ReactOS - informations about free winxp clone?
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When I first read about reactos I thought it was a modified linux-based distro, but obviously I was wrong.
I'm very confused about this project.
What kernel does it use?
Will it really be completely free as mentioned in wikipedia?
Anyway, it would be great news if we had a non-gnu free software operating system for win xp users.
While the OS might be free but its purpose is to run non-free software. Hardly something to be inspired by.
I highly disagree; many, many people need a special kind of proprietary software for their job and are used to windows xp.
with something like reactos, they could reach like 98% freedom instead of 0%.
In my view a huge contribution to free software.
I hate to start a flame war on my first ever post, but I would like to ask a question relating to lembas' post: Isn't Wine a platform to run non-free software? Who would use Wine, a free program, practically to run free software? GNU/Linux as an OS is where free software is out to play, and the ports of free software to Microsoft's (evil) product Windows is largely ignored. I certainly never heard of LibreOffice before I learned (and come to love) free software in the form of the GNU/Linux operating system.
And yet don't you guys refer people who want to play games and miss their Windows gaming to Wine, hence pointing people to compromising their freedom? True, if they valued their freedom they would give up such a thing, but to give up millions of video games of the (very crappy) Windows world is a very hard demand.
Just my two cents, and I love GNU/Linux Trisquel :)
I don't understand you point. Most of us here wouldn't suggest Wine to people so they can run a non-free programs and games. I seems you are lumping this community with other GNU communities who don't care about the ethical issues which the free software movement is concerned with.
GameRunner does make a good point. Most people run WINE so they can get a program limited to Windows running on their GNU/Linux machine. The majority of the time it is a non-free video game or program like Microsoft Office.
If you have the intention to run a free software/open source program designed for Windows, there's probably a version for GNU/Linux out there already.
In a way it reminds me of emulators. The program to do the emulation is free, but has the intention of running non-free programs. Sure, you can run homebrew games on your emulator, but 99% of the time it is used to emulate a proprietary game from the past via a ROM dump.
ReactOS is in development since 1998, so there's no "great news" about this. Because ReactOS wasn't ready for the time I moved away from Windows in favour for free software, I opted for Trisquel GNU/Linux instead, which I needed to wait 3 years to become usable with the release of version 4.0 in 2010 (that I still use on my older ThinkPad computer).
Where the GNU project and Free Software Foundation aimed to develop a fully-free operating system, mimicking the Unix, there is ReactOS and the ReactOS Foundation. Unlike GNU, the goal is to make a free replacement for Windows that's binary compatible with the already available software/drivers.
Nowadays, despite many fundraising efforts, ReactOS remains mainly a hobby project led by some few developers. It's developed by clean-room reverse-engineering, so the developers doesn't use any code or binaries from Microsoft, but some of the source code is shared with the Wine project. The ReactOS uses its own kernel, compatible with the Windows NT architecture.
"Nowadays, despite many fundraising efforts, ReactOS remains mainly a hobby project lead by some few developers. "
You mean like trisquel? A huge amount of free software project are like this.
"there's no "great news" about this."
Well, they started a new fundraising campaign recently, probably because of the end of win xp support. This is why I heard about it.
Anyway, thanks for the info.
> You mean like trisquel? A huge amount of free software project are like this.
The point here is that Trisquel is based on a finished and fully-working operating system, while ReactOS is, despite partially working, more of a proof-of-concept than a fully-fledged OS. It's not that easy to build a complete operating system from scratch without money and paid developers.
> Well, they started a new fundraising campaign recently
There were many of them. I hope that eventually this project will succeed, since I strongly beleive this is the #1 free software project after GNU, that many people don't heard about.
I've tried to run ReactOS several times in a VM, and it often crashed. It is far to unstable for a productive use. GNU/Linux is much better for the avarage user.
However both Wine and ReactOS can be helpful to reverse engineer proprietery software that is only avialable on Windows. Then there is the Linux-Unified-Kernel which allows you to load Windows drivers into the Linux kernel. I recently reverse engineered a proprietery protocol that is used by a USB MIDI keyboard using wine.
Sometimes I use Wine to test a MINGW-compiled executable that I have compiled. I stopped using Windows some years ago, and I don't want to buy a Windows license for testing.
ReactOS people also talk about "Open Source", so it is not better as Ubuntu from the Stallman's philosophical perspective. However Ubuntu is much more stable, and it is easier to migrate from Ubuntu to Trisquel. If more PC venders decided to preinstall Ubuntu this would make the transition to free software more easy.
The average user (business or not) is much better off now using GNU/Linux instead of Windows than they were 10 years ago. Especially if they are using an OS based off of Ubuntu. Here is why.
1.) The web browser is the most used program regardless of operating system. Chrome/Chromium and Abrowser/Firefox on a GNU/Linux distro can access the same sites and playback the same media as their Mac OSX and Windows equivalents.
2.) Want to play audio and video even in the Windows Media and MP4 formats? VLC can play anything you throw at it and of course supported on GNU/Linux.
3.) If local email is a priority, Thunderbird works the same as the Mac OSX and Windows equivalent and has excellent POP3 and IMAP support. There's also Geary, but that project is a little immature.
4.) If your company is tied to Outlook and/or Exchange, you can use the webmail version in the browsers offered in your GNU/Linux distro. You may never need to install Outlook and can access your email anywhere.
5.) For local document editing, corporations are still tied to Office and their formats, but LibreOffice can handle the binary and XML formats well. Since Microsoft didn't support the Strict doctype of their own specification until recently, even the "open xml" format is not truely open. In an ideal world, these companies would settle on the OpenDocument format so users of Office and LibreOffice could work in harmony, but many are stuck in their old ways or don't know of the alternative(s).
6.) Some companies are moving to "the cloud" and moving to Google Docs instead of renewing their Office subscription. While it is true that Google Docs is non-free, it will work the same on every browser regardless or platform. A user can edit a document or spreadsheet in real time on IE on Windows at the same time as a user in Ubuntu with Firefox and have no issues.
7.) A little while back there was a demonstration of the Steam client for GNU/Linux being able to use Windows applications and games by "streaming" from a Windows box. Once again, the Steam client is non-free, but I have seen videos of someone using Photoshop on their Ubuntu machine through Stream.
8.) If Windows XP support (or any Windows) is super critical, they can run a VM in VirtualBox on their GNU/Linux machine and isolate the environment. They can only have the VM run the necessary programs and disconnect from the internet if necessary. This is nice if you have a dual monitor setup and run GNU/Linux in one monitor and Windows in the other.
In summary, as more things move to the web (or cloud), the worry about what programs may or may not run is less of an issue. As long as Google and Mozilla keep their GNU/Linux versions of their browsers up to speed with the Mac and Windows ones, the future looks bright.
I forgot to mention this:
9.) As WebRTC gains support in the major browsers, the need for a Skype, Microsoft Lync, or GoTo Meeting won't be necessary as it will be handled natively in the browser. There's still some uncertainty with audio and video codec support, but if Apple and Microsoft can play along with Google and Firefox in supporting the same codecs, then we have reached true synergy. Of course that's in an ideal world as Apple and Microsoft strongly push codecs with licensing and royalties.
I think, if ReactOS becomes good enough for real use, it will be a good thing. A binary-compatible replacement for Windows would be helpful for migration to freedom.
But don't overestimate its goodness. Firstly, keep in mind that even free/libre software tends to be compiled for Windows with Visual Studio, which is proprietary. Secondly, as was briefly mentioned before, it's supposed to use already-existing proprietary Windows drivers. It's theoretically possible for these problems to get fixed, but I doubt it; so ReactOS isn't ever going to be a good alternative to GNU/Linux systems.
It's unto Widnows NT what GNU is unto Unix (OK, not philosophically).
If you think it hasn't got any chance, look at GNU's history.
Not quite. GNU wasn't designed to be binary-compatible with proprietary Unix systems, just compatible with the POSIX specification. There's a difference. GNU is going to run the same shell scripts as the classic Unix, for example, but a GNU/Linux system can't run a C program compiled for a classic Unix system, and the kernel Linux can't just use whatever drivers classic Unix systems used.
Keep in mind, too, that GNU wasn't developed specifically to replace Unix; Unix was just what RMS chose to base GNU on, because it seemed like a good design. The goal of GNU was to have an operating system which was entirely free/libre software, not to let Unix users run the same proprietary software on an alternative system.
I just noticed that ReactOS has entered the GNU Project's Common Distros
page:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#ReactOS
> ReactOS is meant as a free binary compatible replacement for
> Windows. Allowing people to continue using the proprietary software
> and drivers meant for Windows is one of the stated goals of the
> project.
Naturally GNU/Linux distros (including Trisquel) can do the same job as
Windows - run proprietary software - so I don't think that's the issue.
The issue is that ReactOS doesn't appear to promote software freedom
(from their website:)
> The main goal of the ReactOS® project is to provide an operating
> system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your
> Windows® applications and drivers to run as they would on your
> Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows
> operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the
> familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS
> straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS® is to allow you to use
> it as alternative to Windows® without the need to change software you
> are used to.
On the other hand, I recall seeing at least one free Windows-compatible
program that was apparently developed and tested using only free
software (the website mentioned the program being tested only on
ReactOS), so I think it has potential to be useful for the free software
community. Unfortunately I can't remember which program did this!
Andrew.
>Naturally GNU/Linux distros (including Trisquel) can do the same job as Windows - run proprietary software - so I don't think that's the issue.
One cannot build a free software operating system that would disallow running proprietary software per definition, see freedom 0. Yet, the purpose of most GNU/Linux distros (especially Trisquel) is certainly not to run proprietary software, which 99,99% of windows software happens to be. That's why it is the issue.
>On the other hand, I recall seeing at least one free Windows-compatible program that was apparently developed and tested using only free software (the website mentioned the program being tested only on ReactOS), so I think it has potential to be useful for the free software community.
If a piece software is free, it can be ported to any operating system. No need to use emulators to run foreign binaries.
>> Naturally GNU/Linux distros (including Trisquel) can do the same
>> job as Windows - run proprietary software - so I don't think
>> that's the issue.
>
> One cannot build a free software operating system that would
> disallow running proprietary software per definition, see freedom 0.
> Yet, the purpose of most GNU/Linux distros (especially Trisquel) is
> certainly not to run proprietary software, which 99,99% of windows
> software happens to be. That's why it is the issue.
There are many free programs available for Windows (and also GNU/Linux)
and so I don't think that's completely true. I know because I made an
effort to switch to as much free software as possible a few months
before I installed GNU/Linux.
>> On the other hand, I recall seeing at least one free
>> Windows-compatible program that was apparently developed and
>> tested using only free software (the website mentioned the program
>> being tested only on ReactOS), so I think it has potential to be
>> useful for the free software community.
>
> If a piece software is free, it can be ported to any operating
> system. No need to use emulators to run foreign binaries.
Different systems have different libraries. A program needs to be tested
somehow, right? If a free software developer wanted to make their
program available on Windows, using ReactOS to test the program would
enable them to do that without using proprietary software.
I think that making free software available on a proprietary OS does
have its merits. For example, as much as I don't like Mozilla, their web
browser, which is also built for Windows, has enabled millions of users
to use the web with free software. It's unfortunate that these
developers are testing their programs on a proprietary software which is
why I think Wine and the ReactOS projects could be good for free software.
Andrew.
From what I know (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS), ReactOS is more of a Windows NT clone, than a clone of Windows XP. (Although the project started with a previous version of Windows in mind.)
It's still considered to be in an "alpha" stage. So, several bugs are expected. But, it's already (only) two levels away from a release version.
I'm eager to test it, once I need (again) to use some proprietary program.
I think ReactOS is a great idea. Since, it can also be used to run only free programs, that were made/compiled for Windows - like is the case of many GNU/Linux programs that also have Windows versions - and, this way, is an alternative to GNU/Linux, which might have some advantages(?) compared to the latter.
Like Richard Stallman says... Even if people use it to run some proprietary programs, "it's better to have some freedom, than to have none".
And, there are, sometimes, some good programs whose license ends up being liberated.
So, there might be cases where, even if someone requires a proprietary program to do some work, that person might end up having a completely free system, once the code for that particular program is liberated.
Fernardo_Negro said:
> ReactOS is more of a Windows NT clone, than a clone of Windows XP.
Windows XP and every version of Windows since then is a version of Windows NT. Windows XP is Windows NT 5.0, Windows Vista is Windows NT 6.0, Windows 7 is Windows NT 6.1, Windows 8 is Windows NT 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is Windows NT 6.3. So yes, it's not exactly right to call ReactOS a Windows XP clone, but it's not that far off.
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