Submitted by “The ReactOS operating system has been in development for over eight years and aims to provide users with a fully functional and Windows-compatible distribution under the GPL license. ReactOS comes with its own Windows 2003-based kernel and system utilities and applications, resulting in an environment identical to Windows, both visually and internally. This talk will introduce the ReactOS project, as well as the various software engineering challenges behind it.”
People saying ReactOS has a kernel based on Windows NT5.2(2k3) is a little misleading..
ReactOS actually is writing a completely 100% Open Source implementation of the NT series under the GPL..
They implement plan on supporting API’s from NT4/NT5(2000)/NT5.1(XP)/NT5.2(2k3) and NT6(Vista).
Misinterpretation errors like that cause lots of problems, It’s like the people who keep mistaking ReactOS as a Moddified Linux system.. It’s not..
It’s a complete NT re-implementation..
Misinterpretation errors like that cause lots of problems, It’s like the people who keep mistaking ReactOS as a Moddified Linux system.. It’s not..
You do know who wrote this blurb, right?
One of the main devs of ReactOS.
People saying ReactOS has a kernel based on Windows NT5.2(2k3) is a little misleading.
In their defense, the goal of ReactOS has changed many times over the years.
“People saying ReactOS has a kernel based on Windows NT5.2(2k3) is a little misleading..”
So I should take your word over this guy’s…
“Speaker Bio
Alex Ionescu is currently studying in Software Engineering at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and is a Microsoft Technical Student Ambassador. He is the lead kernel developer of the ReactOS Project and project leader of TinyKRNL.”
I’m glad I RTFA!
Sorry, I was only commenting about his choice of wording.
I must of read it as if they said:
“It’s based off of Windows 2003’s kernel source code..”
SReilly, I’m aware who he is… Apologies.
Edited 2007-03-20 20:26
No worries, I hope I didn’t offend. Reading over it again, it seem like I may have been a little heavy handed in my reply ;-), but I do understand where you are coming from.
Trying to be humorous was never my strong point…
Your comment was appropriate. Regardless of who wrote it, as written the statement implies that the OS is based on Windows 2003, not that it is a reimplementation of it. However, its probably just a poor choice of wording on his part.
ReactOS aims to be 100% API, source, and binary compatible with Windows. It’s similar to how Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API.
My understanding is ReactOS is an attempt to provide binary level compatability with Windows NT and derived systems.
This timeline shows some of the relationships :-
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2165
The timeline has not been updated in a couple of years and the current information I have on ReactOS is here :-
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2341
This is due to be merged in and I will be releasing a new version with a complete update in mid-April.
Paddy
I believe Alex meant “based on the design of”, which is correct.
ReactOS must “clone” an environment capable of running Win16, Win32, and Win64. On top of that, it must also inclusively implement all the .NET Framework releases. That is, if the goal is complete compatibility and implementation. To me that is not directly comparable to cloning one Windows release level, it is going beyond that.
Can anyone clarify the differences between Win64 5.x and Win64 6.x?
ReactOS is currently aiming for win32 only. There is no 16 bit support in ReactOS and there never will be.
64 bit is planned for the future, but there is little point in doing this until the current code base is both stable and complete enough for it to be viable.
It should be noted that much of the ReactOS code is 64 bit friendly as the devs are aware of the future path of computing.
Mono should help if you need the .NET support (which I would need too). It isn’t exactly compatible but it’s close, and runs on Windows already.
Hope this project does well.
It may be the only hope for legacy Win32 code as MS slowly starts forcing everyone to use .NET.