Guest post by In the past, I’ve installed ReactOS to show my students a Microsoft alternative. The performance was slow and there was not much to do. This latest revision offers more! For my review, I used the freeware VMWare Player since I was using the company server. I’m the only one who knows how to use it.VMWare image of ReactOS comes in about 63MB uncompressed, considerably smaller than any MS Windows distribution. Boot time was fairly quick under VMPlayer.
Familiar
ReactOS is a Microsoft WindowsNT compatible OS and it’s FREE. The layout has the familiarity of Windows with the “Start” button and taskbar. Notice how the taskbar has the clock and FireFox. Just like MS Windows, I was able to find most settings and programs. However, some programs don’t work such as Regedit and WordPad. This may be due the VMPlayer image. Hopefully when I do a full installation I will know for certain.
Notepad worked fine. I was able to type a small document. Desktop allows you to change the resolution and color-depth. I don’t recommend changing the default resolution. This will cause a reboot of ReactOS. However, do change the color-depth to 32-bit; 16-bit distorts the color in FireFox.
What OS is complete without a few games? Solitaire to the rescue. This anti-work game has for years been the bane of businesses everywhere. I spent 30 minutes playing Solitaire. It works!
What to do now? Surf over to OSNews of course! Don’t expect to find Microsoft’s IE on this OS. This OS comes with a “get FireFox” selection and ibroswer. Install FireFox using the “get FireFox” selection under Programs. Yes, I know the image above already shows FireFox installed. That print screen was taken after the installation was finished.
FireFox started downloading very quickly. After the download, the all familiar “for MS Windows that is” installation process. Installation was painless and quick.
FireFox on ReactOS layout is like all others. Now for the downside.
Downside
When the browser was running, the mouse became extremely slow. Frequently the mouse pointer ran across the screen. Granted I’m running this under VMPlayer on a server with other processes running. I hope to try an actual installation on a Pentium II that just sitting around.
Overall
Not bad for an alpha release. ReactOS has simple graphics that will not over work a graphics card which is suitable for older computers. With such a small size, ReactOS leaves plenty of room for applications (games).
As always, it looks promising..
Although I tried to run a few Windows applications (modplug, zsnes, textpad, xmplay, opencanvas, etc) I did not have any luck.. everything either froze reactos, or did not even start.
Yes, ReactOS is far from it’s final release, as openly explained on their website “Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.0 is still in alpha stage and is not recommended for everyday use.”. I have personally been able to install and run a few Windows programs, but most fail to install or run poorly at this point, but at least they are going in the right direction. I’ve been following ReactOS for quite some time now and I’m often surprised at how much better it is becoming. They have been slowed down by a recent code audit, which is close to completion. As soon as they get that out of the way I’m sure the releases and improvements will accelerate. Feel free to donate your time and/or money to the project.
ReactOS 0.3.0 Videos & Screenshots
* graphical user interface
* command line
* samba-tng (files and printing over network)
http://www.reactos.org/?page=media
Same here. ReactOS looks promising, but for me, it is essentially failed expectations up to now. Most installations did not work, let alone running the programs, save those included.
Still alpha.
Compatability and stability are improving all the time.
Current trunk has already advanced a great deal over the 0.3.0 release.
The 0.3.1 changelog will also be a biggie
“Still alpha.”
This is the claim of the software. Don’t slam the devs for releasing code before final release. If you weren’t interested in alpha quality code, wait until the the 1.0 release. The site says the project is still alpha.
this is the best idea I’ve ever seen!
Hi:
I do not know how the people find everything bad in everything and do a lot of critics instead of see the good side of anything!
This is a very good work; there is a lot left to do, but there are hands that are working to bring this amazing thing for the people…
Excellent work!
Anyone tried installing vmware tools?
I wasn’t successful with it on the 0.3 release. Got their version of the BSOD.
I was about to say the same thing– The mouse is probably jumpy because the VMWare Additions aren’t installed. For me this happens with a lot of operating systems. Admittedly I haven’t tried ReactOS but I’m confident that this is the case.
However I don’t know if they actually work on ReactOS– They are just standard drivers after all and I’m not sure if they’re supported yet (?)
Forget it. There are some reasons, why they will not work.
1. Without the almost ready (and tested by me) Cache Manager, Setup BSODs quite soon.
2. I’m not sure if the drivers will run yet. Driver support will increase like hell in 0.3.1 and Cache Manager will come in 0.3.1 or 0.3.2
Well done to the devs. Keep up the good work!
more like KDE than Windoze,but if will eventually run Windoze software I’m all for it,my main concern it will they make it so it will run Windoze games and media&graphics apps,Open Office or even GoBe Productive are plenty good enough for most home users(Big Biz buys MS anyways so why cater to them),,the common people that would benefit from this want to edit pictures, watch and record movies,let their kids play games readily available on CD,convert MP3 and load their players,scan photos,print greeeting cards,surf the net,etc.Thats what average folks do with PC’s,not a bunch of office work)Trust me,down on the street level this is what a PC has become,An entertainment center/communication/education device,and I forsee (when the price of large plasma displays come down)the PC taking the place of the television and stereo in the living rooms of America,I have already built boxes to to this effect with TV cards and output into stereo amps but the bottleneck is finding a cheap hi-rez screen large enough to make it worthwhile,but i ramble on …LOL
Windows compatibility, and the opensource world can improve things that Microsoft so far has not been able or willing to fix due to so-called ‘compatibility concerns’.
> Windows compatibility, and the opensource world can
> improve things that Microsoft so far has not been able
> or willing to fix due to so-called ‘compatibility
> concerns’.
If it was really about compatibility (which sounds reasonable to me), then ReactOS might get stuck at the same points because one of their goals *is* to be compatible with Windows.
But then, with many eyes looking at the problem, one may find a good solution.
What file format are they running in right now?
I see on their roadmap that they intend to have full read/write support by the 0.5 release. Are they planning on using something based on the NTFS-3G driver?
Will it actually run Windows apps? This might be the ticket for us that have to run one or two Windows applications. Does it do any better than Wine?