ReactOS Is An Open Source Windows-Inspired Operating System

Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That's the mission of ReactOS! ReactOS has been under development since 2004 and is still considered alpha software.

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[ReactOSCommunity]

Hello from the ReactOS team! Thank you for the nice video!
We want to mention that we already started the development of the next version of ReactOS.
More features and bug fixes will be available this summer.

P.S. We will be very grateful for any donations to support our project. The project is being developed almost only on donations of private individuals.

[drenee]

one nice quality feature reactos has is getting the wonderful "blue screen of death" at boot....

[gardenapple]

You forgot to mention one crucial feature of ReactOS (and possibly the only reason to use this instead of Wine): it's compatible with not only Windows apps but also Windows drivers! So in theory, it should have the best hardware compatibility among all open-source systems. In practice, though, the support is pretty bad.

[KnutBluetooth]

You're getting it all wrong. First of all ReactOS targets the Windows XP/2003 architecture. Not Windows 2000. And it doesn't target only running Windows apps that work with Windows XP/2003. There is work in progress to have forward compatibility shims that will allow running apps that need APIs from later versions of Windows. So yes one day it very well may run the latest Firefox. Targetting the Windows XP/2003 architecture doesn't also mean that it will be limited to working with older hardware. You can write drivers for newer hardware designed for the Windows XP/2003 architecture. Hardware manufacturers still even do it sometimes these days. So actually it will be able to do much more than what Windows XP/2003 can. It already has better capabilities in some limited areas. What ReactOS ultimately aims to be is kind of more like a fork of Windows 2003/XP that continues to improve upon the Windows XP/2003 architecture. A bit like DragonFlyBSD was forked from FreeBSD because the DragonflyBSD dev disagreed with the architectural decisions the other FreeBSD devs took. If you had looked a bit on their wiki you would have found that they also have plans to implement all kinds of features that appeared in later Windows. Such as a better WiFi stack like on later versions of Windows.

[madthumbs]

Windows 2000 was my favorite Windows by far.

[MrHatoi]

ReactOS kind of falls into the category of "it would be cool if it was actually good." I get that they have a very hard task and what they've accomplished is pretty impressive, but it's really not that consequential. It has about the same software support as Wine, but with most, if not all of the same disadvantages of just running Windows. Unless it gets a huge upgrade it's just a novelty and nothing more.

[atemoc]

0:40
It... didn't started in 2004, it started before that

[TnMe]

"We have minesweeper and solitaire. The windows experience is complete"

But does it have Pinball?

[dsedchenko]

16:00 - Actually, ReactOS is trying to mimic Windows 2003 Server, not Win2k.

[AutumnWind]

I like ReactOS. It’s an interesting project

[johnsmith-gsqf]

ReactOS was the fastest installing software I ever installed on a virtual machine. However, all the windows apps I tried to run on the OS showed some strange error messages and refused to run. I think I'll stick to Linux with Wine or Windows in a virtual machine.

[AaronStarkLinux]

I think the point of ReactOS is for those gov administrations that are using some database programs that only work on windows and also they need the old InternetExplorer certifications compatibility etc.

[eritert]

Bad browser is part of the whole experience. I want IE6 and to be angry no websites have shims for it.

[mach-]

I tried this on a 1 core PC and it actually worked very well.

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Derek. I remember trying it out when I was trying to defenestrate but it seems it's not too close yet to being functional.

[torspedia]

I could potentially see myself using it, if they ever reached 1.0... and had the capability to run more modern software.

[andrew]

Thank you for making a video about it. I'm hoping that more people will donate, contribute and test so eventually we can have a Free windows system.

What ReactOS basicly will be is what GNU/Linux is to UNIX but for Windows in other terms
GNU/Linux : UNIX
ReactOS : MS Windows

[pauldufresne]

Near 1:24, the live iso is not to put on your USB key to boot with it (that's what I have try... and see that this version still not allows to do that), you are suppose to burn it to a DVD or CD and boot with it.

[rajvinder]

I could see something like this becoming a viable alternative to Windows 10 if enough developers get behind it.

[Gabifuertes]

Microsoft is going to open source the windows kernel before this gets out of alpha...