6 ms·

ReactOS Community Edition

46 points by kercker 13y ago

lnlyplnt 13y ago
Has anybody tried this? Thoughts? How well does windows compatibility work IRL?
- tmikaeld 13y ago
  Since they doesn't go into any specifics, i suspect the same as wine?
  - M2Ys4U 13y ago
    It's been some time since I've looked at ReactOS, but it's a bit more than that. ReactOS actually uses some of the wine libs, and the two projects work together. IIRC, ReactOS actually aims for driver compatibility, so you should be able to completely replace Windows with React.
    - josh-wrale 13y ago
      I'm glad I read this comment. Maybe my basically driver-defunct M-Audio Firewire 410 can be revived using ReactOS. Cool.
    - davidgerard 13y ago
      Well, they don't "work together" - Wine devs avoid ReactOS code and devs like the plague. However, Wine is happy for ReactOS to use their DLLs - so Wine does Win32 and ReactOS does the lower, weirder layers that Wine doesn't bother with.
      - uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
        Actually they kind of do, though not as directly as the term "work together" seems to imply. There are a few Wine Devs who actively check (and post comments, advice, etc. on) the ReactOS bug reporting system ( http://jira.reactos.org http://jira.reactos.org ) and most of the Wine patches I've seen from ReactOS Devs get included in Wine pretty quick. Note: There was a time when ReactOS Devs and Wine Devs were not on good terms, but for the most part at least those days are gone.
      - pritambaral 13y ago
        > Wine devs avoid ReactOS code and devs like the plague Is this due to any patent/copyright issues?
        davidgerard 13y ago
        Copyright worries, I believe. Wine is paranoid of contributors who may have looked too closely at Windows or reverse-engineered it in potentially risky ways. I am vague on details. Also, Wine is LGPL and ReactOS is GPL, so no code can flow in that direction.
        uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
        ReactOS uses only "clean-room" reverse engineering, so this is not a concern. Also Wine Patches from ReactOS Devs are always sent to Wine first, thus they get Wine's LGPL license, then the ReactOS Devs do a "Wine Sync" to get the code into ReactOS; thus code-flow due to Licensing is also a non-issue.
        VoiceOfWisdom 13y ago
        uaygsfdbzf, you are marked as dead. I believe this is due to a somewhat brusk comment you made earlier, but your other comments deserve to be seen.
        uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
        ... hmmm, off the top of my head I'm not sure what I did to get 'killed'. ... Is there [anything I can do / anyone I can ask] to get ... 'resurrected'?
  - iso8859-1 13y ago
    Wine works better. For example, it has better 3D support since it can leverage the host stack. Some non-3D apps like Java run better under Wine too.
- frik 13y ago
  (former dev) ReactOS is an open source reimplementation of Windows NT series operating system (e.g. Win 2003 Server, 7, 2008). Similar to Linux started as an reimplementation of Unix. ReactOS has binary compatible with Windows. This allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used (Win95 classic style and WinXP theme support). ReactOS is still in development, but a lot of Windows apps and some several types of hardware drivers work fine or with minor glitches. You can find screenshots on http://www.reactos.org http://www.reactos.org and even more on the following page: http://old.reactos.org/en/screenshots.html http://old.reactos.org/en/screenshots.html
  - jksmith 13y ago
    Would love to dig up my old Win95 Holmes' London theme with the smoking pipe mouse pointer to see if it would work with ReactOS.
    - mickeyp 13y ago
      Gosh I remember that theme! Don't forget the "Island Man" [0] screensaver, Johnny Castaway. We used to spend hours watching him and his antics back in the day. I miss the whimsy of yore. 0: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gnudawn/johnny/ http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gnudawn/johnny/ Observe: a proper, old-school 90s website unravaged by time.
- pizza234 13y ago
  I tried it. It's simply not suitable for real-world usage, and actually, not suitable for anything more than installing it in a virtual machine, playing with it for fun, and destroying the VM. The "alpha"ness of ReactOS is not the same concept of, say, Ubuntu. Sad, but true. It needs a huge amount of work; compatibility matter little - if one needs compatibility for a given up, wine is a much more usable choice. If one really needs XP compatiblity, I think an XP in a virtual machine without networking is going to be the workaround for a very long time.
skrowl 13y ago
This appears to be a pure marketing site aimed at getting IndieGoGo donations. Nothing really new to see here if you've looked at ReactOS in the past (no, 0.4 isn't out yet).
- jksmith 13y ago
  I think the project is worthy of marketing. Nothing wrong with trying to get some jake together to speed development if that's what they're trying to do. Full time developers should be working on this effort.
pawelkomarnicki 13y ago
Hah my first thought seeing screenshots was "oh, looks like windows 95" :D but the page was more about "joining a revolution" than giving me actual information
pjc50 13y ago
I still don't really understand the advantage of ReactOS in any particular situation, although I suppose if you really liked NT-era Windows (and people do) it's a re-enactment society for that.
- frik 13y ago
  It's about "NT-series". Windows 7, 8.1, XBoxOne, WinPhone 8 are all Win NT series operating systems. Each newer version brought some improvements. So it's not about ancient Windows NT 3.5. ReactOS aims compatibility (Win32 apps and drivers) with more modern Windows versions.
  - iso8859-1 13y ago
    But it doesn't even run Java 5 for Win98...
    - contulluipeste 13y ago
      Windows 98 is not NT.
    - chc 13y ago
      contulluipeste, in case you see this, you should know you have been hellbanned. I am not sure why — just a heads-up.
      - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
        I couldn't help but notice another hellbanned user with a variation on contulluipeste's username here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517159
- sdegutis 13y ago
  With XP ending support, I see many corporate customers switching to ReactOS. Firstly it's free rather than paying for a Windows upgrade, and secondly the premise is that all your apps will keep working exactly the same way, so no compatibility problems, and hence hopefully little to no downtime.
ForHackernews 13y ago
I wonder if ReactOS could position themselves as an upgrade path for Windows XP users, now that Microsoft is ending support? "Switch to ReactOS--run your legacy apps out of the box, and stay current with security."
- userulluipeste 13y ago
  That's exactly their aim. From a recent HN submited article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511825), the soon-unsupported Windows XP is still with 27% compared with less than 10% for non-Windows operating systems on general-purpose computers. That amount of usage is supposed to be supported on various degrees by a binary-compatible option like ReactOS.
- chriswarbo 13y ago
  Being under active development doesn't mean that ReactOS is secure. Sure, there's attention being paid to OS-level security policies (user accounts, passwords, etc.) but there's nowhere near enough dev resources to focus on the kind of vulnerabilities that are actually exploited against win32 systems (ie. bugs). Running a Windows firewall and virus scanner might help, but a) do they run reliably (they certainly hook into the OS more than most standard apps) and b) how many exploits will be ReacOS-specific?
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    That's an interesting question: Is ReactOS even vulnerable to win32 exploits? In other words, are the vulnerabilities flaws in design, or flaws in implementation? (Or some of each?)
    - davidgerard 13y ago
      Wine does Win32 well enough to run malware. It's not so much 'sploits as just running software that does socially unpleasant things.
      - 13y ago
bippi 13y ago
Having an elevator-pitch somewhere obvious where an idiot like me could see/find it would have been nice. They really could have put 'awesome' in 15 different fonts and sizes, and maybe some 'more awesome' in there and it would have told me just as much. I'll save everyone the wikipedia jump: This is intended to be binary-compatible with windows NT-based applications.
kelvin0 13y ago
Wow, now if these guys could magically continue support for WinXP, they would become filthy rich! Of course this is not possible, since it would entail uninstalling all current XP machines and installing ReactOS and hoping that ReactOS == WinXP
- camus2 13y ago
  You could still maintain a level of compatibility for some critical enterprise apps, and ReactOS could provide enterprise services for specific apps. Anyway,there is no silver bullets or easy solution to the XP migration problem,especially critical apps that relies on IE<=8 depreceated features. Does ReactOS runs IE by the way?
  - iso8859-1 13y ago
    It does not.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

46 points by kercker 13y ago

lnlyplnt 13y ago

Has anybody tried this? Thoughts? How well does windows compatibility work IRL?

tmikaeld 13y ago
Since they doesn't go into any specifics, i suspect the same as wine?
- M2Ys4U 13y ago
  It's been some time since I've looked at ReactOS, but it's a bit more than that. ReactOS actually uses some of the wine libs, and the two projects work together. IIRC, ReactOS actually aims for driver compatibility, so you should be able to completely replace Windows with React.
  - josh-wrale 13y ago
    I'm glad I read this comment. Maybe my basically driver-defunct M-Audio Firewire 410 can be revived using ReactOS. Cool.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    Well, they don't "work together" - Wine devs avoid ReactOS code and devs like the plague. However, Wine is happy for ReactOS to use their DLLs - so Wine does Win32 and ReactOS does the lower, weirder layers that Wine doesn't bother with.
    - uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
      Actually they kind of do, though not as directly as the term "work together" seems to imply. There are a few Wine Devs who actively check (and post comments, advice, etc. on) the ReactOS bug reporting system ( http://jira.reactos.org http://jira.reactos.org ) and most of the Wine patches I've seen from ReactOS Devs get included in Wine pretty quick. Note: There was a time when ReactOS Devs and Wine Devs were not on good terms, but for the most part at least those days are gone.
    - pritambaral 13y ago
      > Wine devs avoid ReactOS code and devs like the plague Is this due to any patent/copyright issues?
      - davidgerard 13y ago
        Copyright worries, I believe. Wine is paranoid of contributors who may have looked too closely at Windows or reverse-engineered it in potentially risky ways. I am vague on details. Also, Wine is LGPL and ReactOS is GPL, so no code can flow in that direction.
        uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
        ReactOS uses only "clean-room" reverse engineering, so this is not a concern. Also Wine Patches from ReactOS Devs are always sent to Wine first, thus they get Wine's LGPL license, then the ReactOS Devs do a "Wine Sync" to get the code into ReactOS; thus code-flow due to Licensing is also a non-issue.
        VoiceOfWisdom 13y ago
        uaygsfdbzf, you are marked as dead. I believe this is due to a somewhat brusk comment you made earlier, but your other comments deserve to be seen.
        uaygsfdbzf 13y ago
        ... hmmm, off the top of my head I'm not sure what I did to get 'killed'. ... Is there [anything I can do / anyone I can ask] to get ... 'resurrected'?
- iso8859-1 13y ago
  Wine works better. For example, it has better 3D support since it can leverage the host stack. Some non-3D apps like Java run better under Wine too.
frik 13y ago
(former dev) ReactOS is an open source reimplementation of Windows NT series operating system (e.g. Win 2003 Server, 7, 2008). Similar to Linux started as an reimplementation of Unix. ReactOS has binary compatible with Windows. This allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used (Win95 classic style and WinXP theme support). ReactOS is still in development, but a lot of Windows apps and some several types of hardware drivers work fine or with minor glitches. You can find screenshots on http://www.reactos.org http://www.reactos.org and even more on the following page: http://old.reactos.org/en/screenshots.html http://old.reactos.org/en/screenshots.html
- jksmith 13y ago
  Would love to dig up my old Win95 Holmes' London theme with the smoking pipe mouse pointer to see if it would work with ReactOS.
  - mickeyp 13y ago
    Gosh I remember that theme! Don't forget the "Island Man" [0] screensaver, Johnny Castaway. We used to spend hours watching him and his antics back in the day. I miss the whimsy of yore. 0: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gnudawn/johnny/ http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gnudawn/johnny/ Observe: a proper, old-school 90s website unravaged by time.
pizza234 13y ago
I tried it. It's simply not suitable for real-world usage, and actually, not suitable for anything more than installing it in a virtual machine, playing with it for fun, and destroying the VM. The "alpha"ness of ReactOS is not the same concept of, say, Ubuntu. Sad, but true. It needs a huge amount of work; compatibility matter little - if one needs compatibility for a given up, wine is a much more usable choice. If one really needs XP compatiblity, I think an XP in a virtual machine without networking is going to be the workaround for a very long time.

skrowl 13y ago

This appears to be a pure marketing site aimed at getting IndieGoGo donations. Nothing really new to see here if you've looked at ReactOS in the past (no, 0.4 isn't out yet).

jksmith 13y ago
I think the project is worthy of marketing. Nothing wrong with trying to get some jake together to speed development if that's what they're trying to do. Full time developers should be working on this effort.

pawelkomarnicki 13y ago

Hah my first thought seeing screenshots was "oh, looks like windows 95" :D but the page was more about "joining a revolution" than giving me actual information

pjc50 13y ago

I still don't really understand the advantage of ReactOS in any particular situation, although I suppose if you really liked NT-era Windows (and people do) it's a re-enactment society for that.

frik 13y ago
It's about "NT-series". Windows 7, 8.1, XBoxOne, WinPhone 8 are all Win NT series operating systems. Each newer version brought some improvements. So it's not about ancient Windows NT 3.5. ReactOS aims compatibility (Win32 apps and drivers) with more modern Windows versions.
- iso8859-1 13y ago
  But it doesn't even run Java 5 for Win98...
  - contulluipeste 13y ago
    Windows 98 is not NT.
  - chc 13y ago
    contulluipeste, in case you see this, you should know you have been hellbanned. I am not sure why — just a heads-up.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      I couldn't help but notice another hellbanned user with a variation on contulluipeste's username here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517159
sdegutis 13y ago
With XP ending support, I see many corporate customers switching to ReactOS. Firstly it's free rather than paying for a Windows upgrade, and secondly the premise is that all your apps will keep working exactly the same way, so no compatibility problems, and hence hopefully little to no downtime.

ForHackernews 13y ago

I wonder if ReactOS could position themselves as an upgrade path for Windows XP users, now that Microsoft is ending support? "Switch to ReactOS--run your legacy apps out of the box, and stay current with security."

userulluipeste 13y ago
That's exactly their aim. From a recent HN submited article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511825), the soon-unsupported Windows XP is still with 27% compared with less than 10% for non-Windows operating systems on general-purpose computers. That amount of usage is supposed to be supported on various degrees by a binary-compatible option like ReactOS.
chriswarbo 13y ago
Being under active development doesn't mean that ReactOS is secure. Sure, there's attention being paid to OS-level security policies (user accounts, passwords, etc.) but there's nowhere near enough dev resources to focus on the kind of vulnerabilities that are actually exploited against win32 systems (ie. bugs). Running a Windows firewall and virus scanner might help, but a) do they run reliably (they certainly hook into the OS more than most standard apps) and b) how many exploits will be ReacOS-specific?
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  That's an interesting question: Is ReactOS even vulnerable to win32 exploits? In other words, are the vulnerabilities flaws in design, or flaws in implementation? (Or some of each?)
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    Wine does Win32 well enough to run malware. It's not so much 'sploits as just running software that does socially unpleasant things.
    - 13y ago

bippi 13y ago

Having an elevator-pitch somewhere obvious where an idiot like me could see/find it would have been nice. They really could have put 'awesome' in 15 different fonts and sizes, and maybe some 'more awesome' in there and it would have told me just as much. I'll save everyone the wikipedia jump: This is intended to be binary-compatible with windows NT-based applications.

kelvin0 13y ago

Wow, now if these guys could magically continue support for WinXP, they would become filthy rich! Of course this is not possible, since it would entail uninstalling all current XP machines and installing ReactOS and hoping that ReactOS == WinXP

camus2 13y ago
You could still maintain a level of compatibility for some critical enterprise apps, and ReactOS could provide enterprise services for specific apps. Anyway,there is no silver bullets or easy solution to the XP migration problem,especially critical apps that relies on IE<=8 depreceated features. Does ReactOS runs IE by the way?
- iso8859-1 13y ago
  It does not.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]