When rebooted (which took a matter of
seconds), ReactOS brings up the default desktop, disappointingly – no
Tele-Tubby land rolling hills of green. Unfortunately, the multimedia device it
was asking for didn’t feel like installing so we had to make do with inventing
our own startup sounds. Nevertheless, the façade and feel of ReactOS is so
identical to Windows XP that it’s scary. But then, that’s what it’s meant to
look like.
A quick look around the desktop icons, My
Computer, My Documents reveals the same kind of interface that we all know and
love. Normal tasks, such as copying, moving and other file management works
smoothly enough without feeling too much like a beginner’s attempt at C or
Visual Basic. Moving down the list of desktop icons you’ll come to the Command
Prompt, which is as equally powerful, and as useful, as the Windows equivalent.
Most of the standard commands work perfectly well, with the omission of some of
the more MS niche commands.
ReactOS
desktop
Working from the start menu, we have a
selection of the usual suspects – Notepad, MSPaint, Calculator, Wordpad – as
well as MineSweeper, solitaire et al. The Control Panel makes an appearance,
with the standard selections to get your hardware working and operating as it
should. All in all, it apes a standard, fresh install of Windows XP, which any
user can navigate and use without fear of coming across anything too
unfamiliar.
In addition to the normal applications,
ReactOS had bundled a ReactOS Applications Manage, which acts very much like a
Linux Software Centre. You simply launch the app manager, scroll down the list
of categories on the left, highlight the one you’re interested in, and then on
the right, select the package to install. The package is then downloaded from
the relevant site and installed accordingly. Although the installation didn’t
always kick off the way it was planned, a second try usually brought it back
from the dead.
The
app manager is an element that Windows could do with
Looking at ReactOS, it’s a remarkable feat
of coding; you could almost call it WineOS as the functionality and
developments are very similar, due to the implementation of Wine-based API’s
and such. As for ReactOS becoming an option for Widows refugees to migrate to,
well, to be brutally honest, that doesn’t like it’s going to happen any time
soon.
Despite the fact that the developer clearly
states it’s the alpha stage of ReactOS, and that it’s very much developmental
and not meant for the general population, the operating system doesn’t seem to
be moving anywhere particularly fast.
With Linux distros becoming more and more
advanced with each release (within a year the likes of Ubuntu will be seen as a
mobile application on a smartphone that can hook up to a monitor, keyboard and
mouse for a fully working desktop and or ZorinOS has a very Windows look but is
still a stable Linux core), what’s the point of ReactOS? It as already reached
the point that it looks outdated, and even after 14 years of work on it, it’s
still not stable enough to accept a standard video card driver for an ATI
Radeon without generating a BSOD. Why would we ever need to have a Windows
looking and Windows feeling desktop when there’s so much on offer from other
sources?
In one of the answers from the ReactOS
team, stated earlier, ‘There are many people who do not like how *nix systems,
behave or dislike the conventions used.’ This may have been apparent some years
ago, but with the sudden rise of Android, ChromeOS and Ubunti, the *nix
operating systems have rapidly become a part of our daily lifestyles.
That said, ReactOS is still a very
interesting project, and one that certainly deserves a look at. After all, if
no one likes Windows 8, or whatever may come after it, ReactOS could find
itself in a nice position to welcome the flocks of ex-Windows users as they
abandon ship for an OS that looks and runs like the one they used to have.
Of course, the ReactOS team will have to
get a move on and produce something a little better and more stable than the current
selection. However, there is a small possibility that ReactOS could become the
new Windows. Stranger things have happened in the world of computing.
The
starting desktop. None of our sound drivers worked.
Check out the project
As with other open-source projects, there’s
a wealth of information, debugging, testing, development and building going on
around the clock. Keeping up with it can be a full-time job in itself, so be
sure to bookmark the ReactOS main page at bit.ly/A91Nqd, as well as the
development wiki pages at bit.ly/yDgPVL. From here you can get involved with
the project on many levels, either by contributing coding solutions, testing
the latest nightly builds, or writing up translations or documentation. Or, if
you’re feeling up to the challenge, why not download the source code and have a
go at building your own version of ReactOS? Full details and instructions can
be found here: bit.ly/wv4oWM. Good luck!
Supported hardware
ReactOS
aims to fix all this
ReactOS is capable of supporting most
modern and old hardware, but here is a full list of supported hardware,
straight from the horse’s mouth:
ACPI
ISAPNP
PCI
PS/2
Floppy
IO Controllers
Mouse (USB: only with ‘Legacy Device
emulation’ enabled in the BIOS, so no real USB support yet)
Keyboard (USB: only with ‘Legacy Device
emulation’ enabled in the BIOS, so no real USB support yet)
RAM drive
Serial port
Parallel port
USB devices
MPU401
Networking (NIC) cards \ wireless
Networking (NIC) cards
Video cards
Sound cards
