Submitted by “The ReactOS project is proud to announce the release of version 0.3.15. A culmination of over a year of development, 0.3.15 incorporates several architectural enhancements to create a more compatible and conformant implementation of the NT architecture. Perhaps the most user visible enhancement is initial support for USB devices, both storage and input. Infrastructure wise, this is the first release of ReactOS using CMake instead of rbuild. The conversion to CMake has allowed developers to generate Visual Studio solutions for working on the code, though several C++ components still need work before support for Microsoft’s toolchain is complete.”
What all can you do with this OS as of now? For example, could I install Office 2013 and Adobe CS6 on it, or is it more like, “Well, you can get Notepad to work on it …”
I am wondering the same thing. In the last several ReactOS releases I tested, both stability and compatibility were pretty bad. This news item doesn’t leave me with much to go by, so in the meantime I’ll just assume that these two things probably haven’t improved all that much and not waste my time with it yet again. I’m starting to lose my interest in the project, because it seems like it’s going absolutely nowhere. Years have gone by, and it still doesn’t seem to have much going for it.
Okay, fair enough–ReactOS is still alpha software. But so is Haiku, and Haiku is quite stable, compatible, and reliable. It has been for years, and it makes great strides with each release. I could actually *use* Haiku for a while; with every test of ReactOS, I was done with it in record time.
And by the way, screw Notepad. Wine (and therefore ReactOS) has ran Metapad flawlessly for a long time now, and that’s what really matters. :p But seriously, Metapad is open source, why don’t the Wine guys just use that and throw away their crappy faithful Notepad clone? Hell, if ReactOS did that it would automatically be better right from the start.
Edited 2013-05-31 02:01 UTC
Ya, love me some Metapad
You don’t need a full-blown text editor with tabs and syntax highlighting to open a readme.txt file. For that, Metapad is perfect as a Notepad replacement.
Edited 2013-05-31 03:50 UTC
If the strikethroughs across most of the languages formerly available shown in the lower left corner of the ReactOS homepage is anything to go by, you are not the only one starting to lose interest in the project.
It was inevitable; the ReactOS devs are chasing a swiftly moving target. Haiku devs only had to resurrect a moribund OS for which they could dictate the pace of development.
If it attained a modicum of functionality, however basic, then ReactOS might gain some traction as a slightly advanced version of FreeDOS – bundled with cheap electronics to be used in bootable media for the purposes of gui-based ROM flashing or to demonstrate with simple apps some of the capabilities of the product it is bundled with.
Worse, the user FAQ is empty (at least in my browser, bug?).
Which means there are no users or there are users that don’t ask any questions.
Off-topic: Frequently Asked Questions? FAQs appear on sites that have just gone on-line, how can any question have been asked, let alone frequently?
In reality FAQs are QWTPAMLTAs (questions we think people are most likely to ask).
I like to refer to them as just Q&A — questions and answers. It gets the point across just as well.
To be fair, it can sometimes take a lot of work to put a site online. And in the case of start ups, they may have been communicating their ideas with a number of people long before the site does go online. So they might already have a list of frequently asked questions.
However there’s definitely also a lot of the QWTPAMLTAs going on as well.
My understanding is that the strikethrough only happens on pages that haven’t been translated to those languages yet.
WINE and ReactOS have less in common that you’d think. Sure, there is some code sharing between the two. But there’s even more code that cannot be shared due to the difference in the architecture (ie one being a compatibility layer that sites on top of a POSIX OS, and the other being a clone of the entire Windows stack (kernel and all), which means the Windows APIs cannot just link into Linux ABIs.
already…
I mean they even have the copyright notice on the splash screen exactly like MS….
Linux is more Windows compatible than ReactOS (and is constantly getting even more so), which makes ReaktOS a bit pointless. But it’s kind of cool anyway. If I had the time and knowledge I would at least consider giving a helping hand.
I wonder whether they have noticed a spike in web hits/usage/downloads with the recent controversies (if I can put it that way, I have not used Windows 8 myself so I am not commenting on it as such) over Metro?
If they haven’t against this backdrop, then I really cannot see that they can succeed overall.
On the whole, I agree with most of the people posting here. Maybe it’s time to call it a day? They are obviously talented people but perhaps they could do more good elsewhere?
ReactOS is no Windows 8 alternative. It is a Windows 2000 alternative at best. If anybody is unhappy with Windows 8, he would go for Windows 7 instead…
The main thing Windows 7 does better than W2000 is compatibility with newer programs/games. If ReactOS can run my games it is equal to Win7 to me.
Umm… Security and stability, hello? Windows 7 is absurdly better engineered than 2000.
W7 is definitely more secure, but I don’t agree that it’s more stable – or at least my anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.
While ReactOS is a promising project especially for open source windows apps in my opinion it has some drawbacks
1. (User Space of things) It tries to implement things that already have alternatives instead of reusing as much code as possible.
2. It states that it has no intention to accelerate cygwin. For me its a bad decision.
3. It aims at binary compatibility with Windows instead of source compatibility which means it reproduces many windows specific flaws.
4. It insists on Fat while JFS is an attractive option
5. It could co-operate with OS2 crowd to get OS2 functionality / source compatibility BY them
6. It could optionally investigate the use of a uKernel like the OsFree project
All of those things are features, not problems, implementing any of them would destroy windows binary compatibility, which is paramount for the project.
Windows users expect binary compatibility, and couldn’t give a rats ass about source compatibility, which would be impossible, as most of the most used Windows applications are closed source.
Reproducing the flaws in Windows is part of the process of maintaining binary compatibility with Windows.
Windows doesn’t support JFS, so why would ReactOS?
Using a kernel that is not binary compatible with windows when the goal is to maintain binary compatibility is crazy.
You don’t seem to understand the goals of the project, so you probably should either A) find out, or B) stop commenting about something you know little about.
I downloaded the virtualbox image upon hearing of the new release of ReactOS, hoping the old bugs that plagued it last time I tried it would have been ironed out in the year between releases.
Unfortunately, ReactOS failed the first test I gave it, which was the nail in the coffin for this release. I installed Firefox 19 through the ReactOS software app. While Firefox INSTALLED just fine, running it was a different story. The Browser portion came up just fine, however the navigation bar & URL field were completely glitched, blacked out and unusable. With respect to the developers working hard on this project, if you can’t get a web browser to load properly, there’s no point in trumpeting a release. I wanted to try downloading various programs form the web myself and see if they work in ReactOS. With the web browser itself failing (then failing to close when I right clicked it and told it to close on taskbar) it was a quick click to power off the virtual machine and delete the virtual machine permanently from my computer.
Even for an alpha, this release sadly disappoints. same old ReactOS unfortunately.
I wonder why this project keep enjoying this kind of coverage…
I’ve tested many ReactOS releases in those years but I always it lacked the ability/stability to do anything useful.
Most mainstream software does not correctly install or run, shall we talk about usb and network features, or about the frequent random crashes?
An attempt to replicate W2K? Please, get serious, I recall when I used 95 alphas, and even infamous NT4 alphas, and that 18-19y/old stuff was MUCH MORE stable than ReactOS!
This last release only displays a nice blue screen of death right after booting: enough for me, I’ll test the next release of ReactOS as I do every few months, just to see if I’ll get disappointed more, or less, than the previous iteration.