Anyone Install ReactOS?

[Jackson_Slugger]

It's based on Windows XP apparently but is a free OS that works well on older systems:

https://www.xda-developers.com/reactos-hands-on/

https://reactos.org/

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

ReactOS is fast and fun but may not be much more than an intriguing diversion, something to dabble with on a spare piece of hardware on a rainy afternoon.

Basically says it all. I may try it in a VM for grins.

 

[Hall]

You have to understand the target audience of OSes like these. They accept a lot more hiccups, bugs, incompatibilites, etc than the average user does because they know it's "in development". I remember when the mantra of Linux in 1995 was "ready for the desktop". How'd that work out ?

Try it on a spare system, but don't expect anything even remotely close to really good.

 

[Jackson_Slugger]

...

Try it on a spare system, but don't expect anything even remotely close to really good.

Exactly what it would be for, an old laptop that can barely do Windows 10. Mainly just for fun...

 

[Brons2]

I have tried it before. The distro owner is Brazilian and he intends it for use on low-power PCs in developing contries.

ATMO, it was not as polished as LinuxMint or Ubuntu for daily desktop use. The Windows skin is a gimmick, also. Doesn't really work like Windows, again ATMO.

The problem with all the distros that claim to friendly to older PCs is the web browser itself. Web browsers nowadays are pretty resource intensive if you open a bunch of tabs. "But I just want a PC to browse the web" it takes memory if nothing else.

 

[vpr5703]

I've "used" this before. It's buggy at best. I couldn't get it to boot on half of the machines I tried it on ranging from a 4th gen Intel system to my modern 5900x. In addition I was missing drivers on every system. If you've got an absolutely ancient system it'll probably run alright, but don't expect modern software support.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

It seems like someone's (rather ambitious) pet project that serves no real purpose nowadays. If you need to run old software in an old Windows environment, virtualization is a much better bet. And if you just need to make an old computer work, then a modern yet lightweight Linux distro is a far better idea.

Cool that it exists for sure, but...

 

[Hall]

Sounds like I guessed pretty good....

The problem with all the distros that claim to friendly to older PCs is the web browser itself. Web browsers nowadays are pretty resource intensive if you open a bunch of tabs. "But I just want a PC to browse the web" it takes memory if nothing else.

And you don't dare run an older, "leaner" one or you'll be vulnerable to security exploits.

 

[simple_gifts]

I remember when the mantra of Linux in 1995 was "ready for the desktop". How'd that work out ?

Really well; 100s of UIs to choose from; enterprise reliability, zero cost.

Teams for Linux, Skype for Linux; what does that suggest.

 

[Hall]

Really well; 100s of UIs to choose from; enterprise reliability, zero cost.

Teams for Linux, Skype for Linux; what does that suggest.

Really ? It's 30 years later.... There was no Teams or Skype on Linux back then either.

 

[vpr5703]

Really ? It's 30 years later.... There was no Teams or Skype on Linux back then either.

Don't worry. It's been the "Year of Desktop Linux" for like 25 years. And yet Linux is still under 5% market share.

 

[simple_gifts]

i have no idea what you are trying to imply.

 

[Hall]

And yet Linux is still under 5% market share.

And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Linux for over 10 years and used it as my primary software (desktop). My computer did dual-boot Windows (this was pre-Grub but the name escapes me). I started with RedHat and still have the dozen+ floppies and CD somewhere, moved to Mandrake and after that, I can't remember the others besides Debian and Ubuntu. I was custom-building kernels, running enlightenment, WindowMaker, Gnome, KDE, etc, etc. I continued that theme with Android, rooting all of my devices, installing custom ROMs.... until I got tired of constantly tweaking/hacking. Now I use macOS and and iPhone

 

[vpr5703]

And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Linux for over 10 years and used it as my primary software (desktop). My computer did dual-boot Windows (this was pre-Grub but the name escapes me). I started with RedHat and still have the dozen+ floppies and CD somewhere, moved to Mandrake and after that, I can't remember the others besides Debian and Ubuntu. I was custom-building kernels, running enlightenment, WindowMaker, Gnome, KDE, etc, etc. I continued that theme with Android, rooting all of my devices, installing custom ROMs.... until I got tired of constantly tweaking/hacking. Now I use macOS and and iPhone

Linux is a good idea on paper. A flexible lightweight core kernel that can be built on in practically any way that a user/group wants. But the core of what Linux is and what it does is also one of the core reasons why adoption has stalled out. You can't just make a program for linux. You have to make it for a few major core distributions if you want to hit the majority of the Linux user base, and then there's 10,000 distributions based on those core few. And it just spirals out of control into madness. This is also the reason hardware driver support can be kind of a pain in the tail as well.

With Windows and Mac OS you get exactly that. If you want to make an application for windows, you only have to target it to the main operating system versions which at this point are really windows 7, windows 10, and windows 11. And Win7 support is completely optional as the OS is out of support and slowly dying out.

The core idea of Linux is a good one, but the implementation is holding it back from mass adoption.

 

[BrandonV]

I used to think ReactOS was slow with their releases but now it looks dead... no new release in 2 years?

 

[Brons2]

Really well; 100s of UIs to choose from; enterprise reliability, zero cost.

Teams for Linux, Skype for Linux; what does that suggest.

You need to have Linux sysadmins to make that zero cost enterprise reliability work, a resource many smaller orgs don't have.

As for Teams for Linux, Microsoft decided not to go forward and it is deprecated. Maybe it's being maintained by the open source community, I dunno. You can verify this yourself:

New Teams:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-desktop-admin

Classic Teams:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/get-clients?tabs=Windows

As you can see there is no mention of Linux Teams on these Microsoft sites

 

[dogememe]

Now someone just needs to make an OS using React (the JS framework) on top of a modern version of Linux - now THAT would be neat and worthy of the name ReactOS.

But seriously, that thing is impressive in a way, but like... why? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

I got it running in a VM in about two minutes. I haven't done much with it at all but it does 'work'.

Not sure how/where Id get device drivers for the few things it didn't detect but I don't think they're deal-breakers.

 

[uc50ic4more]

The core idea of Linux is a good one, but the implementation is holding it back from mass adoption.

?!?!?!?!?!!

The entire world runs on Linux. This very web site. Chromebooks, Android, very likely your router or smart toaster or whatever in the world you have hooked up to your WiFi. Your Amazon Firestick. All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers. Your bank runs on a UNIX of some sort I'd wager. Microsoft's Azure cloud runs atop it for heaven's sake. **Microsoft's**.

Who is it exactly that you feel cares about consumers adopting a Linux-based OS on the desktop? I advocate for it because it is smarter on pretty much every level; but I have no interest beyond "trying to suggest smart things to people" in you or anyone else adopting this, that or any other thing. Who is it that is "failing" in mass adoption? Who gains from this "mass adoption" on the PC Desktop?

 

[hemioiler]

Linux is a good idea on paper. A flexible lightweight core kernel that can be built on in practically any way that a user/group wants. But the core of what Linux is and what it does is also one of the core reasons why adoption has stalled out. You can't just make a program for linux. You have to make it for a few major core distributions if you want to hit the majority of the Linux user base, and then there's 10,000 distributions based on those core few. And it just spirals out of control into madness. This is also the reason hardware driver support can be kind of a pain in the tail as well.

With Windows and Mac OS you get exactly that. If you want to make an application for windows, you only have to target it to the main operating system versions which at this point are really windows 7, windows 10, and windows 11. And Win7 support is completely optional as the OS is out of support and slowly dying out.

The core idea of Linux is a good one, but the implementation is holding it back from mass adoption.

As a software engineer; you most certainly can "just make" a program for linux. Flatpak and Snaps have been a thing for a while, which means you write once and deploy to flatpak and can support every distro that supports flatpak (so basically everyone that matters).

And beyond that for native packaging you only really need to support a few major desktops like debian and redhat etc. The spin off distros are automatically supported. So if you support debian, you support all of ubuntu and all of its hundred of spinoffs. Works well for the most part unless you absolutely require some very specific library version, but then you can also ship static libs instead of depending on dynamic ones.

Adoption for linux hasn't stalled. It grows slowly every year. The reason it grows slow is not due to packaging primarily, but because you can't just push out windows overnight because of the monopoly it has. It's a chicken and an egg scenario and you can't just brake the dependency overnight no matter how good linux is (and lets be honest, it's much better than windows at this point even despite its flaws).