ReactOS 0.4.0
A version of Linux that strives to provide a drop-in replacement for Windows. FREE | WWW.REACTOS.ORG
ReactOS aims to be an open source OS that’s binary-compatible with Windows applications and drivers. Ultimately this boils down to chasing not only a moving target, but (thanks to the closed nature of all things Windows) also an invisible one. Not only that, but the team has had to be very accurate about its reverse engineering strategy in order to remain on the right side of copyright law. So we can forgive any perceived delay in shipping a final (or beta) version.
At present, ReactOS aims to provide a kernel that’s compatible with Windows NT 5.2 (Server 2003) and a userland that’s compatible with NT 6.3 (Windows 8.1). What it categorically isn’t is Wine running on top of Linux — you can’t push Ctrl-Alt-Whatever and hide from the Start button in a virtual terminal, nor can you even run Linux binaries. To confuse the issue, Wine and ReactOS do share some code, specifically Wine’s implementation of various Win32 services and libraries.
You can download either a live CD or an installer for ReactOS. The live CD did not work well outside of VirtualBox, but we were able to use the install medium. The boot process prints Windows-style device paths and then, sure enough, first impressions look and feel just like Windows 2000 or XP in classic mode. But after some clicking around you realise things are a little barren. Granted, all the core Windows apps (Sound Recorder, Wordpad etc) are there, but these aren’t very interesting. The most conspicuous absentee is a web browser. Be aware that this is quite a small selection, but the Internet & Network category did include a couple of versions of Firefox and Opera, together with some less-well-known browsers. You’ll also find Steam and an older version (4.4) of LibreOffice.
All the software in the Applications Manager has been tested with ReactOS. That isn’t to say that it all works entirely as expected, but when it doesn’t issues are usually minor and can be worked around by studying the bug tracker. Armed with a (mostly) working web browser, we were free to go and explore compatibility outside of ReactOS’s curated offerings. The results were not inspiring. Older versions of the Nvidia driver can be shoehorned onto ReactOS, but we were still unable to play anything on Steam. It’s odd that there’s only read-only NTFS support in ReactOS. However, 0.4 brings out-of-the-box support for ext2, 3 and 4 and also has support for SATA devices as improvements to the Sound and USB subsystems. As such it represents a huge step forward, but alas, many more giant leaps are required before the project becomes useful for the masses.
It’s hard to find a solid use case for ReactOS: People looking to run the latest versions of Office or Photoshop are going to be disappointed and people looking to run older (or just better behaved) Windows titles would be better served with Wine or even a VM.