Is this a windows killer?

ReactOS is a free and open-sourced operating system based on the Windows NT architecture, providing support for existing applications and drivers, and an alternative to the current dominant consumer operating system. The interesting part about this open source project is that unlike applications like Wine, it is an operating system completely re-written from the ground up, with windows binary compatibility in mind.

History

ReactOS has been written from scratch since 1996, a rock solid NT re-implementation, and therefore a reliable and robust operating system for tasks ranging from embedded micro computer to personal computer, workstations to server cluster, mainframes and super computers. It incorporates many design decisions from other operating system families like UNIX, VMS, OS/2 and of course NT and is meant as ‘the’ new platform that serves all.

Screenshots

The following are screenshots of reactOS running some popular windows apps.

(Winrar)

(Quake 1)

(Unreal Tournament)

Installation

I decided to give reactOS a shot. I didn’t want to re-partition my harddrive or format, so I downloaded the virtual machine version that you can run within windows (it includes the reactOS image and virtual machine software to run it).

Installation (if you can call it that) was seamless. I just downloaded the zip file, extracted it and ran boot.exe. Within a few seconds, it booted into the OS on the virtual machine.

Looking around, the gui needs some work. There are also a few useful applications pre-installed: remote desktop, solitare, minesweeper (what OS is complete without minesweeper), and reactOS explorer (I was able to get onto the Internet through an automatic download of the Mozilla ActiveX plugin).

I was able to install the latest version of Firefox, which installed without any issues. However, when I tried to launch it, I got some strange font/graphic issues.

ReactOS has a lot of promise. Once it is out of an alpha/pre-beta state and supports more hardware, it could be serious competition for Microsoft.

You can try it yourself by going to the reactOS website: Here

If you are having any speed issues, you can install an accelerator for the virtual machine here (Under the section “Accelerators”)

Another good tool to install is here. It allows you to mount the virtual hard disk in your Windows system.