wouldn't be susceptible to all the viruses and malware that Windows is. So the bottom line is it could have a lot of useful applications but you really couldn't have enough faith in its future to use it for those applications.
- calcnerd256 16y ago
  Why wouldn't it be susceptible to malware? The fact that that question is even worth asking demonstrates that you've abused the phrase "by definition"
  - coderdude 16y ago
    I would say it could still be susceptible to malware since a lot of it gets installed on account of user stupidity, but anything that requires exploitation of a specific memory address will fail. Of course though, I think the latest version of Windows has protection against that as well by making it difficult or impossible to determine what addresses will be used when a program is ran. (Maybe, my memory of that is admittedly fuzzy.)
- Daniel_Newby 16y ago
  Why would Microsoft care? Their revenue core is the shell, app frameworks, apps, not the kernel and a few system utilities. If by some miracle ReactOS manages to get major public uptake on the strength of kernel superiority, Microsoft can simply share in the fun.
  - thebigshane 16y ago
    I'm no Microsoft-hater but that really doesn't sound like Microsoft.
    - 16y ago
csomar 16y ago
So what's the point of this Operating System? Kill Microsoft and the thousands of developers that are working their just because you don't like them or the name of the company? Wouldn't this huge time and effort be spent on something we need but don't have? And yes, charge me for using it. I study medicine, but I won't work as a doctor for free.
- dRother 16y ago
  You might want to look into the concept 'open source' and study the phenomenon known as 'linux'. It sounds as if you've never heard of either one.
  - memoryfault 16y ago
    I think the term you wanted him to look up was 'free software'. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...
    - dRother 16y ago
      Oops, RMS probably would have punched me for that. Okay, look into 'free software' and the phenomenon known as 'GNU'.
- jlcgull 16y ago
  You Sir, are a disgrace to the entire healthcare community. Hope you never manage to take the Hippocratic Oath as you will be breaking it at every chance you get. Enjoy your career as scumbag-of-a-doctor. Yes, that is my opinion alone, but I do hold it strongly.
  - endtime 16y ago
    I don't know what the guy you replied to was going on about with respect to Microsoft, but...seriously? He's a scumbag because he doesn't want to work for free? Do you perform your profession for free?
ComputerGuru 16y ago
I reviewed it back in 2006. It has not changed much since, though it has some graphics subsystem and USB improvements: http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/ http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/ Screenshots of ReactOS (it BSODs too!): http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/ http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/ I'm surprised not to see mention of this though in the comments here: ReactOS is now "dead" as it is being rewritten to use the wine project as the actual codebase. The aforementioned slowness in development is the primary cause. The new project is codename ARWINSS: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss
- daeken 16y ago
  It seems that ARWINSS is purely a replacement for a few userspace components (specifically user32 and gdi32, not that those are small by any means (having written my own implementations, my hat goes off to anyone who attempts it)), not the ROS kernel and all that entails. Am I incorrect here? The reason I follow ROS is that it allows compatibility with existing NT drivers, which is huge in my opinion, so moving away from the ROS kernel would be a Bad Thing (TM) in my eyes.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- daeken 16y ago
  Sadly, Alex Ionescu (the developer you mentioned) dropped the tinykrnl project when he left for MS. It was a completely source-compatible, reverse-engineered reimplementation of the NT kernel, which had a lot of promise for everything from education to security research. But in going to MS, he killed the project and the few other developers (including myself, although I did very little) all went in different directions. That's one of the projects I most regret seeing die. One day when I actually have free time, maybe I'll start it back up. Amazingly, it was very simple to work on, there's just a lot to do; anyone with a basic knowledge of x86 assembly and how `cl' works could jump into it fairly easily, since it was hand-decompiled line for line from the existing source, then commented from there. There were no problems to solve (a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective), since it was directly taken from the existing kernel and drivers.

59 points by ertug 16y ago

A free/Open source clone of the most successful virus ever created!</unix zealot> Basically, these guys decided they legally wanted windows, but they didn't want to pay for it.</snark> It's a cool idea, but, I'm not exactly sure on a) the legality of it and b) the usefulness of it.

mansr 16y ago
I don't think there are any legal issues here (but IANAL), and I can see a free Windows clone being useful to some people. However, Microsoft has a 25-year head start so these guys have some serious catching up to do. Until Microsoft goes out of business, I doubt they will ever have a system compatible with a current Windows version.
- hga 16y ago
  That would be OK by me: I'd prefer to keep myself and my parents at the XP SP3 level quasi-forever as long as the OS was supported (I myself an still using Windows Eudora as my email client). Well, I suppose eventually Firefox el. al. will drop XP support, but that day will hopefully be far in the future.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > I don't think there are any legal issues here Just imagine how many patents Microsoft will be compelled to use against this project if it ever becomes a perceived threat. I am sure all MS's EULAs prohibit you from running Microsoft software on anything other than Windows.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Add this to the list of things you're "sure" about, but shouldn't be. Nowhere in the EULA for Microsoft Office (their most profitable product) do I find text requiring you to run it on Microsoft Windows. I read it top-to-bottom, then searched for "Windows" (which never occurs) and then "operating system" (which occurs only to warn you that they use your operating system to get to the Internet).
    - dRother 16y ago
      I wonder if that has changed recently? I recall hearing about this issue in the past in regards to Office and Wine.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      You are right about Office 2007 (the one license I found), but you are wrong about Internet Explorer. It's license states clearly you can only use IE if you have a license for Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or 2008 (the IE8 on my wife's corporate notebook has a Brazilian license that doesn't mention Windows 7)
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        I see very biased moderation when it comes to mentioning Microsoft under anything but the most favorable light. Do they pay for this?
        dRother 16y ago
        I think you're seeing a knee-jerk reaction to what is seen as a knee-jerk reaction to Microsoft. The truth is, MS clearly sucks beyond any hope. People are sick of hearing it, though, so especially if they use Windows and don't know any better, they deny it and become angry.
    - ratsbane 16y ago
      This is correct on the face of it. However, some of the terms, though vague, effectively prohibit running Office under Wine, etc. The following phrase occurs in the Office 2007 EULA: "...In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways." The phrase "...technical limitations..." is present four times in total; particularly combined with some of the license verification verbage certainly could be used in legal arguments as rbanffy suggested
etal 16y ago
It's handy for the same reason FreeDOS is handy -- eventually Microsoft will EOL the platform, but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform. You're right that there's no point in chasing the most recent Windows version.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > but there will still be programs that you need to run (for whatever reason) that require that platform. But why would that be better, or even preferable, over Wine on top of a Unix-like OS with current programs to run sde by side with your legacy app? It's they project, their motivation, but I can't share it or understand why not devote these resources to make Wine better (or a better Wine, BTW). It's pretty obvious they are fairly bright guys. I have to agree with the Unix zealot (I am probably one myself - Unix is a local maximum in the OS space, as eloquently illustrated by the failure of, for instance, Plan 9): of all OS concepts (and with so many exciting ones - like Plan 9) there are to be reinterpreted/reimplemented, why Windows?
  - zokier 16y ago
    I'm quite sure that there are some software that is impossible to run on Wine. Drivers and other stuff that touches the kernel comes to mind. And ReactOS does make Wine better as they share some code: "ReactOS works with the WINE project to share as much programming effort as possible. ReactOS depends on Wine mainly for user mode DLLs. Where appropriate, patches to Wine are also submitted by the development team, and patch contributors are often directed to Wine if it is felt that the patches would benefit them." <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE&#62 http://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE>
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      You are right, of course. I remember having read about the ReactOS/Wine cooperation, but I completely forgot about it while making my comment. Still, it's not the kernel side of the driver that requires a bare OS, but the hardware side that requires the OS not to interfere. The foreign kernel can be emulated. A Windows-like OS can help you use hardware that has no drivers for other OSs but I never had this issue, nor know anyone who needs to run legacy hardware that can't also run a legacy OS.

coderdude 16y ago

ReactOS is one of those projects that has been on the net for a long time. You see it resurface every now and then and each time it looks better than it did before. I have to hand it to the their team, they have tenacity.

VeXocide 16y ago
For others like me who are unfamiliar with the word tenacity: "The state or quality of being tenacious", which in turn is "Holding or tending to hold persistently to something, such as a point of view" or "Tending to retain; retentive".
- coderdude 16y ago
  When I use that word I'm conveying "doggedness: persistent determination." (It's part of my Googled vocabulary.) Either way, it's certainly meant as a compliment. :)
  - mapleoin 16y ago
    > Either way, it's certainly meant as a complement. :) While we're at it, you should also read this: http://www.google.com/search?q=complement+vs+compliment http://www.google.com/search?q=complement+vs+compliment
    - coderdude 16y ago
      Thank you, sir. I honestly didn't realize I had been using the wrong compl*ment all these years.
      - richbradshaw 16y ago
        I think the right word was compliment. Complement means goes well with, compliment means a good comment.
        16y ago

volomike 16y ago

Prediction: ReactOS will be little more than an OS used for running Windows-less video games that were designed for Windows. In the time spent fiddling with it, you could have just purchased and XBox and been done with it.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

Kudos to the creators for keeping at it. But in the end I don't see if being of much consequence. If it ever does get out of Alpha and is viable than Microsoft will likely stop at nothing to bury it with lawsuits. They'd have to because it would be a free version of their core product that, by definition, wouldn't be susceptible to all the viruses and malware that Windows is. So the bottom line is it could have a lot of useful applications but you really couldn't have enough faith in its future to use it for those applications.

calcnerd256 16y ago
Why wouldn't it be susceptible to malware? The fact that that question is even worth asking demonstrates that you've abused the phrase "by definition"
- coderdude 16y ago
  I would say it could still be susceptible to malware since a lot of it gets installed on account of user stupidity, but anything that requires exploitation of a specific memory address will fail. Of course though, I think the latest version of Windows has protection against that as well by making it difficult or impossible to determine what addresses will be used when a program is ran. (Maybe, my memory of that is admittedly fuzzy.)
Daniel_Newby 16y ago
Why would Microsoft care? Their revenue core is the shell, app frameworks, apps, not the kernel and a few system utilities. If by some miracle ReactOS manages to get major public uptake on the strength of kernel superiority, Microsoft can simply share in the fun.
- thebigshane 16y ago
  I'm no Microsoft-hater but that really doesn't sound like Microsoft.
  - 16y ago

csomar 16y ago

So what's the point of this Operating System? Kill Microsoft and the thousands of developers that are working their just because you don't like them or the name of the company? Wouldn't this huge time and effort be spent on something we need but don't have? And yes, charge me for using it. I study medicine, but I won't work as a doctor for free.

dRother 16y ago
You might want to look into the concept 'open source' and study the phenomenon known as 'linux'. It sounds as if you've never heard of either one.
- memoryfault 16y ago
  I think the term you wanted him to look up was 'free software'. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...
  - dRother 16y ago
    Oops, RMS probably would have punched me for that. Okay, look into 'free software' and the phenomenon known as 'GNU'.
jlcgull 16y ago
You Sir, are a disgrace to the entire healthcare community. Hope you never manage to take the Hippocratic Oath as you will be breaking it at every chance you get. Enjoy your career as scumbag-of-a-doctor. Yes, that is my opinion alone, but I do hold it strongly.
- endtime 16y ago
  I don't know what the guy you replied to was going on about with respect to Microsoft, but...seriously? He's a scumbag because he doesn't want to work for free? Do you perform your profession for free?

ComputerGuru 16y ago

I reviewed it back in 2006. It has not changed much since, though it has some graphics subsystem and USB improvements: http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/ http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/ Screenshots of ReactOS (it BSODs too!): http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/ http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/ I'm surprised not to see mention of this though in the comments here: ReactOS is now "dead" as it is being rewritten to use the wine project as the actual codebase. The aforementioned slowness in development is the primary cause. The new project is codename ARWINSS: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss

daeken 16y ago
It seems that ARWINSS is purely a replacement for a few userspace components (specifically user32 and gdi32, not that those are small by any means (having written my own implementations, my hat goes off to anyone who attempts it)), not the ROS kernel and all that entails. Am I incorrect here? The reason I follow ROS is that it allows compatibility with existing NT drivers, which is huge in my opinion, so moving away from the ROS kernel would be a Bad Thing (TM) in my eyes.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

daeken 16y ago
Sadly, Alex Ionescu (the developer you mentioned) dropped the tinykrnl project when he left for MS. It was a completely source-compatible, reverse-engineered reimplementation of the NT kernel, which had a lot of promise for everything from education to security research. But in going to MS, he killed the project and the few other developers (including myself, although I did very little) all went in different directions. That's one of the projects I most regret seeing die. One day when I actually have free time, maybe I'll start it back up. Amazingly, it was very simple to work on, there's just a lot to do; anyone with a basic knowledge of x86 assembly and how `cl' works could jump into it fairly easily, since it was hand-decompiled line for line from the existing source, then commented from there. There were no problems to solve (a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective), since it was directly taken from the existing kernel and drivers.