React OS anyone?
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Was reading the BBC news and came across a story regarding React OS, very interesting reading, was wondering if anyone here has participated, tried or has any experiance with it.
and the article:
Russian President Medvedev asked to fund Windows clone
A free, open-source Windows "clone" ReactOS that has been in development for over a decade has caught the eye of the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
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It's an incredibly ambitious project. They are rebuilding the Windows API and Kernel (or better: a compatible version) with reverse-engineering. Since Windows is not open source, they can't study the Windows source code or documentations to understand how Windows works. They are closely working together with the Wine team (who are rebuilding the Windows API as compatibility layer on top of other operating systems like OS X, Linux, BSD etc).
Because of that one cannot expect the guaranteed correctness of a commercial product. I tried it once in VirtualBox. It's very fast. But I don't think you would replace a Windows 7 workstation with it if you need to run specific modern, complex programs. Still it's impressive how many older programs work. Somehow a heritage of mankind that will for ever allow access to most Windows-compatible software.
Unfortunately they don't have the necessary development power to follow closely or catch up with what MS does. But since Microsoft will ditch their old APIs somewhen in future (Win8 is compatible to new and old APIs), they could maybe get it "almost complete" in some years.
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Thanks for that input.
I'm just thinking about installing it on a spare machine and playing around, hopefully one day they will get the funding and get a good robust product out.
On another note, I see Windows 8 chatter everywhere, I see they are concentrating on the phone and tablet market using ARM chips, they have not commented yet on the desktop versions yet....kinda scary IMO as even Intel is partnering with Google to concentrate on an ARM type chip. Does this mean the end of the Intel chip as we know it? will this hurt us power users that need brute force power hungry chips for our work? will we now have to pay high $$$$$ for specialized rigs?
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Personally, I'd wait until the chatter and speculation dies down. MS needs to gain traction in the mobile market as they have been running behind there for years. Win CE was never really strong in the early "palm device" days and I think Win 8 was created to address their lack of presence in the mobile device community. They will have to go up against Apple and Google (Android 3 rocks!) and an already entrenched manufacturing and user base. The Motorola Xoom is proving to be a very capable device and I would put money on it doing very well in the future. The old "Wintel" alliance disintegrated a long time ago, and that alliance was key in Microsoft's OS developments.
Intel has other problems and working with Google is a great move IMO. AMD has been gaining market share steadily as well so I don't think we'll see the Intel x86 architecture chips disappear too soon. Developing the ARM architecture is "future proofing" somewhat because mobile devices simply don't need the horsepower of a multicore x86 CPU. The Xoom for example is using a dual core ARM chip from Nvidia. I would think Intel might like a piece of that pie as well ...
However, from a person who still happily runs Win XP 64 Pro, I will wait and see what develops. MS has a "hit and miss" history with their OS releases and I consider both ME and Vista to be disasters while the XP and Win 7 releases have proven pretty decent.
We will see ...
Cheers.
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Windows is available to download and be installed from a 8GB stick. It's currently the Dev version but open to the public. Claims to boot in 8 secs.
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