ReactOS -> Windows -- LINUX/gnu -> Unix

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Hi,

some people argue that ReactOS is not so strange a development really. ReactOS trying to be binary compatible with Windows just as Linux and gnu try to be binary compatible with Unix. Unix and Windows are proprietary I guess their thinking is. I agree. Although I think in a practical sense, well this is just a feeling, but I think ReactOS developers will have a practically harder time to get ReactOS up and running with a lot of legal obstacles to fight even if their repository doesn't contain a single piece of Windows code, but is just their own implementation of "Windows APIs".

Anyway, I've recently detected that there is a repository of live cd's and installation cd's available that are created 'daily' . In the beginning I thought I would need their "building environment" ROSBE(ReactOS Build Environment) but after some weeks I found the iso images making trying it out much more simple, of course in a virtual machine because even they themselves don't recommend you to try it outside of a virtual machine. Here are the iso images: http://iso.reactos.org/bootcd/ . I personally test it out with VirtualBox OSE in Trisquel, but it's been a lot of days since I've tested last.

Ah, but there are multiple open-source implementations of UNIX, and UNIX has long had multiple vendors rather than a single company controlling the rights to it. That makes the situation of GNU/Linux somewhat different from ReactOS, and simplified their task greatly in comparison to the tedious reverse-engineering that the ReactOS team might have done by the time Microsoft decides to completely drop the OS they're trying to copy.

Sort of assumed ReactOS was still vaporware like Duke Nukum Forever, I have been hearing open source version of WinNT for years.

I like the concept but I downloaded a copy a long time ago and never got it to work.

ReactOS is interesting, i've tried a live CD with a Visual Studio 6.0 executable and it seemed to work just fine, given opportunity, i'm gonna fire up a VS .NET 3.5 binary and test that as well.

But as i have said before, its not going to be useful until NTFS and USB support is implemented. Networking support would be useful, but not critical.

You can't compare GNU and Windows. Two different OSes.

I've been following ReactOS for some time, as I'd like to eventually use it as my primary OS. However, its just not ready. It only works on older hardware, and even then it has a ton of issues. Until it has USB support I wont run it outside of a VM.

That said, the progress they've made is absolutely astounding. I don't think Microsoft will be dropping NT any time soon, the only reason they dropped 9x was for security/stability reasons which don't plague NT. Hopefully within 5-10 years it'll be a viable alternative. It already runs a large amount of software, they've at least proven it can be done.

I think ReactOS is an interesting idea. If there were enough developers and resources for this project, it would progress much quicker and be more reliable. It's just too bad they don't have NTFS working...that's a deal-breaker for me

The way I see it ReactOS is just trying to be API compatible with Windows and I don't think APIs are copyrightable. I just don't hear anyone concerned about the legality of WINE. Seeing ReactOS and WINE shared a lot of codes, I don't think there's much to worry now that they've switched to the clean house approach.

Anyone hear about LUK Linux Unified Kernel?

The claim of wdm drivers support sounds interesting. But I have to say their website doesn't instill confidence and the forum seems to have even less posts than here.