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thought about ReactOS

what do you guys think of ReactOS?
is it "the best of boath worlds" or not really...?

what are the Pros and cons?
is it a lightweight distro?

all knowledge about it would be great.

It is a project that has been in the works for maybe 2 decades.

I rather doubt anyone on a Linux forum would consider it to be the best of both worlds. It has a place for some windows users maybe. Wish it had more developers working on it.

It is lightweight only because it is so limited. By version number I'm not sure they are at version 1 yet.

You should install it and use it on some older hardware you have or on a free virtual machine software on modern computer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro (Post 6119277)

Thanks a lot

I looked at it about 8-10 years ago, maybe even longer. Nothing but frustration just getting it to boot - but that was on real hardware; might be worth a look as a virtualised guest as suggested. I keep an eye on other OS development projects, but have long lost interest in this.

I played with it in a VM a couple of years ago. I did not find it worth my while.

It's a great idea but is nowhere close to being ready for prime time.

I seen somewhere they are updating the compiler and maybe adding 64bit. A lot of people bash ReactOS but I think it helps wine quite a bit in the long run. personally I think Windows design/layout is disgusting so naturally that carries to clones and emulators. That said I'd much rather run something in wine/ReactOS than boot Windows.

Used to keep an eye on it, but have now got so used to Linux, (& BSD), that it no longer holds any fascination for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro (Post 6119277)

You should install it and use it on some older hardware you have or on a free virtual machine software on modern computer.

VM — yes, real hardware — no. They've just recently managed to get the e1000 driver working:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReactOS 0.4.12 released, September 23, 2019

Intel e1000 NIC driver

While ReactOS’ traditional usage in virtual machines generally shields it from rapid and oft massive changes in hardware configurations, even the systems emulated by virtual machines have undergone some evolution over the years. Case in point, VirtualBox and VMware have been shifting their default emulated network interface card to be based off of the Intel e1000 NIC in order to present their guests with a gigabit capable interface.

Thanks to work done by Mark Jansen and Victor Perevertkin, ReactOS now possesses a driver that supports this NIC out of the box instead of requiring end-users to manually find and install a driver, a finicky process if one does not have a working network connection in the first place. Furthermore, the new driver should also be compatible with e1000 NICs in real hardware, though of course more real-world testing will be necessary to fully validate that assertion. Interested testers are of course encouraged to try and see just how much ReactOS can get out of the e1000.

The only reason I would ever look at ReactOS would be gaming but as others have said, the project is 20 years old and not even close to being ready to do much of anything. Gaming on Linux is perfect for me so I have no motivation to try it. Cool project idea though.

I can't imagine the nightmare it is to symlink code to registries to make things windows comaptible and avoid getting sued by redmond at the same time.

No wonder it is still in beta. In a ever changing digital world. Hard to keep up/ketchup.

Edit: especially with the large debian, ubuntu,redmond, world, support to see them succeed. oh yeah. They don't have that either.

Last time I used it I could install a driver much like one does with Windows.

I recently tried it in VirtualBox. It seems to work well. Lightweight. I am not sure how it will work on a real desktop. Will it easily accept usb devices and printers? Will it run all applications? I was searching for these answers and reached this thread.

Apparently, one can run it in browser at this site: https://distrotest.net/ReactOS

There are other uses than just gaming.

Where I work, there are old equipment where the only way of administrate those units are by using an old computer - because the software cannot run anything newer than windows XP. Had a go trying use ReactOS a little over a year ago, but had no luck installing the special software.
I see forward that day might come, so I can use something other than a VM (that also have problems communication using physical serial ports interfaces)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grobe (Post 6231409)

There are other uses than just gaming.
Where I work, there are old equipment where the only way of administrate those units are by using an old computer - because the software cannot run anything newer than windows XP. Had a go trying use ReactOS a little over a year ago, but had no luck installing the special software.
I see forward that day might come, so I can use something other than a VM (that also have problems communication using physical serial ports interfaces)

For this purpose, one could try some the old operating systems available at:

https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems