blog/data/2014-04-01-reactos.txt

   1 Title: ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software
   2 Tags: english, reactos, nice free software
   3 Date: 2014-04-01 12:10
   4
   5 <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
   6 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
   7 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
   8 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
   9 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
  10 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
  11 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
  12 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
  13 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
  14 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
  15 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
  16 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
  17 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
  18
  19 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
  20 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
  21 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
  22 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
  23 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
  24 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
  25 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
  26 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
  27 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
  28 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
  29 Linux.</p>
  30
  31 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
  32 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
  33 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
  34 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
  35 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
  36 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
  37 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
  38 Windows before metro).</p>
  39
  40 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
  41 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
  42 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
  43 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
  44 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
  45 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
  46 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
  47 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
  48 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
  49 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
  50 old Windows binaries, check it out by
  51 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
  52 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
  53 image.</p>