“In a little over a month since version 0.3.5, we are announcing the release ReactOS 0.3.6. This release along with the rest of the 0.3.x series is still considered alpha quality software, so do not set your expectations too high. ReactOS 0.3.6 is the product of the current development focus: bugfixes, compatibility, and stability.”
Nice to see ReactOS coming along,
btw, if you’re around Linux World, go see them, they share a booth with Haiku
We have to be very very patient, but I think the wait will be worth it. I can’t wait to use the 1.0. Who knows, maybe 5-10 years down the road
That is still before XPs end of life.
So no need to upgrade
They actually has roadmap unlike most open source projects which shows 0.5 by 2008. I would think they get 1.0 out by 2010.
I love these guys!
It’s really crazy to write a fully windows compatible operating system but these guys seems to have sucsess!
And that’s phanomenal. I really like to see how the future versions do in Tests.
Waiting for this to hit beta so I can test it out and give my two cents.
What I like about their development process is this very early bug hunting and focus on compatibility and stability rather than a let’s-make-it-boot-and-be-fancy. I especially liked the code review idea, considering that ReactOS’s final target is, essentially, a piece of Microsoft’s cake. Way to go!
It’s nice to see ReactOS progressing again. I didn’t knew they were porting it to ARM and PowerPC. I know this is good for platform independence, buy I can’t stop thinking they should be better putting more energy in bringing in more stability and compatibility. I mean, The point to having a Windows clone is to run windows apps, but there’s no PPC Windows apps on the market. The ARM port could be useful to replace Windows CE but that’s about it.
I also think it’s funny to have ReactOS around while Microsoft as started to talk about Midori. Suddenly this look like FreeDOS a bit more!
Well… If you read the newsletter, the port to ARM allowed a lot of bugs to be uncovered and squashed that helped the X86 version.
So, it’s not wasted effort.
I wish some more programmers would jump into this project, but I think they’re doing the best they can with the number of contributors they have.
AROS is proceding at about the same speed.
Seems to me that the ReactOS guys are porting their OS to other platforms for the same reasons ID software is porting Doom/Quake/ET to Linux:
A. Because they can. (Trust me, nothing beats seeing your software run on 5 different platforms
)
B. It helps them uncover bugs on their original platform. (The lower you get [kernel/drivers] the more the platform behaves differently – hence, new and interesting bugs…)
Plus, they most likely thinking about a Windows CE replacement.
– Gilboa
If Midori sees the light of day before about 2060, I will eat one of my own arms.
ReactOS has the potential to be the most serious competitor to Windows ever.
It looks a bit Win95-esque at the moment, but I think once it is functionally complete, and a Novell (or similar) picks it up, it is definitely game on.
I mean if you’re a Windows user and you can get something that looks, feels and acts like Windows for free without the activation rubbish, why wouldn’t you?
win95esque? I’m on Vista and it looks win95esque. The first thing any ‘real’ windows user does upon install is turn off the cheesy glass/aero/dancing menus
🙂
Yeah I know. Me too actually 🙂
But I just meant it will probably need some cosmetic surgery before release.
If only so we have something to turn off!
No, that’s the first thing geeks who think it actually improves performance do. Smart geeks will realize after a few days that it looks like ass, and is probably slower, certainly no faster, and re-enable Aero.
because having an OS that also looks good is such a bad thing….(referring to the glass/aero, not so much the “dancing menus”).
Meanwhile everyone else is happy that their OS finally looks good in the UI department, more like the competition one might say. Everyone still has different tastes but for me Aero was a welcome improvement.
For me it has no negative impact on productivity and is simply more pleasant to look at.
Well, NT-based Windows was designed to be portable, even if non-x86 apps never really made a big impact.
errr.. commented on the wrong article heh, my bad 🙂
Edited 2008-08-07 23:05 UTC
Once ReactOS reaches a usable beta state, the development will pick up pace a lot because it will start attracting more code contributers.
I’ve always admired the design of Windows NT and an open source alternative to MS’s own bloated implementations of it will be a good thing once it reaches a better state. At the moment, though, Linux+Wine still throughly trounces ReactOS in terms of user-level compatability.
If you are looking for Widows OS-emulating software versions >1.0, you could always try out Wine on any Linux distribution of your choice. Runs a lot of Windows software in default config, and lots more if you tweak it a bit. If tweaking is not your cup of tea, or if you want to run Win32 games or a broader spectrum of Win32 programs in Linux, there are always the wine-derived Crossover or Cedega.
But really, according to the discussions re: “lets go to Midori”; if people really think that cutting the Win32 backwards-compatibility cord is the way to go, that can easily be done today by loading Linux and a using any of the huge number of Linux-native free programs that replace Microsoft equivalents. Oh, and it’s free, too.