The current version being worked on is 0.4.15. The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. ReactOS is written primarily in C, with some parts, such as the File Explorer, in C++ and some minor bits of assembly. Later, as the kernel became more complete and stable, and as basic drivers such as the IDE and Keyboard drivers were written, more people were able to get involved in the development. It was a time of only a few people writing the difficult kernel beginnings. Only a few of the developers knew how to write kernel code. The first few years of ReactOS were painfully slow, despite the large amount of code that was being written. In February 1998, ReactOS officially began. The project was renamed ReactOS, since the roots of this new OS grew out of a dissatisfaction with Microsoft Corporation's monopoly over the operating system market. It was decided that the new target should be Windows NT, and that there would be an emphasis on results - on written code, rather than endless talk. It was around this time that Jason Filby became project coordinator and called on everyone still subscribed to the mailing list to revive the project. By the end of 1997, when Windows 98 was released, FreeWin95 had burnt out. Unfortunately, like many such Open Source projects, stylistic differences inhibited FreeWin95's progress and it never accomplished its goal. Install it on some ancient laptop, and you just might be able to use your favorite legacy software again.Some time in 1996, a group called FreeWin95 was formed with the goal to implement an operating system that would be a free, Open Source clone of Windows 95. If you just want a free operating system that's easy to use, you'll be much happier with something like Linux Mint.īut if you're a more experienced user, happy to spend time tweaking or exploring, and you really need to run older Windows binaries, then ReactOS could be interesting. But it's also still very much an alpha, unreliable and packed with bugs. ReactOS is a hugely ambitious project - which is partly why there was a 10-year gap between versions 0.3.0 and 0.4.0 - and the developers have achieved a lot. There's also a LiveCD which will boot ReactOS, and allow you to browse its menus, but you won't be able to install anything. This is more likely to work with older, simpler packages (Win95 text editor = probably yes, huge multimedia suite = probably no), although there are no guarantees.įor the best results, follow the download link, grab the "BootCD" file and install it somewhere (this can be a VirtualBox VM if you don't have a spare PC). You can also try installing other Windows and DOS applications. Double-click the Applications Manager shortcut on your desktop and you're able to browse and install some great tools, all in a couple of clicks: VLC Media Player, Winamp, GIMP, Irfanview, Firefox, Opera, OpenOffice, BurnAware, CCleaner, assorted torrent clients, VNC tools and more. If you're willing to spend some time exploring ReactOS, and you don't expect too much, then there are some interesting touches here. It's an alpha, missing some major features (they've only just added NTFS read support, can't write yet), and what you do get has plenty of bugs. While that sounds great, this isn't a project for the average user. And it'll run some Windows and DOS applications, maybe including DOS games that regular 64-bit Windows can no longer touch. It looks like Windows (a 10-year-old version, anyway), so you already know how to use it. You can boot your desktop or laptop from it. ReactOS is an open-source binary-compatible reimplementation of Windows.
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