2009-12-16, 09:55 PM
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.
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.