ReactOS - Does anyone care...

[savage]

Hi All,
just wondeing what you guys thought of ReactOS, the OpenSource WinXP replacement.

Will it take off? Does anyone care?

[Robert Kosek]

Interesting!

Not sure if it'll take off, or if I care ... yet.

[LP]

Just checked it out, read some FAQs, manuals and forum.

It is a very attractive project, if I had more free time, I'd definitely install and check it out. Personally, I'm not very optimistic about Windows Vista as I still am not very fond of .NET either (after BDS 2006 came out, C# looks less attractive now ).

[Robert Kosek]

I hate .NET and am loathe to consider Vista as well ... and I concur about C# as well. Though some swear by .NET, I think it's a bad thing ... mainly since it can screw up essential things if the latest version is flawed.

It how my entire COM/OLE interface blew up one time...

[Stoney]

I've heard about it a while ago and downloaded the preloaded QEMU version. Very buggy and very slow.
But it has potential, and if the developers will reach beta status in the soon future, it could be capable of reducing the influence of Windows. I hope so.
As I read in the german forum, Delphi applications doesn't work (well) under ReactOS.

[JernejL]

delphi apps used not to work

it is progressing fast now, it was a lot more buggy year ago, they are working on it a lot, see #reactos on freenode, networking also works now, and bugs are squashed regulary.

[jdarling]

Well it still doesn't run properly on a 64 bit processor (locks up before it can even boot). So while I'm keeping an eye on it, its useless to me : (.

[Jonax]

​Time flies. Reviving this thread two decades later.

I just discovered ReactOS while struggling with some XP era software. ReactOS is still in Alpha mode and obviously there's much room for improvement.
From what I hear people struggle to install it on bare metal. But it does install nicely as Virtual Machine under Linux and I can at least install and play Starcraft 1 and Fallout 2. With sound but only 16 colors. Playable but a bit dull.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to install 16-bit Borland Delphi 3. But my old Delphi code compiled on XP runs well on the ReactOS. So I'll gradually revive some ancient Jonax stuff.
Starting with PopDyn - a simulated ecosystem - and Adventure. A very short Adventure game concept test with horribly bad programmer art. More stuff may be dug up later.

https://www.jonax.se/XP/index.php

I have no plans to spend much time on creating new programs for ReactOS, the future efforts will mainly be for Linux. But one never knows.

How about you guys? Anyone having success to install ReactOS recently?

[SilverWarior]

I must admit that I have never tried ReactOS myself. Years ago I have seen some YouTuber tried it and it went quite poor.

I doubt you will have any luck installing any 16 but application on it. While ReactOS is 32 bit OS like WinXP was it surely doesn't have backward support for executing 16 bit applications like WinXP had. If they can't make ReactOS work correctly in 32 bit mode when executed on 64 bit CPU I doubt ReactOS has any support for 16 bit applications.

If you are interested in tinkering with old software from WinXP era it is best to set up a vriatual machine with WinXP running in it.
Based on my experience WMware Workstation Player (https://www.vmware.com/info/workstat...yer/evaluation) is one of the best solutions for running Virtual Machines with older OS installed in them. And yes WMware can be installed in Linux as well.

I myself have WMware installed pretty much installed on all of my computers except an old 100 MHz AMD K5.
For instance on my old WinXP computer I use it to run virtual machine with Win98 Se in it for some very old windows based programs that natively no longer work on WinXP. I also have another VM with MS-DOS 6.22 (still have original floppies) installed in it. This allows me to play some very old games on not so ancient computer or run Windows 3.11 for nostalgia.
On my a bit more modern computer which natively has Windows 7 installed on it I have a VM with WinXP on it in order to run some older WinXP software like Delphi 7 that no longer run properly on Win7 due to UAC.
And on my most moder Win10 computer I have a VM with Win7 running in it. This allows me to quickly test the compatibility of some of my projects with Win7. For more detailed testing I do use my actual Win7 machine.

And yes I have used WMware on many of my machines in order to test various Linux distributions.

[Jonax]

Unfortunately my old XP PC crashed 15 some 15 years ago. Recent attempts to install XP as virtual machine was not totally successful. That is the XP installed and ran but any attempts to register/verify the software failed; and after 30 days the XP refused to continue. So that's when I started searching for alternatives and found the ReactOS. It's certainly lacking lots of capabilities but seems to be somewhat useable.

Unfortunately I haven't saved other old hardware. Congrats to your excellent collection of legacy systems.
I have heard good things about WMware but never tried it. Used to use Hyper-V when on Windows (10, 11) and now I use KVM/QEMU on Linux.