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The ReactOS project recently showcased on YouTube [that it's] possible to virtualize the Mac OS X 10.4 operating system on their free and open-source Windows alternative operating system.
Our "Watch" series of articles continues today with a very interesting one where you can see Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger running inside the ReactOS computer operating system, which we believe has come a long way, and it's beginning to look like a viable alternative to Microsoft's Windows 7 or Vista operating systems, perfect for desktop computers and laptops.
The latest release, ReactOS 0.4.8, showed us last month that it's now possible to use Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows Vista software on the free and open-source operating system that's binary compatible with computer programs and device drivers made for Windows.
It also introduced initial support for reading data from NTFS formatted drives, a new app similar to the DrWatson32 software for Windows, some user-visible changes like support for balloon notifications in the system tray area, and support for unmounting network drives directly from the file explorer.
The video is available on YouTube
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday May 10 2018, @08:58PM (17 children)
I would love a free open source alternative to Windows that wouldn't require switching to different programs, fiddling with Wine, dual-booting, or just doing without. ReactOS could be that free open source alternative, but it's not ready yet. Despite the huge improvement over just a few years ago, it's still in Alpha. There's nothing novel about virtualizing MacOS X using an emulator on ReactOS, but it does mean that they are doing good work. The fact that they've made it this far shows that they are pretty committed to the project.
Here's hoping that 5 years from now, Microsoft will have competition from a free open source Windows compatible OS.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday May 10 2018, @09:38PM
Modded you insightful because there's no 'Amen, brother' mod.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 10 2018, @10:05PM (7 children)
Do you have any hands-on with how Alpha is Alpha?
Is it sufficiently ready to try single applications on, or does it crash all over the place?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Thursday May 10 2018, @10:33PM (5 children)
https://reactos.org/wiki/Testing_Central
Looks like quite a few programs run well or with only minor issues but a great many more have serious problems.
I gather that the OS itself is actually pretty stable.
I have been rooting for this project for years. There's a constant stream of people trying to migrate to linux because the new version of windows sucks, then complaining it's not Windows. Something that does actually work like they are used to would be better both for them, and for linux. ReactOS really has the potential to become that OS. A drop in replacement for "classic" windows XP through 7, fully binary compatible, free of spyware and microsoft. Also great for specialized hardware that only works with XP (a serious problem in several niche areas.)
I wish them the best, I might even try it again myself soon.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @12:58AM
I know a number of companies (small/medium sized) that are not going past Win 7 for engineering and other technical computing...and are not sure where they are going next. Do the ReactOS developers need more resources (money, mostly) because if they do I could imaging a number of potential users that would be willing to pitch in.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @02:04AM (3 children)
Good luck. MS will crush this if it ever gains traction. MS will make sure newest programs use Win 10 telemetry APIs and must be bought from the app store. Sure you can run old programs on ReactOS but you probably won't be able to run tomorrow's shiny ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @04:08AM
Technical and engineering users often write their own in-house software, and don't normally care about the latest shiny thing.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 11 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)
Or just pay off some people in order to sue ReactOS out of existence if it ever gets close to usable, regardless of the fact it's a clean-room implementation.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 11 2018, @05:19PM
I do have similar concerns, but the one thing they have going for them is that they're not in the US. Otherwise, I'm sure they would have already been sued and the project would have died years ago.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 11 2018, @05:17PM
Hardware compatibility used to be a huge issue. Driver compatibility issues. Etc. That's at least how bad it used to be. I haven't played with it much recently, but I usually fire up a ReactOS instance in a VM when they do a new release. It seems to be pretty stable nowadays, but they recommend not using the current version for every day use (their definition of Alpha). From what I understand they'll mark it Beta when they think it should be safe to make everyday use of it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2018, @11:25PM (4 children)
Yeah, let's populate all of our FOSS boxes with a bunch of misc. blackbox programs.
No thanks.
You can wait, while most of us have just moved on.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2018, @11:42PM (1 child)
Here in the really real world where you live, the exact opposite of your FOSS utopia is happening right now. The Internet of Things is all around you and all the Things are proprietary black boxes with your precious FOSS software trapped inside. You can't modify your precious FOSS software. The proprietary firmware of your Things won't allow you access.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2018, @11:52PM
silly wabbit, /r/stallmanwasright
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 11 2018, @05:27PM (1 child)
Please note that ReactOS is open source. "Blackbox programs" exist in the Linux world too. Nowadays you can get many open source programs for Windows PCs too. React OS + open source programs would fit the bill. The only reason I still use Windows is because I am a PC gamer. At least with a computer I can still use it for other things as opposed to whatever XYZ console. There's also this awesome place called GoG that essentially lets you own your games. Sure there are some Open Source games, but for the most part they're casual, released after they were "useless" to their owner (Doom, is an example I think), or just really bad games. Also, VR is cool.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:09PM
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
entertainmentsafety deserve neither liberty norentertainmentsafety."-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Friday May 11 2018, @08:21AM (2 children)
They've just put in NTFS support.
The first public version of NTFS came out in 1993.
5 years from now you won't have a free open-source Windows-compatible OS, if it takes them 25 years to get a filesystem in there (one that's been in Linux and other OS for quite a while with several implementations over the years).
Oh, and that's only "reading".
ReactOS will be perpetually playing catchup. It's never been at the point where an arbitrary program (for any version of Windows) stood a chance of working vaguely like it would on real Windows, in its entire existence.
By the time you get to the point that it could run, say, even a Wine-amount of Windows 7/8 software, then you'll be talking about an OS that will be four or five versions behind the things people are buying computers with. And with Windows 10's "no big versions, just lots of updates", it'll become impossible to track the changing API.
ReactOS literally never get the funding, support, or development to make a difference. Wine actually had commercial partners (Crossover, Transgaming, etc.) and still doesn't come close. And ReactOS is doing the hard part - the OS integration and compatibility (including hardware drivers, antique processor modes, etc.) - rather than just piggybacking on Linux.
I speak as someone who did buy Crossover several times and used it for years. It was actually more feasible to use OpenOffice (as was) than it was to hope that Crossover would allow Office to get as far into the documents as I needed. Support for that particular version of Office is better now but I couldn't speak at all for how modern Office works on Crossover any more. I gave up when I realised that I used Libreoffice every time. And that's one of their BEST supported apps.
I'm of the opinion that 25 years of playing catch-up to a binary OS is a lost cause in an era of platform independence and browser-focus. 1/3rd of my games on Steam are Linux-compatible (more even than Mac). The major browsers are all cross-platform. Hell, you can get Office for Android.
ReactOS is the MAME of the OS industry. Fine for preservation, archiving, compatibility with things so obsolete they don't even work on modern PC's even. But unlike MAME, it's only a homage, not a product you can base anything on (licence issues aside). I consider ReactOS to be "FreeDOS / DOSBox for Windows". Except even those programs have a huge amount of guaranteed compatibility with any random DOS program you might want to throw at it that it's never seen before.
Honestly, by the time ReactOS is just a "download, install, run" kind of thing, it'll be our kids saying "Oh, yeah, I remember having to install programs... look man, they have the version of Skype before Microsoft messed it up".
I'm not even sure I approve of ReactOS being mentioned in the same kind of way as Wine at all. Wine appears WAY ahead of the game and ReactOS feels like someone saying "I'll work on this bit of Wine (hardware interface / OS layer) which is outside the main scope, for nostalgia purposes".
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Friday May 11 2018, @04:20PM
We use Lync at work. It's already like that. Skype is messed up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday May 11 2018, @05:44PM
Please note until recently, they were fairly unpolished and had very few contributors. They recently switched to github and have for the past few years been coordinating with the Wine dev team. Or at least stealing from and I assume adding to Wine dev. I've not really looked into it very much. Yes, they will "always be playing catch-up" to a certain degree, but they're trying to do something very useful. I would love me a free OS that can run all of the games from today and earlier. I assure you, Windows isn't working on that, because they don't care about old games. They don't care about old software. They don't care that you have a perfectly usable Thinkpad A21m or three sitting in your office. They want your money, money, money.
Comparing ReactOS to Wine. Is like comparing an Arcade Machine with MAME. One was developed to run things natively, the other was developed to run things in a sandbox.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"