ReactOS Revealed

reactosfanboy writes "DRM Hacker Alex Ionescu explained the internals of ReactOS in a recent talk. Ionescu indicates that ReactOS is nearly 100% binary and API compatible with the Windows 2003 kernel, and that they are aiming for full Vista compatibility. Ionescu attempted to demonstrate ReactOS but only succeeded in installing it after two BSoDs. This alone should make it clear that ReactOS is still not ready for prime time." In what may be a red flag for Microsoft's lawyers, ReactOS is described as "an environment identical to Windows, both visually and internally." Here are slides from Ionescu's talk (PDF), which might prove more useful than the video offered in various forms at over 450 MB.

Re:Doubt microsoft would care

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

ReactOS would still be unsupported and untrusted in business, and it's proliferation would only add to MSFT's dominance of the market.

ReactOS would be useful for companies looking for a way to move off of Windows but who have binaries that only run on Windows. Due to the proliferation of VM technology, a VM running ReactOS on top of your OS of choice could make migration away from Windows cheap enough to be an option. If ReactOS is cheap enough, it could displace Windows by itself for limited applications. A free OS Dell or someone can install that still lets them get paid for crapware and which still lets end users run games and junk software from Walmart could easily grab market share away from Windows. Anything that threatens MS's dominance with Windows, whether it detracts from Linux or your favorite OS or not, is good for motivating MS to make Windows better. If Windows is as good as other OS's, I don't care if it is dominant as much.

Still too much in the kernel

[Animats]

ReactOS still, apparently, has much of the graphics system in the kernel. Along with drivers. It emulates NT 4/2000/XP architecture, not NT 3.51, which actually had a cleaner kernel.

But at least they didn't put in a 16-bit subsystem.

Identical?

[FunkyELF]

an environment identical to Windows, both visually and internally.

I didn't get that from the screen shots [reactos.org]. The text inside of cpu-z go beyond their container. The okay and cancel buttons here [reactos.org] look as bad as 20 year old Unix, I'm thinking of CDE or Motif or whatever that is called. In fact, every single thing looks a bit off. Is that on purpose for legal reasons? ~Eric

Re:Doubt microsoft would care

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wine offers a much more compelling method of migrating from Windows.

WINE is an incomplete re-implementation of the Windows APIs, while ReactOS aims to be a complete one. I don't have any real confidence that WINE will ever work reliably for arbitrary software. It is a nice crutch for specific, common applications. It is a reasonable route to building a quick and dirty port. I don't think it will ever fill the role of a method of moving away from Windows and still running random (often proprietary or outdated) applications.

ReactOS would still require you to be running a full separate operating system. If you wanted to do that, you could run your current Windows XP licenses in virtual machines, and just run Linux on the host, or what have you.

That is pretty much what I am doing now, except most WinXP licenses are not portable to new hardware and such a move is often accompanied by a move to new hardware. ReactOS is likely to be more lightweight than the current version of Windows and less likely to cause headaches with licensing and registration and DRM shutting it down arbitrarily. It also would have save my company a hundred bucks a license and that adds up.

Granted, Wine isn't entirely there yet... but neither is ReactOS.

I actually looked at WINE and a couple of commercial WINE-based offerings and ReactOS before I chose to run WinXP in a VM. It was the most expensive solution by far (other than Windows outside a VM) but the only one that worked. In future I could see going either way, but I think the overhead from ReactOS is likely going to end up less of a consideration that the necessarily limited range of WINE.

Preventing Bitrot

[IllMnec]

This project can become very interesting for companies that rely on old equipment and software, which I think is a huge market.

With Microsoft changing the driver model and the API of Windows with Vista, a lot of applications and devices will not be supported by the latest and greatest from Redmond. This means no security patches/bugfixes for old equipment and software.

If ReactOS can emulate Win2k/XP, it could be used as a secure and supported replacement in those environments.

OSX Hacks DO exist (www.osx86project.org)

[Anonymous Coward]

By using these hacks you can install OSX on a plain, non-Apple computer. The hacks circumvent Apple DRM and thus they are illegal in America (I dont know about other countries). There is a wiki about all these illegal activities, http://www.osx86project.org/ [osx86project.org]. Slashtot competitor, Digg, diggs everything about it.

Re:ironic

[Raideen]

The practical reason is that you've migrated away from Windows but need to run a Windows app that doesn't run under Wine (which does happen, despite the shared code base) or use a device that doesn't work under (enter alternate OS here). You fire up a virtual machine and load up ReactOS without sending a red cent to Redmond. You could accomplish this another way but that would amount to copyright infringement.

Re:Windows clone? Why not go for OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be much more interested in an OS X clone running on my PC,

Go yell at the GNOME guys. They're the ones who, after Apple bought NeXT, decided to build a desktop on the Gimp toolkit instead of on the already-live GNUStep project. Imagine if the effort that had gone into GTK+ 1 and then GTK+ 2 development had instead been spent on getting GNUStep ready for prime time.