ReactOS
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ReactOS "atom" logo
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ReactOS is an open source project to develop an operating system that is object code-compatible with Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 applications and drivers. The project is currently in the pre-alpha development stage, although some of the project's goals and milestones have already been achieved as of May 2005.
ReactOS is licensed under the GNU General Public License and also partly licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License and BSD Licence.
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History
Around 1996, a group of open source developers started a project called FreeWin95, with the aim of implementing an operating system that would be a clone of Windows 95. The project stalled in discussions of the design of the system.
At the end of 1997, the project still had no results. The project members called to revive the project, the project's target was changed to Windows NT and the project's name was changed to ReactOS. The ReactOS project began in February 1998, with developing the kernel and basic drivers.
Functionality
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As of 2005, the ReactOS kernel is quite stable, many APIs are ready for a higher level of development and a basic GUI is available. ReactOS features ReactOS Explorer, which is a basic shell for ReactOS, similar to Windows Explorer.
Version 0.2 of ReactOS is able to run many Win32 applications, including Notepad (a basic text editor), Regedit (the registry editor), Cmd (the commander interpreter), and several other applications (such as AbiWord) and basic games (such as Quake and Quake II, and the Wine clone of Minesweeper).
As of version 0.2.5, sound support is functional for some cards, and networking code is moving ahead. Screenshots of the Lynx text based browser grabbing a page have been demonstrated. Support for the Ext2 filesystem and the GRUB and NTLDR boot loaders was also added, allowing ReactOS to co-exist with Linux and Windows partitions.
Since 0.2.6 Dillo, mIRC, and a DCOM components of the Mozilla Firefox web browser (using the Gecko rendering engine) run in ReactOs. Some games like Unreal Tournament are confirmed to work, using software rendering. Also OpenGL runs with some minor problems, using the nVidia-Driver or the software implementation Mesa 3D. And the first webserver (Tiny Web server (http://www.ritlabs.com/tinyweb/)) and The UltraVNC Client (http://www.ultravnc.com) are reported to work. As you can see in the screenshot on the right, even OpenOffice.org (Version 1.x) works partly.
Related projects
ReactOS works with the Wine project so that the ReactOS project can benefit from Wine's progress in implementing the Win32 API. These efforts mainly concern Wine's DLLs, most of which can be shared between ReactOS and Wine. Both projects work on cross-compatibility issues, so that the remaining few DLLs can be used in ReactOS.
Future
The ReactOS roadmap indicates release (0.3.0) will include full TCP/IP networking support. ReactOs-Developers are also working on USB-Support currently. For this the Cromwell Linux implementation is ported. Another thing that is currently been worked on is the reactos.com homepage.
ReactOS developers are working on improving the GUI system, adding networking, multimedia, and plug-and-play hardware support. Java and .NET support (through Mono) has also been stub. Provisions for DOS, OS/2, and POSIX subsystems have also been made, in a similar fashion to the Windows NT subsystems.
In October 2004, the goal for version 1.0 was articulated as a stable implementation of a subset of Windows Workstation ("ReactOS Workstation"), including TCP/IP networking, client-side and server-side support of CIFS, OpenGL, DirectX and support for Windows device drivers.
Challenges and opportunities
One of the challenges for the project has been a lack of developers. The coordinators hope that the rate of development will increase as more people are drawn to volunteer their time. They note that ReactOS provides a unique and fulfilling opportunity to be involved in the early stages of OS development, as Linux did in the 1990s.
Criticism
Some critics of the ReactOS project have set forth reasons why they believe ReactOS not to be a worthwhile project. Among these, some have stated that several well-developed open source operating systems already exist. (Currently all based on Unix: Linux and the various variants of BSD.) They feel that rather than building a new operating system, it would be better to concentrate on improving these and work on WINE so that they can better run existing Windows applications. However, ReactOS developers argue that that an OS which is more like Windows at a lower level is more likely to be able to easily run Windows applications.
Aside from the functionality of Windows applications, ReactOS developers and other advocates argue that a Unix-style OS is not the only or necessarily the best type of OS and that the design of NT contains many ideas which are an improvement on the Unix way of doing things. They also strongly feel that choice is an essential principle of the Open Source and Free Software movements, and assert that someone who wants to use an open-source modern graphical operating system should not be forced to use one that's Unix-like. They argue that the movements will ultimately have the greatest success when everyone has the freedom to choose a free-software OS which functions in a way that best suits their preferences, and/or is similar to the OS they're accustomed to.
Hardware requirements
- IA32-capable processor (i486 or more recent implementations)
- 32MB RAM
- IDE hard disk
- FAT16/FAT32 boot partition
- VGA-compatible video card
- Standard keyboard
- PS/2 compatible mouse or Microsoft Mouse-compatible serial mouse
As noted, ReactOS can also be run on software which emulates the above hardware, such as VMWare, QEMU or Bochs.
As Windows NT 4.0 additionally ran on MIPS, Alpha AXP, and PowerPC architectures in addition to the i386 architecture, and NT-derived operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 have been ported to several architectures (i.e., AMD64, IA32 and IA64), ReactOS developers have also taken initial steps in view of portability. For example, support for a variant IA32 architecture, the Xbox platform, was added to the 0.25 release, and efforts toward a ReactOS port on the PowerPC and the Xen architecture are also underway as of 2005.
See also
External links
- ReactOS home page (http://www.reactos.com/)
- Splash - Official ReactOS Newsletter (http://reactos.com/splash/)
- ReactOS Wiki (http://reactos.com/wiki)
- ReactOs Fansite (http://frik85.reactos.at)
- ReactOS Nightly Builds (http://meklort.isa-geek.com/)
- Interview with Steven Edwards of ReactOS and WINE (http://www.winehq.com/?interview=14) (WineHQ)
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