Submitted by The ReactOS team has released ReactOS 0.3.13. “This version continues building on the work first previewed in 0.3.12, ranging from memory management improvements to better sound and display control. A Coverity scan also occurred between 0.3.12 and 0.3.13, helping the team clean up potential security holes and also help improve general stability by enforcing more care in memory operations.” The detailed 0.3.13 changelog is also available.
I know its still aplha, but I’ve really seen some dramatic improvement over the past couple of years. Old simplistic programs I wrote for windows have gradually started to work on ReactOS.
Haven’t tried Reactos in a while but will definately try this new version out.
From what I’ve seen/read of it I’ve always liked the NT kernel architecture (never been very keen on the win32 subsystem though…) and having an open source implementation of it is great. As for compability I know there’s been work on leveraging wine for win32, is this available in the official distribution or is it a separate distribution? Also is there a huge difference in compability between these versions.
And congratulations to the Reactos team for making it into SOC again!
Indeed – I know this probably doesn’t matter to a lot of people, but ReactOS had a lengthy “dry spell” when it came to GSoC. This year they put a ton of effort into their ideas page and application submission and it worked out great
Congrats to the renewed enthusiasm that the ReactOS team used to pull things together this year!
I was half-expecting ReactOS to get in, and Haiku to be left out this year
Before someone asks (like in every single ReactOS related news article) why this project exists in the first place when we already have Linux and windows, it’s because *they can*. People should have the freedom to write whatever applications they want or develop any technology they want.
And the ability to run Linux with a stable reactOS in vmware to run Windows apps would be fantastic.
I think it would be better for ReactOS to merge with unified kernel.
If unified ever work fine, as it start to do (apparently), it is a better way to run Windows apps and drivers in Linux as it is just a kernel module that add windows compatibility. Add this to the Galium3D directX state tracker and you solve the second problem (OSS driver will still suck).
A unified kernel is a terrible idea and really foreign to the way Linux is developed. Do you remember OS/2? No? Ever wonder why not?
Because Microsoft took it and turned it into Windows NT
Edited 2011-03-29 20:38 UTC
No.
Microsoft did take their part of the joint project with IBM and eventually rolled out NT. Meanwhile IBM took their part and rolled out OS/2. It was a nice platform which nobody developed for because IBM made it compatible with Microsoft’s stuff, meaning that there was no incentive to write apps for OS/2 since apps for DOS and Windows would run just fine on OS/2 most of the time. IBM inadvertently gave developers incentive to support Windows and not IBM’s own system by implementing top notch compatibility.
Why on earth is this article not on the main page?
This is a lot more interesting than the endless updates on Nokia’s recent identity crisis, and even news about the latest updates regarding Unicorns®.
Yes, I’m looking at you Tom!
A cool idea would be creating a “distro” based on ReactOS with a complete set of win32 open source applications running as first-class citizens on top of ReactOS.
Edited 2011-03-29 00:00 UTC
I’ve been working on such a distribution for quite some while, called ReactOS++.
As soon as the networking stack is implemented, I will continue working on ReactOS++.
And with the Win32 port of KDE in mind, that could become very interesting IMO. 😉
Edited 2011-03-29 03:55 UTC
Yes, really cool!!!
Having a full Qt environment running on top of it could be also the base of a new set of applications able to run on ReactOS…. and windows, and linux, and bsds, and macs, and….. etc.
Good news! Too little too late for ReactOS++. I just fooled around with the Qemu version and noticed the ReactOS team have already implemented a package manager them selves. I have the idea networking also works now. Will install it on Bare metal today.
According to the release notes, Mono 2.8 works now. I assume that means that I could develop and run .NET 4 apps on ReactOS. This is a significant development. I certainly be giving that a try today!
I’ll try Qt creator on it!
Last time I tried it, ReactOS was not stable enough to even open an Internet connection (yeah it was a while ago), but the real acid test for an opensource Windows clone would be having it autohost with OpenWatcom.