ReactOS

ReactOS is a free, open source implementation of the Windows NT architecture. It allows already existing Windows drivers and applications to be used natively. Not only is it compatible with Windows, it has the same look and feel. Those comfortable with navigating through the Windows GUI will feel right at home (a broken-down home, at least) in ReactOS. ReactOS uses a shell that has a very similar appearance to the Classic theme of Windows.

[fright]
ReactOS Application Manager[/fright]It is not related to Linux in anyway. The only thing that even seems similar to Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, is its application manager. Since ReactOS does not come preinstalled with applications one would use in an everyday setting, such as a web browser or office suite, it provides a means as to obtain such things. The ReactOS Application Manager contains a list of software, separated into categories, for users to download. There is currently an issue which makes it unusable after one use (so download anything you want the first time your run it).

0.3.11 was released today (16 December) after a long delay due to several prominent blockers. It was given the name ReactOS "for Workgroups" 0.3.11 as a nostalgic Easter egg for those familiar with the Windows release; the boot screen and start menu were changed for this release to include this joke (see it here). Changes that are relevant to most users are the work that has been done to the memory manager and audio stack. While still incomplete, the work to these categories has been extensive and provides a much more appealing system to be used. A summation of the newest release can be found in the official release notice, here.

ReactOS is currently in the alpha stage of development and not recommended for everyday use. Although there is a lot of progress being made for the small team of developers, the system lacks a lot of features and does not support a wide variety of hardware. In a future release, one could replace Windows with ReactOS on their computer with no problems in their daily routines. That is the goal at least.



For those who know and/or have tested ReactOS, what is your opinion on its current issues, progress, and overall goal?
For those who do not know and/or have not tested ReactOS, what are your expectations and concerns about the project?

1) Inb4lawsuit.
2) Assuming #1 does not ever happen, i'm extremely interested in this project.

How stable is it currently? Could you run it and do web browsing, IMing, etc for a week without it crashing?

Does it have any DirectX support? Can it run a game like Maple? Smoothly?

Do the ReactOS folks have a legal team for when the inevitable lawsuit comes? How much have they looked into whether the OS is legal?

The whole "inevitable lawsuit" stuff has yet to even be mentioned and ReactOS has been around for a few years now. There's nothing that would necessarily even call for a lawsuit--they use Microsoft's own API in development.

They're not using any Windows binaries or anything like that--at most they're mimicking features in the style of the UI. That's pretty much it, and Linux distributions have been doing that for God knows how long.

The whole "inevitable lawsuit" stuff has yet to even be mentioned and ReactOS has been around for a few years now. There's nothing that would necessarily even call for a lawsuit--they use Microsoft's own API in development.

They're not using any Windows binaries or anything like that--at most they're mimicking features in the style of the UI. That's pretty much it, and Linux distributions have been doing that for God knows how long.

They're not just mimicking UI style - they're making a binary-compatible API, which is remarkably similar to a private server. I am not a lawyer, but I think Microsoft would at least have enough grounds to initiate a lawsuit, if not to win it. But MS probably won't care until ReactOS actually becomes a threat to their market share.

Some parts of ReactOS are stable enough to replace their Windows counterpart, some parts are there but do not work properly, and some parts are missing most of their functionality or are just completely broken.

Some developers have been able to keep a box running for a few days and probably a week or two, but that's with no real application use; Cameron Gutman, the developer focusing on networking support, often connects to the official IRC channel on his ReactOS box. If you try to use it as you would Windows, you will experience an error or BSOD after several minutes.

Most of the current DirectX support comes from Wine code. There is no real functionality and passes calls to OpenGL instead. There are also issues with installing Microsoft's DirectX redistributable, so gaming is not something you will be doing soon (though some of the developers and testers do play Quake together on their ReactOS boxes). There probably will not be any focus on DirectX from most of the developers (I only know of one with interest in looking into it) until the graphics subsystem rewrite is finished.

The threat of lawsuit and illegal coding styles has been brought up in the past. This was because of Alex Ionescu disassembling assembly code to finish one of his kernel function implementations. Ionescu rewrote most of the kernel at the time he was an active developer with the project, which is why the issue because a big deal and lead to an internal audit.

I already looked into this several years ago. ReactOS developers use White Box Testing to avoid lawsuits.