[jr2]

I try to check on the progress of ReactOS once in a while.  Apparently, they now have a LiveCD (probably have had for a while), and in February, the project reached alpha.

So, that's encouraging. 

Link to download page for LiveCD & Install CD

[Mito [PL]]

Is this...?
Something that could actually replace Windows somewhere in the future (or am I just daydreaming? )?

As soon as I get a new PC, I'll test it for sure ^^.

[Mongoose]

Heh, I was just wondering if this project was ever going to go anywhere the other day.

[Whitelight]

Happy to hear this  Thanks for the heads up. 

[S-99]

That is a massive undertaking that the reactos project is. Glad they are making progress. Sucks they are far from beta yet. I would like to play with then.

[jr2]

Well, one could always check out their LiveCD just to poke around, without actually installing it.    OP updated with link.

[S-99]

I've played around enough with live cd's. I would want to mess around with it in an installation. They are slowly having things added to make an alpha unattractive. If it at least reached beta, then people could start using it for stuff.

This reminds me of the code audit they have done which was an understandable yet weird part of the project when you get down to the details of it.

EDIT:
Here you guys go. General audit information updated May 8th, 2014.
In 2006 it has lead to a temporary halt on development. Here's the status update from them back in the day.

I thought this portion was interesting.

Yet again another thread about dirty code...
So to finally clear everything up lets lay out all the facts:

- We are doing an audit already. To this day, no dirty code has been found.
- There is no Windows code in ReactOS. There never was. There was never such an accusation in the first place.

It is suspected that this caused one hell of a slow down for the project, but i can't be safe in saying that, all i can say is that it did slow them down (idk enough to quantify it). It'll supposedly keep ms from knocking on there door if they are curious how they are doing things by presenting transparency on more of their methods aside from just being able to view the code.

EDIT:
I fixed the second link so people know where the quote came from.

[karajorma]

[Conspiracy Theory]MS leaked the code so that they would slow down ReactOS since XP was getting old and Vista was still a year away from release (and ****).

[jr2]

I've heard that theory.  I wouldn't put it past M$, but that doesn't mean that there's evidence to support that theory.  -shrug-

[S-99]

[Conspiracy Theory]MS leaked the code so that they would slow down ReactOS since XP was getting old and Vista was still a year away from release (and ****).

This clears that up real fast. I fixed my post earlier where i accidentally posted the same link twice.

Yet again another thread about dirty code...
So to finally clear everything up lets lay out all the facts:

- We are doing an audit already. To this day, no dirty code has been found.
- There is no Windows code in ReactOS. There never was. There was never such an accusation in the first place.

[karajorma]

Nope, it doesn't clear that up cause whether they had dirty code or not, they still had to audit the code to prove it.

[jr2]

[Conspiracy Theory]MS leaked the code so that they would slow down ReactOS since XP was getting old and Vista was still a year away from release (and ****).

This clears that up real fast. I fixed my post earlier where i accidentally posted the same link twice.

Yet again another thread about dirty code...
So to finally clear everything up lets lay out all the facts:

- We are doing an audit already. To this day, no dirty code has been found.
- There is no Windows code in ReactOS. There never was. There was never such an accusation in the first place.

Nope, it doesn't clear that up cause whether they had dirty code or not, they still had to audit the code to prove it.

It clears up the fact that ReactOS doesn't (and never had) dirty code, but it doesn't clear up whether M$ let source code 'leak' so that they could claim that ReactOS was using it, triggering the audit, and hindering the development of the project.

Although, as I said, even though probably no one would put it past them, that is not by itself evidence that they did so.

[karajorma]

Which is why when I wrote it I added the [Conspiracy Theory] tag in front.

Let's face it, it wouldn't be any more sneaky than things we have actually seen from MS. And it's not like MS actually took any measurable damage from the leak even though you would have expected it to cause some.

[Goober5000]

ReactOS is great news.  This is what I thought Lindows would be way back in 2001.  Eventually they changed their entire business model and software approach, and I lost interest.

I wonder if there are any reverse compatibility hacks in Windows that ReactOS will need to emulate.  There's a story about SimCity crashing on beta versions of Windows 95 due to a bug in SimCity itself which Windows 95 protected against but Windows 3.1 did not.  It was accommodated by writing special code that detected whether SimCity was running, and if so, allowed the buggy behavior.

[Dragon]

Gotta admire Microsoft's dedication to backwards compatibility. Though this can cause problems in the long run, too (too many "special case hacks" can be problematic and heaven help you if you trigger one unintentionally...). The sad thing is, it's not all that uncommon for programs (either badly written ones or performance-critical ones like games) to rely on quirks in Windows which aren't always accounted for between versions. I dunno if that particular story is true, Sim City was certainly big enough for MS to add a hack if it was needed, but Supreme Commander lost all audio post-XP, for instance. Likewise, they wouldn't have had to skip the "Windows 9" name had the programs used the actual version number of the OS (like they were supposed to) instead of just the display name to determine what they're running on.

I'm sure that ReactOS won't be able to run everything that can run on Windows, but if most of them do and it really is better, I might end up switching. I hope it'll have better-looking UI, too, since it doesn't look like MS is gonna ditch their hideous "minimalist aesthetic" anytime soon.

[Mito [PL]]

I really want to run this OS on my old Dell Latitude D410 - it has no CD/DVD built in, so I decided to go for running it from a flash drive. However: https://reactos.org/wiki/LiveUSB
So there isn't a nice and fast way to get this working from USB, at least not at the moment...?

[S-99]

The status of their usb stack is why i am not interested beyond screenshots for now.

[jr2]

I really want to run this OS on my old Dell Latitude D410 - it has no CD/DVD built in, so I decided to go for running it from a flash drive. However: https://reactos.org/wiki/LiveUSB
So there isn't a nice and fast way to get this working from USB, at least not at the moment...?

Get their Install CD, use Rufus to get it onto USB.  Install to hard disk.  If you don't want to overwrite your current hard disk's contents accidentally, back it up.  (Macrium Reflect or something, then transfer it out to a large USB stick or USB hard disk).