Anyone here ever heard of ReactOS?

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The YouTuber "Barnacules" (actually "Barnacules Nerdgasm") did a video about Windows 10 installing on people's computers without their permission, and some people in the comments began talking about an OS called "ReactOS", which is a Linux flavored effort that's apparently a lot more able to run Windows programs.

Has anyone here heard of it, or better yet, tried it?

I first heard of it many years ago, and the only boot CD I have of it is a very old version. It is still in development stages, but it would appear it has improved a lot since I tried it. I really should get a newer version to try some time.

ReactOS isn't Linux based. It is its own system, which is supposed to be binary compatible with Windows.

Yes. ReactOS is a clone of Windows XP. I'm guessing it's called ReactOS because the programmers are reacting to Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy with a similar tactic of their own.

I've heard of it, but having used it in virtual machines, it's still VERY early in development. We'll probably see a competent version of it around the time GNU Hurd is finally released.

Yes I have heard of it,

I don't recommend installing it unless you like explosions. A lot it its code comes from wine and we all probably know what a piece of crap it is. Don't get me wrong, wine is an impressive feat in terms of programming but its not practical since nothing hardly works and what does is going to have a lot of bugs.

Yupp, tried getting things to run in it and had some success. Some things worked and some things did not. Wasn't overly impressed with the lack of support for .NET applications.

I wanted a bootable Windows DVD and i played around with Windows PE (That Symantec Ghost was booted from), but screen resolution was crap. Thought about setting up Linux with WINE, but eventually found a Bart PE builder that worked.

That thing was in alpha stage since I was 12, and has remained there ever since. Forget about it.

I tried it years ago and it messed up my computer . Practically unusable,

I remember when I first saw this, the first thing I thought was "welcome to the early 2000s." https://www.reactos.org/project-news/re ... 0-released

To be fair, the ReactOS project is horribly understaffed and underfunded. If more people would give them money when they download, maybe they'd be able to get past the alpha version.

I just tried running ReactOS in VirtualBox. I need to find a couple of drivers for networking and multimedia, but other than that, it seems to work fine. It also has a certain "late 90's" charm, as it looks a lot like Windows 98.

It would be great if ReactOS had proper drivers for running under Virtualbox. I'm not sure if Virtualbox's Windows guest drivers are open source though.

ReactOS has some pretty nifty screensavers too. I'll say this much: Despite being in the alpha stage, this OS has much smoother full-screen animation than Linux. I'd say given this it's probably an ideal gaming OS.

^I actually meant on Linux, though it's impressive that ReactOS is working as well for you as it is with generic drivers.