ReactOS 0.3.9 Review and Screenshot Tour
As the new version of Microsoft Windows 7 is nearing completion, many users are gearing up for the big upgrade. Since it is the most popular operating system, many people who use an alternative OS miss out on some good software made for Windows, such as Photoshop, many new games et cetera. Even though we have partial solutions like Wine, they are not perfect and remain the main obstacle for wider adoption of open source operating systems.
The ReactOS Team gathered more than 10 years ago to address this problem. I often wonder why they fail to make the headlines with their releases (probably because the project has yet to reach beta stage), as their goal is very useful to the wider open source community: to completely reverse-engineer Redmond’s flagship product, thus providing a working clone of Windows under an open source license. 10 years is a long time and although they failed to deliver version 1.0 in this time, by working closely with the WINE project, they managed to put together a working development version, which is still impressive considering the work reverse-engineering a multi-million-dollar project demands.
I know I’ve written about the project before, but I never did an extensive review. I decided to do it this week, the guys are doing a great job and they certainly deserve a mention.
So let’s see what version 0.3.9 has in store for us, shall we?
The new release is very fast, the minimum requirements are under 32 megabytes of RAM, you will need as many megabytes of hard disk space to download the live image. I took 0.3.9 for a spin using Virtualbox. The LiveCD should work fine too.
Apart from the usual apps and a skin that will make any veteran Windows 95 and 98 user shed a nostalgic tear, the Tango icon theme certainly improves the overall impression. Notice the icons do not have a transparent background. I believe this is a Virtualbox problem, it worked fine using the LiveCD. And what do we have here? Virtual desktops! Yes, ReactOS provides this essential tool out-of-the-box (unlike Windows 7).
ReactOS also features ReactX, which should replace DirectX. It is still in its early stages, but you can see it resembles DirectX very closely, even with the version numbers.
Now let us download some applications! First, we will try out ReactOS’ “Download”, an interface similar to Linux package managers. You simply select the software you wish to install, and the front-end does the rest of the work for you.
Not really a lot of apps available yet, but there is some fun stuff, like Diablo. I downloaded DosBox, Abiword and Firefox (both 2 and 3 are available). Don’t forget, these are all Windows binaries!
The installers worked fine. Now to try the software out!
Firefox 3 was a minor disappointment. Looks like it could not render the CSS. On the other hand, it did actually load the sites. And because there are lots of nice plugins like FireFTP which can replace some desktop apps, making Firefox work well would be a step in the right direction.
I then attempted to run Abiword, a FOSS word processor. In the virtual machine, there were some graphics glitches, but I could write without any problems. The toolbar buttons were a bit funky, too.
So the tested applications managed to run and perform some basic tasks. Even though ReactOS is still in alpha, let us try some untested software and see how it works. I fired up Firefox, downloaded the VLC player installer…
… when suddenly …
You have to admit this is a good Windows clone. Joke aside, I am sure this will see a great deal of improvement throughout the alpha and beta stages.
Since the restart takes about 20 seconds and I was still curious, I rebooted the VM and downloaded the lightweight OffByOne browser (interesting that they included it in Downloads) in order to obtain my VLC executable. This is how the ReactOS File Manager looks like. Like Explorer’s evil twin.
I installed VLC, but sadly it did not run. Of course, I was maybe wrong to choose a multimedia application, though I somehow had confidence in VLC’s excellent programming. However, this is still an alpha-quality operating system and multimedia is probably not their first priority.
I recommend you give ReactOS a try. You will be surprised at how far a community project can come. Programming an entire operating system is not an easy task. The ReactOS Team certainly has the vision, they want to bring you a completely free version of Windows, so you have control over what you run, but do not need to switch to an OS that works different. ReactOS gives you a choice and choice is one the most important aspects of software freedom.
You can view the project roadmap here and if you really like what they are doing, consider donating a few bucks. To download and test ReactOS click here.
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I hope ReactOS will be awsome
Never heard of ReactOS before. Sounds promising, however I wonder how they will keep MS off their back if they continue to make it look and feel so much like Windows. I would think there’d be a copyright issue there.
Let’s hope the upcoming beta version is able to run essential stuff like FF and VCL stable. Looks promising so far!
[...] ReactOS 0.3.9 Review and Screenshot Tour As the new version of Microsoft Windows 7 is nearing completion, many users are gearing up for the big upgrade. Since it is the most popular operating system, many people who use an alternative OS miss out on some good software made for Windows, such as Photoshop, many new games et cetera. Even though we have partial solutions like Wine, they are not perfect and remain the main obstacle for wider adoption of open source operating systems. [...]
My major gripe at the moment is the lack of NTFS support, this will be a huge problem as FAT32 cannot handle files greater than 4GB, so if you like editing video etc you will be out of luck. I wonder if NTFS will ever become a viable option due to copywrite infringement etc.
Other than the lack of NTFS support I find this a very exciting project, and am thinking of trying it on my EeePC as it works well running on a Virtual PC.
First time I ever heard of ReactOS, but already I’m as excited as the first time I booted up DOS 3.31. I hope and pray the team succeeds with a stable, compatible OS. I always like to say the only things I own that are from Microsoft are the Windows operating system and an MS ballpen. I don’t use MS Office or MS Works, and I’d be glad to shed the operating system too. I can always keep the ballpen.
I tried the OS in virtual box. Sad to say I found that the OS really sucked. I feel that they do have great potential as good and even better than linux. The project does not have the funding it needs. They need the same support and funding as Ubuntu linux has. If I ever win the lottery I’ll bring this OS to true life. Also, I feel they need to consider replacing some of they people on there team that write the code and whom run the project. That part of my review would take too long to write. I wish them the best of luck. And I hope they find a true course for the project. And the right people to make it happen.
I have spent a lot of time reading about this OS. I tried it first in VMware. It crashed. I then downloaded a VM from Torrent. It also crashed. I then tried it in linux with virtualbox. It also crashed. I then downloaded the live CD. It crashed as well on 3 differandent computers. I downloaded it again from two different sources in the hopes I had a bad CD. I did not. After all that I felt the real install would also crash and burn. I tried it on my Acer. On my Dell and then on my wifes gateway. All with the same results. I did however see some pretty good screen shots on what ever machine it does actually does run on. From what I read. The project needs more redirection from leadership than money. The theme is awesome. But I also feel that they should not mirror microsucks as close as they do. If the project ever takes off. I believe it should try for some originality
of its own. And fire everyone that currently works for the project and start a new with real leadership and real programmers.
To Clare
Ntfs is already out for Linux. To make it for ReactOS won’t be very different. They could, if they had to, call it ReactFS or such and remain safe from infringements etc.
About ReactX, that piece of software is really WINE code right now. It is more WINE than the whole of ReactOS, so basically ReactX is working like an OpenGLwrapper.
And to the author, ReactX isn’t anything similar to DirectX currently.
I really enjoy flaming, sorry, but just because the Dxdiag program looks similar to that of windows, it is NOT similar to DirectX… YET!
So, the interface (Win32) is the same, reactX isn’t truly operational.
It looks as if it might be from 30 to 50 or more years before ReactOS is good enough to be used, by then nobody will even remember WinXP, or it might never be ready.
It is probably just a waste of time.