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ReactOS 0.3.1 Released
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Mar 11, 2007 06:01 PM
from the fresh-bits dept.
from the fresh-bits dept.
fireballrus writes with news of the release of ReactOS 0.3.1 — press release, changelog, download packages. 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)." The press release notes: "Please don't forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS. Also, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware."
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ReactOS Reviewed in Depth 220 comments
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."
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Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
As mentioned, it's perfect to diddle with in a VM environment, though I have loaded it on a dedicated test machine before and that was a lot of fun too.
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Re:Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:5, Funny)
maybe if you were running it through an emulator...
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That's stretching the truth a bit.
The AMD64 'port', for starters, isn't in the same category as other 'ports' as it doesn't actually require any porting! There are optimisations that can be done. But is this a full-blown 'port'? Doubt it.
Next in terms of completeness is the Alpha port, which was abandoned long, long ago. Was it NT3.5 that used to run on Alpha? Something like t
Re:Nice to see them plugging ahead (Score:4, Informative)
How old are you, twelve? Just because your memory doesn't reach back that far, doesn't mean it never happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported
(Also, as noted in the linked article, what do you suppose the Xbox360 runs on?)
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While I was excited in
Cool project (Score:5, Informative)
The legal issues are kinda scary but it looks like they have them under control [reactos.org]. All respect to them for attempting the impossible... and from the look of it, they're a good way to succeeding :)
Re:Cool project (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Cool project (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, in fact, spent far more time in court suing the likes of Franklin Computer (who, in many ways, had a better product.) Granted, that may have been simply because IBM didn't perceive the personal computer as being a big part of their future, at that point in time, since big iron was still their bread-and-butter. However, if you want to get into the history of anticompetitive behavior at IBM, check out out how they dealt with anyone making plug-compatible components for their mainframe systems in the 60's and 70's. That was a very different story. There's a guy named Amdahl that would be happy to enlighten you.
Besides, the legal climate for reverse-engineering is decidedly less friendly to cloners than it was in, say, 1981.
Parent
Re:Cool project (Apple suing Franklin) (Score:3, Insightful)
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I believe it was the brief threat of OS/2 that made MS and Apple get their acts partially together way back when. We saw both those companies put out products that were far more sturdy and usable in the period after OS/2 hit the market.
At the time when OS/2 "hit the market" (and for some years thereafter), it was a Microsoft product.
What timeframe are you actually thinking of ?
But I have to know... (Score:4, Funny)
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http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443 [winehq.org]
How about this?
Good News For Compatibility (Score:2)
Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
Awesome (Score:4, Informative)
I installed it under Parallels, ran Solitaire and it rebooted and then disconnected my network outside of Parallels.
Seriously though, yeah it's alpha but it's pretty cool. Great work!
Reactos Alpha = Windows Beta? (Score:2)
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A method and system are provided for displaying failure information on a limited resource computing device. Unparseable textual messages are displayed upon failure.
4. The method of claim 3, in which the screen is blanked before the message is displayed.
5. The method of claim 4, in which the message is displayed on a blue background.
---
As you see, React cannot legally implement the Blue Screen of Death.
How to Avoid Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
If React OS can keep me running my current Windows apps in a sensible, secure, and supported environment, then I can avoid Vista. That means less headaches, and less expense.
Really, these folks may have found a really nice niche.
(Honestly, looking at Vista make me think that this is the time when someone, whether Linux, Mac, or something else, could make significant inroads.)
Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly why Microsoft will dig deep into it's legal fund and patent portfolio and nuke reactos off the face of the planet the very second that ReactOS becomes a practical alternative to Windows.
Parent
Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
In any event, the whole topic is moot. If they sue based on software patents, then ReactOS can simply move the servers to a country that doesn't recognize them (and there are will plenty of those).
Parent
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IANAL
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Re:How to Avoid Vista (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I'm not trolling (Score:2, Insightful)
but
So it won't run (or at least won't run well) on actual hardware, so that's the driver issue nullified. I'm not running ReactOS for the drivers, it's running with virtualisation under my already free OS. So I'm running it so i can run Windows pro
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I try to use only free software, but if I had to use some software under Windows, I'd run Windows. Creating an alpha environment to run proprietary software just seems wrong.
But what if you were running Windows, and wanting to move to another OS such as Mac or Linux....but you realize you have to keep Windows for one or two apps? Or maybe you don't HAVE to, but if you have to give up those apps, you'll lose some productivity.
Nothing is outright STOPPING you from moving to the new platform, but it sure becomes a lot harder to justify it. Something like WINE or ReactOX can help a lot in making the switch economically practical and smoothing the transition. (I think someone
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So I'm running it so i can run Windows programs under my free OS?
No, you're running it so you can help develop and test it. No one is advocating running it in a VM in a production environment. It's a testing and development release. Obviously the real thing will run on the bare metal; it's just not ready for that yet.
Creating an alpha environment to run proprietary software just seems wrong.
This is just stupid as hell. They don't make it alpha on purpose. It's not finished yet.
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Thank you Mr. Anonymous Coward, I know it's version 0.3.1. Is that a reason to use it though? You didn't really answer my question.
you use it for testing? that sounds like a pretty good reason for using alpha software.
nice to see this progress but (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'd really like to see is some major company getting behind reactos and wine. Getting a portable win32 layer really working to the point where it's no longer just a toy is going to take a major effort, more of an effort than the open source community seems willing to put forward at this time. Working win32 is a real possibility, but it needs a lot of people to get behind it.
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No. The projects are working together, and code goes back and fourth... That's kinda the point of Open Source, isn't it? If somebody else does it better, you use what they've written, in your own project.
A few of the reasons to use ReactOS instead of WINE:
Drivers. How well does WINE load that WinXP dll/ocx driver for your WiFi card? Display driver? etc.
Perf
Re:nice to see this progress but (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Re:this is kinda weird (Score:4, Insightful)
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And if there are any hidden API's, the DOJ and EU will hit MS with the antitrust stick.
API changes might be an issue, but again, if the API's are in use, they can't do this without breaking other software. Hiding stuff from a
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Yes, actually.
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You just described everyone who's been developing on the Microsoft bandwagon for the past twenty-five years or so, me included. The goalposts not only move, but they have JATO units attached to them that fire at random intervals. Now
Re:R-e-a-c-t-i-n-g .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it would be interesting to see if the effort allows them to fix some of the flaws and continue to run a lot of the software. For me personally I look at this sort of an effort as a perfect solution to the main thing that keeps me from ditching MS: games.
Parent
Re:R-e-a-c-t-i-n-g .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you give people other options for running those apps, that aren't controlled by a company trying to protect their monopoly, you open up a lot of possibilities for the industry to move away from Microsoft lock-in.
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Why? Such wasted effort to duplicate a flawed system of software.
Just like Linux was, you mean ?
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
-uso.
Parent
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http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
It's already been done, for wifi drivers. For the devices it does work with, it works fairly well.
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b) you're assuming that they'll be acting alone; they have novell's help on the Linux front, and slapping a Cease-And-Desist on ReactOS would be trivial.
c)the only thing useable in an antitrust suit would be the undocumented apis...which have nothing to do with ReactOS. Anything done in ReactOS can easily be found and studied via MSDN.
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mod my comments down all you like, but it's a fact that once ReactOS becomes any sort of threat (real or percieved) to Microsoft, Microsoft will break out the lawyers and the software patent lawsuits.
Hide your heads in the sand all you want to...it's your time you're wasting, not mine.
Maybe these people will be able to get jobs as system programmers as a result of this. Maybe they want to see how far they can go before they get sued. Maybe they are hoping that by the time this get to that point the world will be more reverse engineer friendly. Maybe this is just civil disobedience.
In the 70's and 80's UNIX was a product developed by a big company, the phone company to be precise. it has since become an idea replicated many times, always poorly, sometimes less poorly than K&R's
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