The Qemu emulation works, and I’m waaay to cheap to buy VMWare

Politics mostly. A “Windows compatible” operating system is an easier sell than “Switch to Linux”. 

VMWare and Xen are certainly viable options for some situations. But the footprint and hardware requirements are relatively large. If you can run Windows in VMWare, you can certainly run it natively right on the client.

If an app virtualization client like Thinstall or Softgrid could be made to work, you could package up your existing Windows apps so that there’s no loss in functionality at the client. You’d reduce your IT support costs since the apps are all isolated in packages, centralized on a server and there’s no issue with people farting around with configurations locally. You also do away with a lot of compatibility and integration testing since the packages are somewhat isolated from the client OS and each other. The advantage over a VMWare solution is that you aren’t packaging the entire OS and operating environment with each app. Only the bare minimum to run the app is included and ReactOS continues to provides the core services. You can do the same with Linux, Wine and a lot of brute-force, but it’s multiple layers of emulation and abstraction where something like ReactOS would be a single layer (or maybe 2).

As for the embedded options, I just realized that I have a few “appliances” that I’ve built using Win2K. (It’s faster than WinXP and recovers better from brute force power on/off situations) I’ll have to see if ReactOS would be a viable replacement. I could also see ReactOS as a viable option where WindowsCE is being used today.

Maybe I just look at it differently than the dissenters. I don’t see the future of it as a replacement for gamers or power users. The real power and viability is where you need core Windows compatibility, speed and a small footprint. The geek running 64-bit with 8GB of RAM, dual-SLI and a 1TB disk array to speed up level loads isn’t going to be the beneficiary. Someone in a call center that runs one app or a Windows-based cash register in Walmart or the guy running a dedicate MAME system on a Centrino with 256MB of RAM are far more likely candidates.

It’s pretty exciting and I hope that the recent attention gets ReactOS some funding and supporters. There’s a lot of potential. I just hope that the timing is right to really exploit it.

But look at it like this: if you’re going to be using it to run virtualized operating systems, why all the bother with MS-compatibilties in the first place? After all, a highly stripped-down Linux distribution with VMware or Xen installed will do the same thing.

However, running Windows-based (probably built for Windows Embedded) thin-clients… that sounds like an idea that could be expanded on!

I don’t know about the Vista compatibility, but I’ll certainly do my best to find out and post back

Just out of curiosity, is ReactOS going to jump on the Vista bandwagon and try to build the Vista kernel changes? (UMDF, ASLR, all of the UAC and session 0 isolation, etc.) I don’t know that anything would be lost by ignoring the changes, apart from compatibility. But I’m just curious how ReactOS is going to position itself now that Microsoft is getting more aggressive and scheduling more frequent kernel-level changes.

Finally, is there anyone looking at ReactOS as a thin/thick-client OS? With desktop virtualization becoming a hot topic in the enterprise, I would think that a sleek fast OS that could run a VNC or RDP client would be pretty well received. If it could stream and run Softgrid or Thinstall images as well, it would certainly be in a good place. Since Microsoft’s VECD licensing is so restrictive (ie: expensive as hell for large mixed deployments), there’s a pretty nice niche there that could be exploited. Add ReactOS on a bootable CF card to an old desktop and get a brand new high-speed thin-client with ultra-low maintenance costs. Linux and Wine has been a popular alternative, but it’s certainly higher maintenance and a larger footprint. Plus it has the “Linux Geek” stigma in the enterprise. A lot of executives roll their eyes and groan whenever you mention Linux because of the wild promises that they’ve been hearing for years. ReactOS would be something “new” without any of the baggage. It would be a pretty nice coup to see ReactOS as an embedded OS in a client appliance.

But all joking aside, ReactOS has actually been “in the works” since the early 90s – it’s only recently getting the attention it deserves.

 Problem is reverse engineering the entire Windows OS would frankly drive me insane…

I presume most of the people posting crap about ReactOS couldn’t even reverse engineer ONE PROPRIETARY Windows hardware device driver…  You bunch of brainless lameos… The OS is at the alpha stage and there isn’t hundreds of paid programmers working on it like M$…

 Imagine having a decent OS for gaming on that wouldn’t get kicked off on-line servers for not being the ‘correct’ Windows. Or an OS that supported Windows drivers that Linux doesn’t (a lot from what I keep finding when I try to install the latest distros - bloody hardware/chipset manufacturers)… An OS that fixes real bugs rather than constantly have security fixes released (bullshit)
 

 ReactOS team rock on!!

Bob Wya

For one thing, I’ve heard that the Windows API is not totally documented, and in some cases, the documentation may be incorrect, which happens sometimes when the code is updated but the documentation is not.  I seem to remember reading that this is a problem for the Wine developers.  Also, I’ve heard that there may be special “hidden” APIs within Windows that Microsoft uses for their own apps to make them run faster or work better with Windows than another company’s app.  That was one of the arguments I heard back when the antitrust case against Microsoft was in full swing.

Another problem is the fact that the ReactOS team will always be a little behind in keeping up with the changes that Microsoft puts out in their service packs, patches, etc..  If Microsoft makes any significant additions to Windows with their service packs, the ReactOS team would have to take some time to release the equivalent changes in ReactOS.

I am excited about ReactOS though.  It looks like it has come along fairly well, and it would be nice to have a GPL alternative to Windows so that if I build my own PC, I won’t have to spend an arm and a leg on an OS to install on it.  If I had more experience with OS development, I might even join the ReactOS team and contribute to it.

Office - OpenOffice, AbiWord (both work stably in Windows now)

Internet Explorer - Firefox (arguably better anyway)

Media Player - VLC

Windows’ (laughably bad) built-in CD burner - CDBurnerXP Pro