--- /dev/null
+Title: ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software
+Tags: english, reactos
+Date: 2014-04-01 12:10
+
+<p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
+2014-04-08, in 7 days. But there are heaps of machines still running
+Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
+upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
+comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
+new operating system. Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
+machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
+are already well known and covered elsewhere. Most of them involve
+leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
+trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
+to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
+the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
+operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
+operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
+system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
+programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
+The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
+drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
+system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing. It is
+a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
+from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
+project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
+Linux.</p>
+
+<p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
+shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
+There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
+allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
+click directly from the Internet. Check out the
+<a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
+project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
+Windows before metro).</p>
+
+<p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
+operating systems. I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
+virtual machine. The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
+fine as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, my main test application
+is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
+seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
+the disk after the installation. So no luck with that test software.
+No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
+I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
+to work just fine. If you like Windows and want to keep running your
+old Windows binaries, check it out by
+<a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
+installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
+image.</p>