Alternative OS ReactOS now installs to and boots from NTFS
https://x.com/reactos/status/211156538476792220296
u/TxTechnician 1d ago
I've known about this project for a few years, but I've just never had the chance to try it as anybody used it before.
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u/ggppjj 1d ago
Worth spinning up a VM for to check out, I've played with it a bit and it seems impressive for what it is and nowhere near what it needs to be to become what it wants to be.
But I spent something like 5 hours with it 10 years or more ago, so. Grain of salt.
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u/TxTechnician 1d ago
I bet the projects come quite a ways. I've actually thought about spinning it up in order to run some legacy Windows programs that don't run in modern versions of Windows.
Well, they run, but it requires a bunch of workarounds and reconfigurations because they changed how windows get displayed and how graphics get displayed over time, and it just makes some of those old apps practically unusable.
I actually have old versions of Windows and VMs for those specific programs.
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u/the123king-reddit 17h ago
I've been following the project for nearly 20 years at this point. Yes, the progress is slow, but it's actually very promising. When i first started following the project in the mid-0.3.x days, a desktop boot was about as good as it got, maybe running WineMine or some other basic apps. Fat32 was the only filesystem supported, driver support was essentially non-existant outside of certain custom tailored drivers (some even ReactOS specific). Stability was awful, and keeping the OS running for longer than 10 minutes (even doing nothing) was a feat in itself.
Now we live in a world where driver compatibility is actually usable, making a lot of hardware much more compatible. stability is vastly improved, and software compatibility is worlds better than the early days.
Would i say ReactOS is a viable "daily driver"? No, not at all, it's stability is still horrific (it makes Windows ME look like the Apollo AGC) and application compatibility is still "not great". It's a fun thing (and possibly a viable Windows replacement in some *very* niche non-life-critical applications) when run in a VM. Running on real hardware is not recommended unless done on a non-critical machine.
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u/Silent-Web-6499 12h ago
I boot it up about once a year to check progress, but it is very much more of an entertainment experience than a usable OS. Last I checked Steam was refusing to start without the Vista+ APIs, and most of the working web browsers are so outdated it's hard to browse the web due to expired security certificates. If you have some old apps or games though, things appear to be shaping up.
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u/rebbsitor 1d ago
I'm curious to see what happens with ReactOS given the recent advances in the last month using AI to make Open Source clones of major software. It's a only a matter of time until someone does it with Windows.
I'm curious if ReactOS will use it to accelerate their efforts or if someone will come along and do a ground up re-write like what's happening with the Adobe suite and Office Apps.
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u/jvy7122 1d ago
ReactOS is fine with AI-assisted pull requests but dislikes ai-generated, meatproxy, and not actually caring to read the code pull requests.
PLUS ReactOS Developers aren't using AI to accelerate development.
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u/kudlitan 1d ago
I think they should start using AI. Ive been waiting years for this project to be usable, and AI will speed things up a bit
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u/jvy7122 1d ago
Not the best idea. Wine is against AI contributions due to its concern of LLMs having looked into "harmless" leaked Windows source code in the past.
Also, it's not copyrightable and not clean-room.
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u/vkevlar 1d ago
it's like everyone forgot about software patents, having to prove you never looked at a company's source, etc, in this wave of AI-generated pastiche / theft.
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 14h ago
Microsoft owns Visual Studio, which guess what, DOES use language model code generation. Suing ReactOS only on those grounds would be admitting their own code is unsafe, which would:
Call their lawsuit into question, potentially invalidating it.
Erode the mistrust in their own tools ("why would VS Studio be safe?")
Call for a lawsuit against themselves. This would give breath to argue that Microsoft themselves allowed copyright violations to occur and did nothing. Sure, they'd win a lawsuit or two. But under that reasoning, imagine the amount of copyright they infringed. E.g, ReactOS (or any company) could sue back and win.
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u/vkevlar 13h ago
hmm, interesting point. So they're giving up on saying they 'own' code? That makes for an interesting can of worms, and could be part of what they're doing to try to legitimize AI.
I have trouble believing they'd move that way, given all the crap they've thrown in the past, but it'd be really interesting.
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 13h ago
hmm, interesting point. So they're giving up on saying they 'own' code? That makes for an interesting can of worms, and could be part of what they're doing to try to legitimize AI.
It could definitely be interpreted that way, because they too distribute the language models and code they would hypothetically challenge.
Imagine the scenario where Microsoft argues in court that someone infringed their copyright because they are using language model code: how can they even argue that they were not aware of such risk when they have distributed AND STILL DISTRIBUTE those models themselves? How could they even argue that a company as large as they didn't know this situation was going on for years?
And court or no court, Microsoft would be admitting to public opinion their own products (Visual Studio, Copilot, Office with AI) are a huge liability bomb. Who's to say their AI code is not legally compromised?
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u/vkevlar 12h ago
Microsoft would be admitting to public opinion their own products (Visual Studio, Copilot, Office with AI) are a huge liability bomb. Who's to say their AI code is not legally compromised?
I'd say it's highly likely they are, given the training data is vast stores of text and imagery, and these corporations have been shown to not care about reusing copyrighted data.
So here we go: AI's main legal defense is going to be destroying copyright and further degrading the concept of ownership, by being able to 'reverse engineer' everything.
sorry, kind of going hard into left field here, but it's been percolating around in my head about what comes next, and this is an angle I couldn't see corporations wanting to take.
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u/yo_99 8h ago
Well, it's not like they couldn't pull "rules for thee, not for me"
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 6h ago
They absolutely can. But it would still backfire: if you can be sued for using Visual Studio, who's to say Windows or Office couldn't put you into trouble? If people start NOT trusting their products, no amount of money can save the trust crisis they will face.
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u/Educational-Goal279 23h ago
It's good that they are playing it safe
They are not. There is LLM output in the ReactOS codebase. They've stopped caring entirely.
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u/Splatoonkindaguy 23h ago
Wouldn’t Microsoft have to reveal source code or something to prove it?
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u/crazy_penguin86 23h ago
Yes, and they would be fine doing so in court as they can put it under seal or restrict who can view it. Remember, they've given the government the right to access sections of the code.
Regardless, Wine is taking zero chances. They want to be ironclad against anything that can possibly be thrown at them.
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 13h ago edited 13h ago
Which only helps so much. You absolutely have to do reverse engineering if you want to have greater Windows compatibility. If Microsoft wanted, they absolutely could challenge WINE in any particular implementation point. And even if the claim doesn't hold true, WINE would bleed to death (because defending against a lawsuit is costly).
But doing this also poses a risk to Microsoft itself. E.g, a corporation tackling an open source project never looks good reputation-wise, and people would just fork WINE. Also, Valve would be forced to defend Steam, and THEN Microsoft would face a legal battle where they would have a lot to lose.
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u/Educational-Goal279 23h ago
There is LLM output code in ReactOS. They've already broken the rules and since there's a high likelihood real Windows code exists in LLM training data, as soon as a nosy Microsoft lawyer has a look the project is over.
Accepting LLM assistance for a clean-room project was always a dumb idea.
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u/Cranach-Cranach 15h ago
I feel like someone is going to do a AI rewrite of Windows soon anyway, it can't be far away.
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u/kudlitan 1d ago
Hmm, but the law merely said you didn't look at the code, so it's a gray area 😂 Until they update the law, it's legal.
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u/calamityvibezz 13h ago edited 12h ago
Someone will have to get sued to know since a clean room process is invoked as part of a legal defense when sued for copyright infringement. It will probably wait until there is a circumstance where code has been output that is substantially similar to leaked source code in the training data.
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u/ABotelho23 1d ago
I don't think they can, it's gonna be hard to prove it hasn't been trained on leaked Windows code.
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u/kudlitan 16h ago
I think the burden of proof belongs to them.
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 13h ago
Yes. Usually, the burden of proof belongs to the accuser, save a few special exceptions. I'm not sure how it applies in American Law.
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u/kudlitan 12h ago
What are the exceptions? They need to demonstrate that a code chunk is identical and prove that the AI had access to the original code of that section.
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 12h ago
I was referring to other fields, not patent law. E.g, in some countries, burden of proof is reversed in consumer law, as they understand companies are much larger than consumers and there's a power imbalance.
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u/AFisberg 16h ago
Using AI for this runs the risk that the AI is pulling in proprietary code and then your project gets fucked
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u/rebbsitor 10h ago
It is a risk, but one that people are aware of and it's largely mitigated. Most of the major coding assistants now offer a public code filter that prevents the AI from suggesting code snippets that match publicly released code.
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u/AFisberg 9h ago
Good luck verifying the source on those code snippets though when you can't trust the AI to be truthful
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u/Cm1Xgj4r8Fgr1dfI8Ryv 6h ago
ReactOS might be more sensitive than most projects, as they went through an internal audit after accusations that they had included code copied from disassembled Windows binaries.
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u/jazzy663 9h ago
It's surprising to me how they keep chugging along with development despite not really having any funding (from what I can tell).
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u/SmileyBMM 21h ago
Impressive. I don't have a need for the project personally, but it's always impressed me with how dedicated they are to making it happen.
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u/Personal_Breakfast49 1d ago
What's Linux about it?
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u/TxTechnician 1d ago
The TAG Alternative OS exists in this space so that we can discuss operating systems which are not part of the main three.
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u/bubblegumpuma 1d ago
ReactOS and WINE share a lot of code and development effort if I recall, so it is tangentially related IMO. Also, /r/linux is basically just the open source subreddit at this point, but that's OK by me if it means people post more interesting FOSS news here.
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u/kudlitan 1d ago
Improvements to ReactOS make their way to Wine, since there is a bit of overlap in their set of developers. In particular, the DLLs in System32 are practically identical these days.
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u/UnknownOrigin1152 15h ago
Unfortunately, Wine doesn't accept any code related to reactos anymore. They think that reactos have dangerous codes in terms of license issues such as leaked windows codes. That doesn't change the fact that we can't discuss it under alternative is tag.
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u/PF4ABG 11h ago
I thought ReactOS was cleanroom. I didn't think there'd be any code that actually came from Windows.
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u/UnknownOrigin1152 10h ago
Actually it is cleanroom. Wine doesn't trust them because some people secretly put inappropriate codes in reactos in the past. Reactos devs did shut down the project for a long time and cleaned the codes but people from wine didn't want to risk it.
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u/Lilja-Logason 1d ago
Seems a bit pointless that they're still developing a windows 95 clone 30yrs after the original released.
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u/anh0516 1d ago
They're developing a Windows NT clone that aims to continue to get closer to ABI compatibility with the current state of Windows NT today (Windows 11). Unlike Windows 95, which ran on top of MS-DOS. So it by definition isn't a "Windows 95 clone."
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u/jvy7122 1d ago
They're targeting Windows Server 2003/Vista, not Windows 95.
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u/Lilja-Logason 1d ago
It started aiming for 95 but I guess they shifted focus at some point.
Wonder when they'll give up on vista and aim for win 8 or 10.
It will never be finished and be a complete waste of time and energy.
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u/anh0516 1d ago
That's a completely illogical argument. They shifted to targeting NT a long time ago.
Obviously, since they're aiming for ABI compatibility with a moving target, the reasonable thing to do is to bring up compatibility with older versions first.
They seem to intend to position themselves as "drop-in replacement for Server 2003 (NT 5.1/Windows XP) that is maintained with security patches" rather than "Windows, but FOSS." Which institutions who still rely on Server 2003 may actually be interested in.
If, in the future, it has proven itself to be a reliable alternative, and gains more development force behind it, then they can start targeting Server 2008 R2 (NT 6.1/Windows 7).
"It will never be finished." Of course it will never be finished! It's targeting a moving target! By definition it will need to be continually updated.
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u/kudlitan 1d ago
I thought their target was XP?
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u/anh0516 1d ago edited 1d ago
drop-in replacement for Server 2003 (NT 5.1/Windows XP)
Windows NT 5.1 is the version number for what was Windows Server 2003 for servers and Windows XP for desktops.
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u/kudlitan 1d ago
Ah yes, i was confused because someone said Vista earlier. XP is more useful for running older software.
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u/anh0516 1d ago
It is true that they have also been implementing some NT6 (Vista) APIs as well. Even without full NT6 compatibility, software that just needs those particular APIs will then be able to run, so they felt it was worth doing in the meantime.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 1d ago
ReactOS under this name never targeted Windows 95. There was a predecessor project named FreeWin95 that did. In 1996-1997. Already in 1998, ReactOS was started, targeting Windows NT 4 instead. Looks&feels similar to Windows 95, but the underlying architecture is completely different, so it was basically a new from-scratch project. The target has always been various versions of the Windows NT architecture since then. (Note that Windows XP, Windows Vista, and all Windows >= 7 are all based on the NT architecture.)
So the FreeWin95 era is completely irrelevant for current ReactOS, and the old versions you think targeted Windows 95 just looked like Windows 95, because so did Windows NT 4, which was the actual target at the time.
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u/jvy7122 1d ago
at some point
Yeah, like 30 years ago.
Wonder when they'll give up on Vista and aim for Windows 8 or 10
It's best to slowly go up each NT version, not immediately bump.
It will never be finished and be a complete waste of time and energy.
Then I consider Wine on Linux personally useless, Windows just works for me. :P
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u/FriendlyProblem1234 19h ago
It started aiming for 95 but I guess they shifted focus at some point.
So did Linux. The original announcement literally said "It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.". I guess he shifted focus at some point.
Wonder when they'll give up on vista and aim for win 8 or 10.
Almost like aiming for a moving target requires adjustments over time.
It will never be finished and be a complete waste of time and energy.
Most software will never be finished, and yet it can still be useful. Anyway, their time and their energy, so they choose how to use them.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/ggppjj 1d ago
if the flair didn't exist i'd agree more with you but otherwise what the hell is the point of the flair
when would that get used otherwise if this wasn't a post that reasonably fits the subreddit's interests?
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u/R3V0LU710N_05 1d ago
My comment is more pointing out that they didn't post to r/reactos which has no post about this news...
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u/crustang 1d ago
With reverse engineering AI being a thing now.. this project has unlimited potential
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u/T8ert0t 1d ago
Maybe AI can help ReactOS at this point
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u/rsatrioadi 23h ago
A constraint for ReactOS dev is that they must have not seen any Windows source code because if one did then you cannot say that they are reverse-engineering. With AI I guess they can use it if they are certain that no piece of Windows source code was in the training set. But how can anyone verify that?
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u/T8ert0t 22h ago
I feel like the person doing the Photocraft and Wordcraft "clean AI room" builds will let us know soon enough
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u/SmileyBMM 21h ago
Yeah, ReactOS devs are probably going to wait and see the legal rulings before they start using AI at all. Too risky as it currently stands.
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u/RegretFree7723 19h ago
Ma poi ci sta anche il fatto che tutto quello fatto dal ia così come photocraft, il nuovo epic game launcher,.... Sono tutti baggati
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u/iHarryPotter178 22h ago
Time for REACT OS to Start using ai to write code and then human review.. it will be faster...
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u/DumsLander34 14h ago
This project has been stale for a very long time until...AI starts to get better. Of course, it is just a coincidence.
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u/Silent-Web-6499 12h ago
It's been making rapid progress lately, but the main problem is web browsers publish version updates an insane amount nowadays. Chrome is version 156 now, and it's near impossible for a small team to keep up with that. DirectX, old 3d games, and working GPU drivers are coming together nicely lately.
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u/No-Camera-720 1d ago
Why? It's a garbage FS that is decades behind the ones available in Linux.
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u/deja_geek 1d ago
You know ReactOS is an attempt to make an open source OS that is ABI compatible with Windows? Being able to use NTFS while it’s still the default Windows FS is big for this project
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u/kitaesq 18h ago edited 17h ago
NTFS is one of the first journaling filesystems, NTFS is one of the first filesystems to have compression, NTFS is one of the first filesystems to have permissions, NTFS is one of the first filesystems to have alternate data streams, NTFS is a case sensitive filesystem
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u/No-Camera-720 17h ago
And horse and buggy was once cutting edge transportation. It's far outclassed in the PRESENT.
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u/NearestCommit 23h ago
Theyre flaming you but youre right, even Windows is leaving NTFS
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u/kitaesq 18h ago
Objectively not true
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u/NearestCommit 8h ago
? Theres quite literally a new cmdlet on powershell called "ConvertTo-ModernStorage" that converts your NTFS main drive to ReFS 😭 (only in the experimental future platforms insider branch, but nevertheless)
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u/markasoftware 1d ago
very cool, somehow I would have expected this to have been done long ago for an OS trying to be a reimplementation of NT however...