ReactOS

[Oso]

Hello all. I noticed there are a couple of comments on the forum about ReactOS. I tried it yesterday for the first time. I put it inside VirtualBox and I can't say it works well for me, unfortunately. I certainly don't intend to give up on it, because I can see that it's a very noble project and worth supporting.

To clarify, for those who might not be familiar with ReactOS, it's an open source project to create a Windows-compatible system and work began in 1996. It has been written as a binary-compatible platform, presenting all the usual Windows APIs, but it has been written from scratch. I was surprised not to have heard about it before, because although I'm a Linux user, I often thought to myself that a Windows alternative to Linux would solve a great number of problems.

Unfortunately, while the project is no doubt impressive in its objectives and in its achievement, it surely has some obstacles to overcome. I assumed the version I had was old, because it looks like Windows XP, but in fact it's the latest version. The website indicates the group is active and has recently employed full-time developers. Has anyone had success with ReactOS?

[mk-soft]

You can try out whether Purebasic runs for Windows.

[jacdelad]

Saying it doesn't work well is not fair, at least that's my opinion. Fristly it's still in beta and will stay for a long time further. Secondly it's not just a new operating system, it's one with the goal to become compatible to windows. From scratch. So it wil improve with every version and become better, until then some things work, others don't.

[Oso]

You can try out whether Purebasic runs for Windows.

I did, it was the first software I tried. The IDE opened, then froze, then this...

[Oso]

Saying it doesn't work well is not fair, at least that's my opinion. Fristly it's still in beta and will stay for a long time further. Secondly it's not just a new operating system, it's one with the goal to become compatible to windows. From scratch. So it wil improve with every version and become better, until then some things work, others don't.

I'm completely behind the concept and hope it progresses well. I've become enormously disappointed with Microsoft's direction in recent years, along with numerous other big-tech vendors, in which everything is moving towards a subscription model, a login account to download packages and worse than that — our desktop screens are becoming monetised with advertising and things we don't want. That isn't a direction I want to follow, so I'm fully in support of anything that empowers users and brings independence.

I tried PureBasic 32-bit out of interest. I then tried Microsoft Office 2007, because it's known to be XP-compatible. Office appeared to freeze at the point where it began the installation. I didn't have time to see if it could be resolved, but I shall come back to it.

I think my concern with ReactOS is that the project probably struggles to keep moving ahead and meanwhile Microsoft's Windows is a moving target that has enormous resources behind it. On the group's website, they say that ReactOS was based on the concepts within Windows Server 2003.