Submitted by The opensource Windows-compatible operating system ReactOS released a status update today. The highlights are the ability to run OpenOffice.org 2 applications (screenshots), kernel bugfixes, a restructured win32 subsystem, and plans about the next release (December 2007).
I’m at loss of words here. “Amazing” doesn’t begin to do justice to what those guys have accomplished here.
My greatest, broadest, widest, highest, deepest congratulations to the ReactOS team!
ReactOS is a great project that has much potential, especially in a few years when it really gets more and more polished. I guess it represents thousands and thousands of hours to develop such a system reverse-engineering a system like Win32, damn, these guys are crazy, it’s mad. They must be highly skilled as well. I hope one day I can use ReactOS in my daily tasks just like I’m using Windows XP now. I think ReactOS should have a lot more momentum for what it is and for the potential it has, heck, if it had the hype Ubuntu has, with many donations and developers, it could evolve a lot faster and, who knows, some companies could be starting switching their Windows installations to ReactOS 🙂
Pretty impressive in terms of the skill of the developers, but I don’t think your going to see many companies switching. They have windows, why would they switch to a something that is so like windows that they probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
If any comapnies do switch it will be small one man companies, with the one man running it being an OSS nut and MS basher. In the real world, businesses don’t care for the MS is evil spin. Look at all the case studies you see on people switching to OS.
Look at these ‘major’ switches to OO.org
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deplo…
Please, are any of these really going to help? Does the boss of Tesco really care if Swadelands School in Kent switches to OO.org? Does any big company? We all know that these switches were made by the IT manager who is a linux fanboy. In Six months this school will be back to MS Office when they realise that they can’t open all there old excel files or read everybodies old word files exactly as before.
Edited 2007-11-15 09:11
Please, are any of these really going to help? Does the boss of Tesco really care if Swadelands School in Kent switches to OO.org? Does any big company?
You seem to live in your very own virtual world, over here in europe many company are starting to switch to OOo, even mine wich is a very big billions $ company. So…
My own little world is Europe. There aren’t many companies switching to opensource. Maybe MS should start a site about people switching to MS from OS, I’d bet the numbers of people switching to MS and other prop. products is higher.
Which companies? Or are they all one-man companies run by your friends? Big is relative. What is big to you, is probably not big in great world view. How’d you get to run a billion dollar company when you can’t even spell ‘which’ correctly? And what’s it called? I bet your just the IT manager for it, and yours is the only computer that has ‘switched’ to OSS. The other computers in the billion dollar company are running MS
Edited 2007-11-15 11:43
Which companies? Or are they all one-man companies run by your friends? Big is relative. What is big to you, is probably not big in great world view. How’d you get to run a billion dollar company when you can’t even spell ‘which’ correctly? And what’s it called? I bet your just the IT manager for it, and yours is the only computer that has ‘switched’ to OSS. The other computers in the billion dollar company are running MS
I’m no IT manager and those company aren’t run by my friends, you’re living under a rock man.
I hope I’m able to get the next release to work, since the two most recent releases didn’t. I tried the Live, Install and VMWARE versions and got none of them to work. Earlier versions *did* work. Anyway, ReactOS is a fantastic project and I’m really looking forward to the next release.
Hoepfully they’ll make a DirectX 10 wrapper too or include DirectX 10 compatibility in the years to come.
… I can throw away XP and Linux to install dual boot configuration on all my boxes: ReactOS 1.0 + AROS 1.0
That moment is still years away, but eventually will become reality, and I hope that PCs in form which we all know still will be around, and not as such curiosity as classic Amigas are today 😉
So many operating systems to try and so little time
Good Work ReactOs.Looking forward to testing this baby out.
That’s what I love to see, lots of operating systems, software companies writing quality, platform agnostic code and consumers benefiting from the vicious competition between the different vendors.
As for ReactOS – it’ll eventually get there. I remember when wine first started to emerge; there were those who aimed for the stars – in that case, to run Mirosoft Office, they were shot down by nay sayers “oh, you’ll never get it to run, too many Microsoft only technologies that’ll stop it from running”. Here we are in 2007 and people can run Microsoft Office on *NIX.
ReactOS might be ‘slightly behind’ the new api’s which Microsoft introduces, but lets remember that given how long it takes for third parties to take advantage of them, its just a matter of time before those applications are released and the eventual features are added to ReactOS.
Personally? I won’t be running it; Windows (or clones) is not my thing, but if it results in more competition in the marketplace, I as a result benefit from it.
What I like about the project too is that it being Windows-like and the system requirements being so low, alot of older working systems dont have to junked to the heap.
Financially strapped users , organisations and/or countries who already use some form of Windows pirated or otherwise wont be left in the cold since its open source and would lower their cost overhead.
Edited 2007-11-15 04:05
Not to be rude, but…
…what costs could lowered if they are using pirated MS software? It never cost them anything anyway? If someone would use a cracked copy of windows, security is obviously not their prime concern.
Thus, having source available to look through isn’t a big incentive, is it?
Mate,dont know where you are but even pirated windows cost money where I am.
ReactOs would be free.
And here’s something else for you.When Microsoft launched their WGA program alot of people who either bought their pc with a cracked Windows pre-installed or paid to have it installed got shafted.Lost some productivity and had to pay to get the mess sorted out.Even by having to buy a legitimate copy.
Again, because Windows is pirated doesn’t mean it cannot be made as secure as a legitimate copy.Similarly because the source code of an Os is available for peeking doesn’t make it any less secure inherently.Heck if that was the case then Windows should be the most secure operating system ever.
Point is the average script kiddy who break into computer systems either lack the skills or interest to proof read the code for an entire operating system to break it.
Cheers.
My part of the world is the uk, mate. If you paid for pirated software you’ve been had, mate.
Welcome to the third world.
As a fellow UK person, I find it slightly embarasing that you would potray pirated software in such a way.
I’m an open source programmer by night, but a closed source programmer by day, which pays the bills. I am fully against pirate software, as I’m sure many people on here are.
Either pay for the software you use, or use an open source alternative. Stealing is stealing. You wouldn’t be impressed if I broke into you house tonight and stole your TV. It’s no different, not matter what you might think!!!
I just read through this thread with a fine toothed comb and I didn’t get the idea anyone here promoted using pirated software. There was for some reason a mention of people that had to re-buy Windows because it turned out their copy wasn’t legit, and there was a comment about security having nothing to do with pirated vs. non-pirated but I didn’t detect anyone actually promoting it.
Try reading my post next time, I never said I use pirated software, did I mate?
I think ReactOS is interesting and impressive from a conceptual standpoint. On the other hand, I don’t see what all the hubub is about. It is still a long ways from being fully MS Windows driver compatible. By the time it is reaching maturity, MS Windows will have taken another turn. And ReactOS is pretty darn ugly to look at. Sorry. I think you’re better off w/ Linux.
> Sorry. I think you’re better off w/ Linux.
not everyone likes linux.
in fact some people absolutley hate it
You’re right. I am using and try to explore Linux (Ubuntu) everyday for about one and half year, even try to help my family and friends with that, but still feel somehow “alienated” or as it is just a one big Internet-centred appliance with lots of plug-ins and addons, and not just an all-purpose operating system. Maybe because I am also an PC gamer and simply cannot close word processor or Amiga emulator, plug-in joystick and launch “Forgotten Battles” or immerse myself into world of “Diablo 2” on Linux. Im quite sure it is not caused by ten years spend using Windows alone – before PCs I used and played on Amigas and 8-bits – almost ten years before first “wintel” PC get into my home in January of 1995.
well, I don’t think your have to hate or even dislike Linux to find Reactos an interesting and useful project. my personal favourite alternate OS-in-the-making is Haiku, but even so I’m certain that of all the alternate OS’s in progress Reactos has the biggest chance of actually attracting a substantial user base given that it is a clone of windows. it will have a ton of software and drivers available, the lack of which is the very achilles heel of every other alternate OS out there.
I read in one of the newsletters (iirc) that there were a new explorer-like shell in Reactos which unfortunately didn’t work yet due to incomplete shell functionality, is there any chance it will work in the upcoming Reactos 0.3.4?
I think you’re better off w/ Linux.
Well, obviously! But the problem is, like it or not, we live in a Windows world. People, companies and governments just assume that if you are using a computer, then obviously you are using Windows. Wine fills a lot of my needs, but it would still be nice to some day have a machine close at hand that’s running ReactOS and running more stable than Windows.
It is licenced under GPL; the driver API which is used on ReactOS and provide compatibility *could* be ported to Linux so that Linux (and other operating systems) can take advantage of the giant pool of Windows drivers.
Even if you don’t use ReactOS, in the future, you might be a beneficiary of its work.
This project works with the wine api and they will probably end up in a fairly similar compatibility standpoint once both are stable since they work together. I have used it before it worked really well on my old 500mhz dell
Is there a live ReactOS CD yet? I couldn’t find one on their website. I think this is a wonderful project, and I can’t wait for the beta.
“Is there a live ReactOS CD yet? I couldn’t find one on their website”.
Sure, on their download page, 2nd link 🙂
http://www.reactos.org/en/download.html
They really should use 7-Zip for their .ZIP archives (or “advzip -z4” from AdvanceComp). It would save them > 1 MB of download size. And if you think that’s not enough (times a billion downloaders), a simple .7z archive is much smaller (liveCD is 19 MB for -mx=1, 14 MB for -mx=9). I reported this all to them in IRC a few weeks ago, but I guess everyone doesn’t mind such “minimal” time and bandwidth loss. Hey, whatever, their call.
The trunk builds (http://www.reactos.org/getbuilds) are in 7z. Its only the sourceforge stuff which is in zip format as this is still a more universal format.
I don’t see the point of providing it in .ZIP format since .ZIP is much worse compression (even if ubiquitous). 7-Zip has gotten tons of popularity and is easily available (even on ReactOS!) and no huge memory drain, so it’s not like it’s a huge inconvenience for someone to download and use it. But hey, maybe they should offer both .7Z and .ZIP (like some projects do).
especially if your hardware is real modern. Plus crashes will be more tolerable that way.
I never try it but hoping to try when more stable. Good on the path to v1.0.
If it only worked (on my PC). I have been trying release after release after release but this OS does not boot on my hardware. I have GA-965P-DS3 mother board with two SATA burners. IDE port disconnected due to JMicron, E6600 Dual Core. It won’t budge. All I get is a blank screen with the cursor blinking on booting and it just stays there. My previous PC was an Intel Pentium 4 2.0 with Intel board I think, worked fine…eCS also won’t boot
I think it’s JMicron or the SATA devices that cause the problems. My HD is also SATA.
Edited 2007-11-15 10:20
Last I heard, there was no support for USB, SATA, or NTFS. And it is “alpha”. So don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t work perfectly (or at all, even).
I use linux but i do like windows still and reactos is a dam cool project to follow.
Hopefully ReactOS will not include the same bugs…I mean “features”…as MS Windows.
Edited 2007-11-15 23:06
While reading the article about lack of good Linux drivers, I had this thought: Maybe, when Reactos has full support for Windows drivers, a tweaked version of Reactos can be used to trace the behavior of Windows drivers, either to help in reverse engineering or to use those drivers in Linux a-la ndiswrapper, as someone proposed. Well, if there’s any truth in that, I guess someone is already working on it, but it’s still another reason for Linux users to be excited about Reactos
Yes, we read comments and are happy when you find our work worthy.
Just to adress a few issues arised:
– USB support is to be improved soon, not only PnPising the driver but more
– regarding SATA, UniATA driver has been imported into current trunk, and the support is slowly being worked on;
– NTFS requires CC (cache controler) part of NTOSKRNL being rewritten from scratch, which also requires changes in other parts of the kernel. So first things first…
– some booting problems may be due to GPUs (especially Intel integrated chips) not being compatible with VESA 2.0 or higher. This issue is marked as a blocker to 0.3.4 release and is being investigated
As usual, if you have any questions or suggestions, please visit our forum or our irc channel #reactos on irc.freenode.net