ReactOS

ReactOS is one of those projects that has been on the net for a long time. You see it resurface every now and then and each time it looks better than it did before. I have to hand it to the their team, they have tenacity.

I reviewed it back in 2006. It has not changed much since, though it has some graphics subsystem and USB improvements: <a href="http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/" rel="nofollow">http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/</a><p>Screenshots of ReactOS (it BSODs too!): <a href="http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/" rel="nofollow">http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/os/ROS/</a><p>I'm surprised not to see mention of this though in the comments here: ReactOS is now "dead" as it is being rewritten to use the wine project as the actual codebase. The aforementioned slowness in development is the primary cause. The new project is codename ARWINSS: <a href="http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss" rel="nofollow">http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss</a>

Kudos to the creators for keeping at it. But in the end I don't see if being of much consequence.<p>If it ever does get out of Alpha and is viable than Microsoft will likely stop at nothing to bury it with lawsuits. They'd have to because it would be a free version of their core product that, by definition, wouldn't be susceptible to all the viruses and malware that Windows is.<p>So the bottom line is it could have a lot of useful applications but you really couldn't have enough faith in its future to use it for those applications.

So what's the point of this Operating System? Kill Microsoft and the thousands of developers that are working their just because you don't like them or the name of the company?<p>Wouldn't this huge time and effort be spent on something we need but don't have? And yes, charge me for using it. I study medicine, but I won't work as a doctor for free.

Prediction: ReactOS will be little more than an OS used for running Windows-less video games that were designed for Windows.<p>In the time spent fiddling with it, you could have just purchased and XBox and been done with it.

A free/Open source clone of the most successful virus ever created!&#60;/unix zealot&#62;<p>Basically, these guys decided they legally wanted windows, but they didn't want to pay for it.&#60;/snark&#62;<p>It's a cool idea, but, I'm not exactly sure on a) the legality of it and b) the usefulness of it.