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ReactOS is an open source project to develop an operating system that is compatible with Windows NT and Windows 2000 applications and drivers. The project is currently in the alpha development stage.
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2 Functionality 3 Related Projects 4 Future 5 Hardware Requirements 6 See Also 7 External Links |
History
Around 1996, a group of open source developers started a project called FreeWin95, with the aim of implementing an operating system that would be a clone of Windows 95. The project stalled in discussions of the design of the system.
At the end of 1997, the project still had no results. The project members called to revive the project, the project's target was changed to Windows NT and the project's name was changed to ReactOS. The ReactOS project began in February 1998, with developing the kernel and basic drivers.
Functionality
As of 2004, the ReactOS kernel is quite stable, many APIs are ready for a higher level of development and a basic GUI is available. ReactOS features ReactOS Explorer, which is a basic shell for ReactOS, similar to Windows Explorer.
Version 0.2 of ReactOS is able to run many Win32 applications, including Notepad (a basic text editor), Regedit (the registry editor), Cmd (the commander interpreter) and several other applications and basic games.
Related Projects
ReactOS developers are working together with Wine developers so that the ReactOS project can benefit from Wine's progress in implementing the Win32 API. These efforts mainly concern Wine's DLLs, most which can be shared between ReactOS and Wine. Several developers in both the Wine and ReactOS projects work on cross-compatibility issues, so that the remaining few DLLs can be used in ReactOS.
Future
ReactOS developers are working on improving the GUI system, adding Java support and compatibility with DOS and OS/2.