Submitted by The ReactOS project has released version 0.3.5 of their ambitious operating system. ReactOS aims to be a “ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.” This new version comes packed with improvements.
The most important changes are summed up as follows:
- Updated bootloader (FreeLdr), with some parts rewritten for better compatibility and better code maintenance
- Memory (heap and pools) corruptions fixes throughout the whole system
- Kernel: a number of critical bugs fixed over the whole kernel, and rewrite of an early initialization part of the Memory Manager
- Win32 subsystem: overall improvements in the subsystem, involving both user and kernel mode components
- Base CRT library had key parts reworked in favor of better compatibility
- Command shell (cmd.exe) improvements, especially in interpreting batch scripts
- Font changes for better metrics compatibility
- Internationalization support improvements with a keyboard layout switcher, working Regional Settings Control Panel Applet, 1st stage setup localization into quite a few languages, and more keyboard layouts added
- Almost all kernel mode drivers and user mode applications, control panel applets, DLLs were worked on, resulting in improvements, bugfixes and more functionality
The new release can be downloaded from the project’s download page.
Can someone explain why anyone would use ReactOS to completely mimic Windows 2000/XP … instead of just installing XP? And with “windows validation” how could you ever get any security updates?
Um, what? What updates?
Think:
* commercial unix -> linux
* windows -> ReactOS
The whole point of reactOS is to do what windows does, without paying for windows, then?
f–king stupid.
It is not about money it is about freedom:
– Where will i’ll be able to buy XP in two years and who guarantees that?
– Who guarantees Microsoft won’t stop authorizing XP installs?
– Where can I legally and for an reasonable price for an private person buy the XP source code to make very necessary changes to it required to sanely use it on a nettop or to correct really old flaws it has?
(eg. for easy correctable flaws: non resizable dialogs, still existing win3.11 dialogs)
– why the hell have i to put up with this incredibly annoying WGA?
While we’re talking about guarantees…who guarantees their software runs on ReactOS.
Answer : Nobody!
And if some software doesn’t work because of compatibility issues, i have the freedom to correct those incompatibilities and just make that software work. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Last I checked, Windows 2k/XP only ran on IA32 & x86_64: if you’d even bothered to glance at the changelog you’d see that ReactOS are a long way along in their work to port ReactOS to ARM, PPC and other architectures. That makes it instantly far more useful than XP is for a lot of applications, including the emerging light-weight PC & laptop markets, which can be made even cheaper if they use non-x86 CPUs.
..probably for the same reason that people one day started installing GNU/Linux instead of Unix.
Why on earth should ReactOS get Windows security updates?
I wonder if this project will start to attract more attention (and therefore, developers) now that XP has been retired.
Wouldn’t that be ironic? MS loses out to open-source not through Linux, but through a clone of it’s most popular (and obsolete) Operating System.
make it work with VirtualBox .. the live CD will not boot properly ;(
Qemu is good for non-x86 stuff, but for anything else Open Source projects should use VirtualBox.
Since version 1.6 it is fast, easy and very compatible.
And it is also Open Source.
VirtualBox is okay, but it’s not the greatest. There are still a number of things that don’t work well with VirtualBox itself (like CD burning from within a VM), and its hardware support is only so-so.
Look at what kvm+qemu can do these days. Hardware accelerated GL from within the VM? Hawt.
and why the f*** should opensource projects use virtualbox?
To hit a wider userbase of course. You cater to your users, not the other way around. Not to say Sun doesn’t have a ways to go making VirtualBox more compatible themselves, but that’s a whole ‘nother thread
Edited 2008-07-01 19:55 UTC
qemu/kvm is a shitload less painful.. in short, it JUST WORKS(tm’ed to hell).
virtualbox does NOT
It works for me and it works on a lot more platforms than KVM.
IMHO VirtualBox is _the_ userfriendly open source virtualisation solution.
Bingo. Not everyone is running a Linux based OS as a host and even if they were, at what point did options become a bad thing?
As much as I like VirtualBox, I still prefer Qemu as the universal lowest-common denominator. As far as Syllable goes we still target VMWare, simply because a lot of people who are interested tend to be running Windows, and the VMDK format is near universal these days.
VirtualBox needs to fix a few bugs in their emulation before it can surplant Qemu for x86 virtualisation/emulation.
i installed reactos 0.3.4 on vbox and vbox ose so i don’t see why there would be any problems with 0.3.5.
i’m glad to see reactos pushed back 3.5 to get some major bug fixing done. it needed some time to squash a few things and there’s no point adding new features when everything else is buggy.
an open source windows clone helps other open source OS’s as well. can’t wait to play around with the new release.
Ah, because virtualbox is opensource.
I just booted and installed successfully from the install cd iso image in VirtualBox 1.6.2. So you might try that one if the live CD fails.
There are, however, hardly any user-visible changes from the previous version. It certainly still has a long way to go.
If you decide to go idle in #reactos on freenode. Do *NOT* make any references to hackbunny’s momma. (s)he will kick ban you
…*sniff*
Nice one step closer to alpha
I could be proven wrong, but I think the ground has shifted towards web apps and cross-platform applications.
Many new apps are cross-platform or delivered via the browser making the OS a lot less important. What the ReactOS people are trying to do is commendable, but very difficult. Will they ever reach feature parity to the point that any software title or driver designed for windows works with ReactOS?
I find that hard to believe. The big applications that people use Windows for (autocad comes to mind) will either become cross-platform and have an official release by Autodesk on OS X and Linux or continue to be certified on specific versions of Microsoft windows.
It seems, at least right now, quite hard to believe that ReactOS will become the defacto win32 platform, but I am hoping to be wrong. Linux has become the defacto Unix, but the unix landscape is very different from the one dominated by Microsoft windows.
There is just so much you can do in an webapp, even with all the ajax in the world. The majority of big applications don’t show too much signs of going cross platform.
If reactos ever reaches the point of XP compatibility, it will be enough for a lot of people, especially since there isn’t too much of a trend right now to go Vista only, except for games, but it would have to happen withing the next 4-5 years.
Anyway, an interesting possibility, at least theoretically.
And isn’t that silly. Don’t get me wrong; I agree with you. The silly bit is that the problem has turned out to be so hard. Why is it so hard? But solve that problem and you’ve essentially got hotels on both Boardwalk and Park Place.
Edited 2008-07-01 22:27 UTC
It is so hard because people didn’t want to go the Java road. Now we are stuck with a wide selection of inadequate alternatives:
– Ajax/DHTML/Javascript/etc and all real browser functions were never intended for what they are used now and won’t ever be an alternative for “rich clients”
That is obvious by the way of their workings. Imagine an photoshop clone in those techniques… rerender the whole page whenever *one* pixel is changed? Not feasible.
– Flash: isn’t really cross platform, i mean sure, there is an horribly bad Linux version and an unusable bad OS X implementation, but people are getting increasingly fed up with it, at least those who don’t use Windows. I’m even tempted to completely remove it from my machines. I’d rather use DOS apps or become an monk in an cloister without electricity than to consider broadly using flash apps.
– Silverlight: i fully expect that to turn out as half assed as .Net. I don’t ever expect an usable OS X version and the Linux/Mono version is going to be the same game of catch-up then with .Net itself.
I don’t see any real movement away from Native apps except for very few types of applications and i also don’t see any real advantage of going that road.
Sure, web technology is great for your insurance companies management applications, but almost none of your daily desktop apps could be done in web technology without getting actually worse.
Java could have been an way out of this, but even today it is so burdened with prejudice that i don’t see that happen in the near future.
ReactOS doesn’t have to run Autocad 2012 to be considered successful. If it can run those countless thousands of inhouse apps written in some old version of Delphi or visual basic which are used in companies around the world to do all kinds of vital tasks, then it will find a niche and probably be very successful.
In a few years time if someone is faced with running a tiny but vital app (which was written for NT4 and not significantly updated since) on the latest Windows release which will probably require all kinds of resources and strange licensing requirements, or running the app on a small lean free ReactOS install, I see ReactOS winning almost every time.
The ReactOS people are working with the Wine people; their Windows compatibilities should be roughly equal (excepting that ReactOS has to re-implement the entire OS, not just a layer on top of *nix). I’m guessing that there are already simple programs running on ReactOS…
Not just “simple” programs. You should check their screenshots & app database
I use Linux at home, but still like to see how ReactOS is going (and they’re making great progress at the moment!).
By this time next year, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it at a point where it is suitable for everyday use.
I just tried out their new VMWare image, and it has come on leaps and bounds since the previous version I tried.
It runs Firefox and Abiword pretty well but there is obviously a huge amount still to do.
(see pic: http://i32.tinypic.com/5d2gs7.png )
Regardless of whether you agree with the politics of making an open-source Windows clone, the technical feat is incredible.
congrats to the ReactOS Team! Keep up great work!
Great, Great New !!