ReactOS: Can It Replace Windows?!

[@danwood_uk]

Get a HUGE 70% off the price of TotalAV including the VPN service by using my exclusive offer: totalav.com/danwood​ - Please support the channel by supporting our sponsors.

[@kshadehyaena]

TotalAV is questionable at best. Malwarebytes rates it as potentially unwanted application. It is also sold as "Scanguard" and "PCProtect", which have the same reputation And it just plain isn't good at its job as well. Please don't work with the company behind these products, ProtectedNet Group Ltd , again, they don't deserve it.

[@meetoo594]

@@kshadehyaena Yeah, very shady outfit, all the genuine reviews of their products are not good with loads complaining about money taken from accounts without permission. I wouldnt trust them to run a bath, let alone the security on my PC.

[@rogerm1111]

It's a shame to see you promoting TotalAV, which is a terrible antivirus. Any big name antivirus will do a much better job of protecting computers. Also worth nothing is that, even if you buy it with a discount, your TotalAV subscription will renew in a year at the full price, which is very expensive. There are quite a few excellent antiviruses for Windows PCs, but TotalAV is not one of them.

[@wettuga2762]

TotalAV looks awfully similar to AVG/Avast, which have a very negative reputation due to selling user information to 3rd parties. Let's hope it's just a coincidence, and not another clone of those awful AVs...

[@meetoo594]

@@wettuga2762 This lot are far worse than Avast (never used avg so don't know about them). At least Avast actually protects your pc and they don't steal your money. I just use Win 10 built in virus thingy nowadays as it seems to work as well as any other, but I previously used Avast for over 10 years without issue so they cant be that bad. 3rd parties already have whatever Avast can harvest anyway (via facebook, google etc) so its not that much of a concern tbh.

[@simonj48]

It's harder to get away from Google than it is Microsoft these days.

[@jothain]

True, but gotta admit that Google knows their shit. They have really solid stuff. Lol, writing from Chrome to YT 😂

[@onometre]

I've never felt a reason to get away from either

[@jothain]

@@onometre I don't know what it's all about fearing Google so much. Yeah, sure they collect tons of data from users. But what about something like Facebook? In my books Google is way better than FB.

[@RetroMMA]

@@jothain You're totally cool with them reading your email, knowing every place you go, your driving habits, how much money you make, who you sleep with, censorship, etc?

[@rickyspanish4792]

google has the power to transform culture, to decide who gets elected (together with facebook, btw), etc, that's TOO MUCH POWER. dangerous stuff and I hope the world will start recognizing this danger asap.

[@ChrisUKFF]

The limit for 32-bit colour at that resolution is because of the amount of "video" memory assigned to your VM. You can increase that.

[@stephanszarafinski9001]

Windows 2000 is my favorite windows too, it’s nice and clean. No waste of screenspace. No background processes that slow down your machine. It’s windows as it’s supposed to be.

[@CommodoreFan64]

Same, followed by 98SE(fully updated, and because of that era of gaming 9X/DOS gaming it handles so well), and then XP SP3(also that era of PC gaming). after that it just kept on going downhill for me till Windows 10 finally broke me, and I moved full time to Manjaro MATE Linux on all my main machines with Neverware Cloudready OS Home Edition(Chromium OS that still has full Google sync) for the family who only do simple task on our older Thinkpads.

[@StarlasAiko]

Windows 3.11 is what it is supposed to be...an add-on to the OS that you can just as easily do without and allows you to actually delete all the unwanted elements it comes packaged with

[@dylanrush184]

After Windows 2000 Microsoft slowly realized the could sell parts of their operating system and sell real estate in their operating system

[@crhu319]

I used it for about 8 years.

[@zz3709]

I used Win2k for over 20 years, because I'm still using it in 2 PCs today. They're for dedicated functions so never had a need to DOWNgrade to XP etc.

[@jfwfreo]

The #1 problem with ReactOS (IMO) is that they seem to be stuck at the idea of targeting XP and not supporting anything post-XP. That means running most modern software on it is a real pain and its even harder to get it running on any kind of modern hardware (since it doesn't support WDDM and other hardware interfaces that modern drivers need)

[@SergeantExtreme]

That's because they literally have zero development. After the early 2000s, people simply stopped contributing to this project and focused on Linux instead.

[@minuteworld7027]

skyrim works and they just added 64bit support

[@fierelier7691]

i don't think the lack of focus on implementing newer things is a problem. think about it, windows is something that continuously had things added, not much was removed. so focusing on XP for now, and then focusing on vista+ compat later (which is what they're doing) is kind of necessary. also, a lot of great programs are available for XP if you go looking (NewMoon for browsing, WinSCP for SFTP, FireAlpaca for drawing, VLC, 7-zip, etc). things are not so bad as they seem on XP. and don't forget that you can just use older software. a lot of the time, that's absolutely fine. though devices that need vista+ drivers will just not fully work for a while.

[@polocatfan]

as obvious said they're just a few people so they're focusing on a smaller goal

[@osgeld]

could be worse 20 years ago they were targeting 95 and never made any headway it seems

[@Noyjitat]

Still a winamp fan to this day. I've yet to find a replacement that meets or exceeds it in quality and features.

[@BLOB_DYLAN]

Wow!! I didn’t know it still existed...it’s the reason I clicked on this vid

[@Noyjitat]

There’s actually a new Winamp project you can sign up for emails on. But yes you can still download and use it in windows 10 etc.

[@robertgray703]

Media monkey isn't a bad replacement

[@tychobra1]

I've replaced Winamp long ago with foobar2000. I'm sure you know this, but I'm mentioning it here anyway, because I'm curious why this is not a good replacement in your opinion :-)

[@dj_inclusion]

I love Winamp, so use it to this day as well.

[@LastofAvari]

ReactOS looks interesting, but they were building it for decades and it's still not really stable or usable. Every time I look at it I get a feeling by the time it will run WinXP - Win 7 software nicely it will only be used for retro computing purposes. All the best wishes to devs though. Hope you're having fun reverse engineering all those proprietary OS subsystems :)

[@sauliuskrasuckas4355]

It's because not enough people help them. "First you give, then you get"

[@LuminousWhispers11]

@@sauliuskrasuckas4355 Unfortunately, that is not going to apply in this case. Most people would rather use Wine and make their Linux system look similar to Windows. Especially since it has been around 18 years at this point. People only invest in things they stand to benefit from. Most people who would support would have already moved to Linux.

[@christopher480]

wow ....i had to go thru sooooo many comments to finially get to this one, where the person actually knows what they are talking about.

[@JanuszKrysztofiak]

They are chasing a target that is faster than themselves. From a practical point of view, it has always been a doomed effort.

[@youtubesuresuckscock]

The problem is that people ultimately don't use computers to wait around for stuff to be released. They're going to keep making new versions of APIs like Direct3D, and something like this will inherently always be behind, and you don't buy a $2,000 video card to wait years for people to reverse engineer new APIs.

[@Vlad-1986]

Mate, if you want higher resolutions and colours you need to give the VM more than 4MB of video memory.

[@RainerK.]

It had 32MB, what are you talking about?

[@Vlad-1986]

@@RainerK. Oh yeah!. Well, 32Mb is plenty for 1080 and 32bit colour, so then I have no idea why of the resolution. Maybe it is VirtualBox fault... I stopped using it years ago because crap like that (and tiny view area when you are using a terminal in DOS)

[@nadadada3938]

@@Vlad-1986 You need to install some Virtual Box drivers to actually let you use higher resolutions

[@datavalisofficial8730]

@@nadadada3938 yea

[@datavalisofficial8730]

@@Vlad-1986 i built a pentium D + 4gb ddr2 machine just for testing weird operating systems and whatnot And i printed virtual box's logo onto a piece of paper and stuck it onto the case with a single piece of tape I did it with a "haha lol" mindset and to this day when i see it, it makes me laugh a little on the inside The "Non virtual box" is better than virtual box And i can run virtual box in it It currently has windows 7 crux installed

[@PlayerClarinet]

The programmers working on ReactOS are probably learning heaps, and that's a great outcome in itself. But when a project hasn't emerged from alpha status after a quarter of a century, you really need to reassess your goals. Medieval cathedrals were built over the course of several lifetimes, but that's not a sustainable project plan for a desktop operating system.

[@Pocket-Calculator]

The development stalled for almost 10 years. Then they had to go back and check manually every single line of code because a programmer might have used proprietary Microsoft code illegally. The way they're developing this is slow since they have a team studying how something work, writing documentation about it and another one trying to reimplement it. This is, of course, to avoid Microsoft lawsuits. Cuple that with the fact that there are a lot of undocumented behavior, and it's obvious why it's taken so long.

[@brianvogt8125]

@@Pocket-Calculator - That is the reason, not an excuse. The simple fact is that ReactOS doesn't seem to have entered the year 2000 (in Windows terms) yet. If I wanted something that looks like Windows XP, I'd just use one of my XP systems - it works very well, unlike ReactOS did here.

[@Pocket-Calculator]

@@brianvogt8125 You're not supposed to use ReactOS. They even say as much by telling users that it's for testing and development purposes only. ReactOS is an amazing feat of reverse engineering carried out by students and researchers with little to no funding. I'm sorry that you can't play your videogames or watch "funny" Facebook memes. ReactOS as a project still has value, even if only an educational tool for developers. ReactOS is both libre software and free of spyware, which makes it even more valuable.

[@brianvogt8125]

@@Pocket-Calculator - Your continued excuse-making is simply a reflection of the fact that the project (which was originally to provide a freeware alternative to Windows) has achieved so little that the product is worth nothing more than a disclaimer. If students get some value out of it, I wish them well, but the initial vision is clearly lost. A product can be "even more valuable" only if it works; otherwise it forces me to another system for useful work.

[@stfuomgdude]

@@brianvogt8125 Yeah, you and PlayerClarinet are absolutely right. The calculator guy has his head up his ass. It's fine to be a fan of a project, but it's clear that the project is highly impractical and unlikely to reach its original goal, even if it's a neat idea and an impressive feat of reverse-engineering.

[@KarlHamilton]

Same here. My A4000T was my main machine until about 2005. It was such and amazing computer. I still miss it.

[@kenkelvin4023]

Linux won’t work I had to use FreeBSD +IceWM

[@ShamblerDK]

I spent hundreds of dollars upgrading my A1200. Recently ditched the floppy drive because some of the 25+ year old disks were starting to go really bad. Running all floppy images off of a single USB key.

[@VladIDrago]

ReactOS=Windows XP huha... .

[@the_answeris6694]

Originally, it was Write. But it changed to Wordpad later and was more compatible with Word. For all of those who were clinging on to Write after the change to Wordpad, Microsoft even had a stub EXE called *write.exe* that just pointed to and opened Wordpad.

[@DolganoFF]

Yeah, and they dropped compatibility with old .wri files. What a stupid decision

[@ez45]

In fact, you can still run "Write" in Windows 10.

[@veryboringrides3664]

@@ez45 "In fact" you can, but if you actually tried this, you would learn that it opens the Wordpad, and the Wordpad doesn't render the old "*.wri" files properly. It looses all the fonts and formatting.

[@ShiroCh_ID]

i still love winamp tough xD

[@RickRollMaster101]

@@DolganoFF ye, it uses rich text format now (.rtf)

[@ErdrickHero]

Windows 7 was my favorite desktop environment. I wish we could have just stayed on that, but with security/driver/api updates. I don't like what Microsoft is doing with the operating system at all anymore, though. Unfortunately, unlike productivity software, you can't just replace a game with another program and call it good. And most of my computer use is for gaming. WINE recently had a big update though, so I'm going to check that out...

[@eyeflaps]

Agreed. Once 8 came around I knew it was going to get worse from there. I was not a fan of that metro UI nonsense and the lack of a start menu. Hated Universal windows apps. Hated Cortana. Hated forced windows updates. Hated it all. Refuse to use any edition 8-11. I'm still using 7 and it works perfectly fine for me.

[@somesalmon5694]

Being using Linux as my daily driver for a year now and personally I have found its made computing fun and adventurous again. I went from arch to artix to gentoo and stuck there for about 4 months now. I love learning about the ins and outs of my computer and everything on windows has a more powerful and customizable open source alternative. I really enjoy the keyboard centric tiling window managers. I recently switched to sway and find it very stable. I haven't had to reinstall or experienced any crashes since my switch :)

[@Psycandy]

all my systems are win7. just means my machines are all pre-2016, but they run all the new software without issues.

[@encycl07pedia-]

Windows peaked with 7. I actually didn't find 8 to be all that bad, but people were upset because they moved far too much around. One job I had had Windows 8 on the work machines there. They looked like they belonged in Nickelodeon Studios or a kid's corner in a library. It was comical how badly they blundered with the arts-and-crafts UI on a business-oriented OS. Windows 10 dialed it back but it still looked ugly. All the flat, lifeless icons look like they hired artists with zero imagination. Windows XP and and 7 looked alive and vibrant.

[@thedevilsadvocate5210]

It was just a coincidence win 7 support just happened to stop when the pandemic started

[@AndreasToth]

Windows 98 was also my reason for leaving my Amiga behind. And I agree, Windows 2000 was Microsoft's slickest Windows ever.

[@lillywho]

16:20 if you "steal" the XP default theme from either a repack or an XP installation online, you can actually install it onto ReactOS. The only thing that won't change is the start menu. Actually, all sorts of themes you can get online for XP work with this.

[@supermaster2012]

Because ReactOS is based on illegally stolen code form an early 2000s NT Kernel and XP leak. This project is outeight IP theft.

[@lillywho]

@@supermaster2012 That's conjecture and also has got nothing to do with its usability.

[@supermaster2012]

@@lillywho no, it's not. You can literally find the exact same macro names in ReactOS' code as in the leak, which is mathematically impossible unless they outright stole since the macros are preprocessor parsed and thus never included in any form in the output unlike function names that can be found in PDBs. They are outright thieves and deserve no platform, admiration or prise. What they deserve is jail.

[@supermaster2012]

@@ButterfatFarms right in the US federal law.

[@supermaster2012]

@@ButterfatFarms the vast majority of the small amount of people that know ReactOS are unaware of the flagrant extremely dangerous and highly illegal theft the ReactOS "team" has been committing for two decades. It is my responsibility and the responsibility of anyone else enlightened with this knowledge to ensure they are incapable of collecting illegal donations.

[@NoobixCube]

I kind of wish they’d stuck with the 95/98 target, in retrospect. While obviously, since they intended a working drop-in replacement for the current Windows of the day, which is an NT based Windows, targeting NT made sense for them, I think because of the slow pace of development, it might have been more useful to target the older DOS shell versions. Basically, if they had made a free 98 replacement, the kernel work would be done, stable, and actually have MORE features than the original, by now, in the form of FreeDOS, and they could focus on the APIs specific to the shell. There are a lot of legacy applications that could benefit from a free 98 implementation, and, when they changed to targeting NT, there were still quite a lot of 98 installs in the wild. A thriving free 98 stack would probably be quite welcome in the open source world.

[@rustyheckler8766]

At the rate they're going ReactOS will be ready to go by 2121.

[@nusaqib]

Right. Still at 0.4.13

[@supermaster2012]

Doubtful, they've pretty much run out of illegal leaks to steal from.

[@xAffan]

@@supermaster2012 they dont use leaks though, its reverse engineering through clean room design and it uses wine under the hood

[@supermaster2012]

@@xAffan those macro names are not public, which immediately invalidates any claim of clean room (which is still illegal both in the EU and the US anyway) reimplementation. Also, it does NOT use wine under the hood and that's a claim even the maintainers make themselves. Do yourself a favour and check my top level comment which contains plenty of proof this project is nothing but outright theft from a 2003 NT Kernel leak.

[@xAffan]

@@supermaster2012 i would support you but microsoft is also outright theif. Immense amount of data logging is enabled by default in windows 10 and theres no way you can disable it. Even if you get enterprise, some data will still be collected. You arent even sure what is being collected so that opens up possibility for an open source trustable OS which is what reactOS aims to be

I guess the build-in web browser didn't work because at 12:00, the OS has failed to download a package regarding to display html content. That also why you can see the url has been changed but the web content is empty

[@lillywho]

13:46 It probably reports itself as Windows Server because you set it into Server mode. I'm pretty sure it normally reports as 5.1 SP3 otherwise, which is XP SP3.

[@rabidbigdog]

Hopefully the ReactOS guys get an appreciation of how massive a task Windows is; the breath of device support is truly incredible.

[@coreyreichle1921]

It's less that Windows is a massive task to complete, it's more that the source is closed, and everything has to be reverse engineered. Because, even with "Standards compliant" APIs, MS always played fast and loose with standards, to ensure it broke compatibility with other OSs.

[@statinskill]

Nobody is going to rewrite the thousands of windows drivers out there. Instead the idea is to build the same driver interfaces these drivers use in ReactOS. Then you load the same driver in ReactOS that you would use with Windows.

[@Zcooger]

ROS team just announced that DirectX 9 stack is working on it with real hardware!!

[@fattyz1]

It comes down to what the Mac users always said it just works. I don’t wanna have to run to the internet every time I plug something in to try and get it to work

[@residentgrey]

Windows is not to thank for the support. That would be the hundreds of developers for the hardware.

[@PhirePhlame]

As a fun fact, ReactOS uses the same MSSTYLES format as XP, so you can actually pull the real Luna theme from the files of XP and plant it into the equivalent folder in a React installation, and it'll work! What surprised me is that the Luna theme's start button even displayed the ReactOS globe icon in place of the Windows flag when applied to React!

[@Spechtlerimwald]

Uhm ... with FAT (is it even fAT32?) there are not any permissions and acls and journal .... But I guess, the NTFS driver when it's the same as from linux won't also honor acls ... Does BTRFS on ReactOS have any advantages to FAT? Can it do snapshots?

[@TheSulross]

I created what was effectively a Start menu in the bottom left corner of the screen on the Macintosh Plus back in circa 1987. The Mac was being embedded as a kiosk interface for operating a laser rasterizing imaging machine that printed Gerber files for imaging the film which printed circuit boards are manufactured from. The Mac Plus OS had added hierarchical menus support and that facilitated taking a Start menu approach. So I beat Microsoft Windows 95 to this manner of GUI desktop by more than half a decade.

[@Caseytify]

Sure you did... {rolls eyes}

[@encycl07pedia-]

Yep. Menus didn't exist before you came around. Hierarchical menus? Forget about it! I can't believe this got 41 likes.

[@TheSulross]

is amazing that people that clearly don't know a damn thing about which they're talking about go and drop comments to publicly display their ignorance anyway - but such is the way of social media: i.postimg.cc/YSb1tLnh/Printed-Circuit-Board-Imager-Mac-UI.jpg

[@kennystrawnmusic]

Re 35:25 - Adobe already has a version of Photoshop for Android and Linux has Anbox: you know, that LXC-based Android container that lets you run Android apps on Linux the same way that ARC lets you run them on Chrome OS. Unfortunately Anbox isn’t bundled on many Linux ISOs - if it was, that would greatly improve compatibility with a lot of stuff, much more so than bundling Wine would.

[@privacyvalued4134]

27:18 The error message you got after installing the Firefox update is related to a feature introduced in Windows 7 called "API sets," which requires kernel level support in the Windows loader for that feature to work. I really hate the API sets feature in Windows because it tends to break applications that need to work across multiple versions of Windows. Import/export tables are no longer cleanly defined by the EXE/DLLs for any given application and there is no simple mechanism to resolve API set import references (i.e. it's somewhat magical). Your experience with more up to date Firefox builds is not unexpected.

[@PeterMaddison2483]

I'm running VM 7.0 and I'm unable to get out of the 'Press any key to boot from the ReactOS medium...' as when I press any key, nothing happens...

[@lillywho]

Short answer: No, it can't. Not yet. Long answer: It would be great if it could and it's a fascinating project, but the people power required for it to be a Windows reimplementation ready for a production environment is just not there and progress moves very slowly. Right now, in many ways it's less than a half-baked Windows XP that runs on FAT or experimentally BTRFS and lacks a lot of features including driver support for a lot of things.

[@BilisNegra]

The short answer is the same as it has always been for over two decades. Maybe should be updated to: "It can't, and it's not really expected to". It will remain within the realm of the merely experimental for good.

[@paradoxmo]

IMO the real reason reactOS is going nowhere is because there’s not much need for it. The people who want to not use windows just use Linux, and for apps there is Wine. The only thing you need an NT kernel for is old drivers for old hardware, and most people would rather just upgrade to a new device instead of keep an old piece of hardware working.

[@davehamrick5028]

@@paradoxmo Very Nice Observation and so true.

[@redstoneminecraft3799]

I downloaded the .iso file and tried to boot it on QEMU with "-machine q35", but it didn't work. Actually, when I used "-machine pc", it succeeded.

[@bob_._.]

The Windows 95 start menu and taskbar actually came from PCTools for Windows, a Windows 3 application that also had multiple desktops, multiple "offices" (groups of desktops), was multi-user and allowed you to password protect any file, desktop or office. As always, Microshaft copied what others had done before but not as well.

[@linuxization4205]

:nerd_face:

[@xybersurfer]

that's interesting. i had always assumed that Microsoft invented the taskbar. cool that an application was already that far ahead

[@RogueRen]

If ReactOS ever gets far enough that its usable for gaming, I will IMMEDIATELY replace Windows 10 on my PC. I daily drive Linux and love it but there's still that small handful of games I need Windows for.

[@travis1240]

There's no reason to think that a particular game would run better under React than under Linux/Wine.

[@tomodiero7524]

Do you know how much development resources it takes in terms of video drivers, game engine optimizations, firmware modifications it takes to just optimize and bug fix just between updates of windows, not even talking major versions. It's over, ReactOS is just a hobby a great one, but the OS battles have already been won.

[@mmo0J]

ReactOS was in development for so long (probably more than a decade) and it still does not look better than the most basic linux distro. I'm sure it still has thousands of bugs in its core functions. What i want to tell is that it needs lots of work even for being a proper OS.

[@Darkest_Soul_187]

Bro, ReactOS has been in development since Ramses II took over the throne in Ancient Egypt, and it's still useless. I wouldn't get my hopes up that it will ever replace windows

[@tomodiero7524]

@@Darkest_Soul_187 🤣🤣🤣😂

[@eclipsegst9419]

98SE and 7 are the two i really enjoyed using. if they had left the ability to reskin your UI to the older versions like they used to, i wouldn't mind 10 at all. I run Open Shell and that helps, but i still would rather use 7 any day of the week. Aero Glass was just a beautiful look. As for this clone. It may save us all from forced cloud gaming some day, you never know...

[@nlx78]

People should take a look at Windows 11 Phoenix, a stripped down version. It's something I tried after I moved back to 10 a year ago after trying the normal 11 for maybe 2 months. Install (on SDD) but doesn't matter, was like 1/4th of time of a normal installation. Extra features, customized for people knowing what they can do with Windows and install stuff along the way (or change settings).

[@nlx78]

Phoenix Lite OS it's called: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3iniKSXfb5khNU

[@eclipsegst9419]

@@nlx78 Ill have to look into it but, man, i just want 7 back. It was just, perfection. The only thing i like better about 10 and 11 are features that could have been added to a 7 replacement without flipping over the table and making it all about touch controls for the failed All In One touchscreen PC market and failed Windows mobile. I've finally upgraded my and my son's PCs again so i now have a spare i7 5775c, the fastest CPU with 7 drivers, and i'm going to build a 7 PC and install all games older than DX12 on it, just to use the greatest OS of all time again.

[@TomAtkinson]

Logic 5.5 may run on this it's normally run on XP but can do Win2k. Very old "VST" plugins and virtual instruments a rumoured to work on linux and reactos which in some cases is a lot more than not running at all on modern Windows (maybe since it does not support 32 bit apps).

[@Docwiz2]

Also, I wanted to say that I put ReactOS in a Virtual Box from years and years ago and even in 2021, it's still the same thing with the same issues I had almost a decade ago

[@liamodell7191]

I'm curious, have you tried any updated version of ReactOS now since it's 2023?

[@retropcdurham]

ReactOS has come a long way considering the development scale

[@1leon000]

19:07 It is. Gecko is part of Firefox's browser infrastructure, it's specifically the HTML renderer (which renders basic page layouts, while SpiderMonkey runs JavaScript.)

[@jorgepadilha1873]

I always loved the win2k visual too. The most elegant and clean among the NTs versions.

[@PShawtx]

Correction the lastest build is 0.4.15 as of 3/24/2023. The main website page has not been updated to the latest build yet.

[@jyoungbr549]

I had an Amiga 500, 2000 and a 4000. The original Quake by ID software was the game that finally made me switch from my Amiga to a PC

[@Kaido_928]

For me it was the game X-wing and alone in the dark. It was bye amiga and hello 486 🙂

[@rodneykingston6420]

The task bar and the start button that Windows added in '95 were based on a piece of software called Dashboard for Windows that was available for Win 3.1 - a co-worker got it and we all installed it back in the early '90s.

[@Soruk42]

In the VirtualBox settings have you tried increasing the screen memory to get true colour in higher resolutions?

[@thedivinityman]

I've run every Windows since 3.1, except server editions and ME, I can count on one hand the number of crashes I've had on one hand. Then one year for a class (when I decided to go back to school) the class recommended a Mac, I bought a Mac book had it crash at least 2 times a week. Brought it in for repair 15 times in one year, and the last time I brought it in when the warranty would have expired in less than a week and them repairing it would have meant they needed to extend the warranty for 3 months they told me it had water damage, but refused to show me the board and where the water damage was. I took it home looked it over, no water damage (I fixed cellphones for years at a major us wireless carrier not going say the name for then to get free advertising so I know what water and corrosion damage looks like.) I called the 800 number and told them to look over my repair history and the operator said they should have replaced the MacBook after the fourth repair in 4 months and they never did, but they can't do that now since the warranty is about to expire, once I said ok I'll just forward all the receipt of the warranty repairs to the state attorney general, she said I'm going to send you box and you send the computer to us and we will send you the next model up for free, I told her no the only way they will get this old computer is if I can take the drive out, and do the exchange at the apple store so I have it the same day (so they couldn't take away the evidence that my board didn't have any water damage) after another 2 min on the phone with them (this lady was the only one that didn't hang up on me when I tried to find a solution to the issue) so fifth phone call, 3 hours total on the phone and them not following their own policies the exchange is for the next model up at the apple store, at the apple store I'm there to do the exchange, they try giving me the i5, 4 gig RAM version when I was told I would be getting the i7, 8 gig RAM version so after another 30 min at the store and getting the computer I was promised etc, I take it home, it still crashed at least once a week, and still had to be repaired 6 time that year. In contrast I bought a Lenovo y50 it has an issue 2 months in (bad backlight) , I called Lenovo they said sorry, they said we will send me a Lenovo y70-70 and a return box when I get it just send the y50 back after I do a data transfer, they never stopped apologizing, they gave me a free upgrade when all I asked for was a warranty repair, this is why I'll never buy another apple product, and every laptop I've bought since has been a Lenovo because they knew how to treat me like a valued customer, and more importantly a human being. For that class I ended up just using my Asus ROG laptop that I had at the time because the Mac was just more trouble than it was worth, and still passed that class with an A. I also cannot stand the menu bar being shared on the top with all programs, I like that each program has its own menu bar and I hate the shared menu bar on osx. I like that the and I missed the taskbar. Also the way you uninstall applications in osx, there are associated files, and dependencies that stay in the drive without a proper uninstaller, they will eventually slow down your computer a lot over time and fill up your drive faster. Due to this poor customer service, I will not buy another apple product, they have no idea how to treat customers, and there are several KZbinrs who know they make lousy products, especially Louis Rossman. As for Linux there is too many gatekeepers in the community, I tried a few distros and asked questions on forums and stuff, and have had people, and devs of the distro go out of their way to answer the question but in a condescending way, like you shouldn't be trying to do it that way, or I can do that in the terminal faster than you can do that using the GUI etc., or acting like I was a loser for not knowing every little thing about the distro, or how to do every little thing on it, I have never had a question answered in such a condescending way in a Windows forum or been called an idiot because I did not know every little thing about the Operating System. For as long as I have been using Windows I still learn new things about it and new functionality that I did not know. Another thing Linux has going against it is there is too much for the average user, first pick a distro, then pick a desktop manager, then a display manager, find good programs that work with your particular distro, display manger, etc. then decide between the plethora of different programs that do the same thing, then so on and so forth. Sorry for the long reply, but Windows is what I prefer for the way it works, the convenience of having most programs written for it, the attached menu for each program, the brilliance and simplicity of the Taskbar. It is by far the best option for an Operating System for me.

[@Winnetou17]

If I'm not mistaken, the WINE project benefited massively from ReactOS development. So while the ReactOS itself might still not be something useful, by the benefits towards WINE, it is certainly a positive outcome. It would be nice if they could improve the stability and driver support. But I can't tell how easy or hard it is. Though many other OS-es, including non-Linux ones, like Haiku and SerenityOS have already a better record in the "managed to install it directly on the hardware" category.

[@encycl07pedia-]

Yeah... I really can't believe they've been working on this for ~25 years and this is the best they've got. It's pretty terrible when actual Windows 95 is more stable and useful. ReactOS seriously can't even load KZbin. I know it's not easy to reverse engineer stuff, but come on.

[@Winnetou17]

@@encycl07pedia- Well, to be fair, neither can Windows 95 (load KZbin). And it wasn't that stable either, though I'll concede that it was overall more useful as the current ReactOS version.

[@CarlBach-ol9zb]

​@@encycl07pedia-, you should remember that Microsoft had a huge budget and entire teams working on Windows actively. This has very few people working occasionally and for free. Makes sense where progress will slow.

[@encycl07pedia-]

​@@CarlBach-ol9zb There's a difference between slow and glacial. I backed up my own massive DVD/BD library for free (over 1000 discs, including plenty of TV shows) in under 5 years. I'm talking ripping the raw video, converting Vobsubs/PGSes to SRTs using manual OCR, compressing and converting the raw video, uploading them to online storage, and setting up a DLNA server. And that's just scratching the surface of what one single person was able to do in a fraction of the time ReactOS has been languishing. Nobody paid me a single cent and there were plenty of dead periods. EA reverse engineered the Sega Genesis in ONE year. ONE. Bleem did something similar with their Playstation and Sega Dreamcast emulators. If the ReactOS "devs" actually tried they would have finished it over a decade ago, if not two.

[@anders7317]

One thing I got a real hang-up on here, is your screen resolution. It never increases through out this video. Doesn't it run higher res, or didn't you bother doing anything about it? It really hurt my head. :)

[@Faceplant-hl5yn]

*This installs a new driver for : System device - automatically install Driver - ok - *The device could not be installed* Yup solid windows clone , right there

[@MEGAMIGA]

"Keyboard not found. Press any key to continue."

[@bizzardiuss7897]

hi Dan. i like linux but i keep getting into one problem. If it connects a USB ethernet, mouse, PC keyboard, etc. everything linux finds everything works 100% but ...... as soon as I have this usb I connect usb midi keys or DJ consoles so nothing happens. Even installed music creation programs will not appear anywhere. With windows no problem what I connect it finds and works. Where am I making mistake? ReactOS solves this problem better than other Linux distributions, so I've tried them all and the problem is exactly the same for everyone. Thanks for advice.

[@ChristopherGaul]

Your screen resolution is limited because you only assigned 32MB of video RAM in the Virtual Box configuration. Bump that up a bunch and try again.

[@Vlad-1986]

Tough the same, but I think 32 mb is enough for 1920x1080, so not sure if that is the only problem. Might be wrong tho

[@ChristopherGaul]

@@Vlad-1986 the VM's video memory usage involves more than just the 2D framebuffer.

[@n00blamer]

@@Vlad-1986 8 MB per page, you need at least two pages so half of the 32 MB is already blown away.. and if there is no proper MMU support the fragmentation might already block the 2nd allocation.. can't comment on that since don't know ReactOS internals.. maybe it doesn't need physical linear, so all good.. but all the same, just two pages blow half the available RAM already..

[@Vlad-1986]

@@n00blamer Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation

[@n00blamer]

@@Vlad-1986 I think my reply was full of ****, because how they can have Windows without VM.. I should think before writing nonsense.. but something similar might be in effect, as I am just commenting out of my butt so take with truckload of salt.. :D :D (edit: VirtualMemory, not Virtual Machine, a bit dumb that the acronyms overlap like that)

[@larrygomez6637]

I haven't been able to get the live version to work and I am tech savvy. Won't boot, errors of items missing.

[@whitebeartigtig]

It is possible to use KZbin on Firefox 48, you just need to press the remind me later button. Also Photoshop does work in linux under wine now. Office 365 might aswell.

[@Vlad-1986]

Had no luck with it, as with VS2019 which I need for Uni. However, virtualisation of Win10 is good enough and managed to do all the year without having Windows on bare metal.. Ah, and office 365 works if you cope with the web interface... this is how I edit my project proposals from a FreeBSD machine.

[@whitebeartigtig]

@@Vlad-1986 tbh if I do switch from Win7 to Linux at some point I'll probably end up using Office 2010 which is known to be stable under wine. I personally can't stand the web version and have a rather unstable internet connection.

[@Vlad-1986]

@@whitebeartigtig Yeah, software as a service is evil, but I found it funny being able to edit my uni assignment from freeBSD. I didn't knew that 2010 works stable, but I have been using 97 I like the interface way more (using win95 on PCem). LibreOffice is fine, but if you use Gentoo you'll have trouble using the latest version. I also found WPS Office works super well, but it has the ribbon interface I don't like.

[@hansdegroot652]

But can i download and install any windows program and drivers?

[@Lucidleo-li8yu]

I was also a HUGE Commodore fan and my primary machines up until around 1996 were various Amigas. I just recently ordered a Raspberry Pi 400 with which I plan to turn into a modern day Amiga.

[@ShamblerDK]

Why not just get an Amiga? I just upgraded my A1200 with a purely digital HDMI output with the Indivision Mk3 :-)

[@jonathont5570]

@@ShamblerDK Well he in NYC Amiga is way to expensive (hundreds), Pi4 is about 50 dollars...

[@Shawn-and-Doc]

Pimiga 1.5 is quite the thing on the 400! Loaded with everything, and most of it works well.

[@richardwicks4190]

@@ShamblerDK Because an Amiga 1200 is very basic in comparison to a raspberry pi. I could literally use a raspberry pi as my main computer if I desired. The only real drawback are web browsers, because the are such resource hogs, but coding on it, watching videos on it, it works fine.

[@LivingLinux]

@@richardwicks4190 Just get a Pi with 4GB or 8 GB memory and make sure hardware acceleration is working.

[@ElTelBaby]

I started on Window ME... Now I've migrated to Ubuntu & have never looked back...

[@gb-channel1880]

Reactos was started back in 1996 , years before the leaks.

[@Planetdune]

Whatever the intention was originally, it long changed and has been shown again, and again they are using old Microsoft code. Pathetic.

[@gb-channel1880]

@@Planetdune What is 1 + 1? How do you set up an algoritm? How do you get the result?

[@rfvtgbzhn]

33:18 so every Windows user is also a Windows tester? Also according to Wikipedia Microsoft has 238k employees as of 2023, so I guess they also count programmers and designers of third-party software, not just of the OS itself.

[@szponiasty]

BSOD is the included feature of ReactOS to give full experience of Windows :) Joking. I love Windows 2000 and 7. After 7 I've switched to Linux: best OS ever :)

[@definitlynotbenlente7671]

i enjoyed windows vista and 7 but 10 has me trying to move to another operating system i have had a lot of isseus with linux not realy being stable does anyone have any tips?

[@mikkelgeorgsen]

To fix your resolution, increase the Video RAM in the virtualbox

[@ThatGreenSpy]

If it's only reached 0.4.15 in the 20+ years it's been around, I'd say it'll be fully complete in the 2050s

[@Carstein666]

Can confirm that Windows still has Wordpad. Btw, interesting selection of programs in the app manager. GoG Galaxy? I wonder if Steam is there. Agat Emulator? I definitely did not expect to see an emulator of a soviet computer there.

[@dylanrush184]

I think a lot of React devs are Russian

[@lars309]

Re the beginning of the video, I read an essay / blog some software engineer wrote. In it he wrote that Microsoft has not built an OS fully from the ground up since Win 2k/XP and all MS does is keeps adding to the Kernel, so we end up with faster PC's yet slower boot times and sluggish performance. That's great React OS ran in a VM, lets actually see a full install on a PC and some software installs....

[@johnnygray8160]

Wow! That beautiful, satisfying sound of your keyboard...

[@dreamyrhodes]

The start menu was not the innovation of Microsoft. It's origins are in the Apple Menu - where it was still on the top of the screen, but covered the desktop and it's functions as well as program launcher, introduced in 1988. Put the Apple Menu at the bottom of the screen and add a NeXTSTEP-style Window-Bar to it and you have the Windows Taskbar.

[@Rockgi59]

The problem with React os is that after 20 years it is still in alpha stage. It you point out this to the developers they answer very disappointed saying that the project needs time. I think that with these steps they will switch to beta stage maybe in 2050. It is a shame that in 2021 there isn't a real Windows alternative (not Linux or wine but a real 'windows') that could help users to fuck off Microsoft and its spyware called Windows 10.

[@computernerdinside]

I heard it's because development was halted for like 10 years as thy checked every line of code since they though a former dev may have illegally used Microsoft code.

[@barryguff6893]

It's because it's open-source and nobody is throwing money at it. It's a geek project only.

[@Luxalpa]

@@barryguff6893 If someone threw money at it then people would start to complain about it being "spyware" like Rockgi59 does.

[@polocatfan]

dude it's like 5 people at the most , the fact it's even this far is impressive

[@AndrewFremantle]

Win95 was a huge step forward for GUIs. Windows NT was a huge step forward in OS robustness. WinNT4 tried to merge them, but it was incomplete. Windows 2000 was *perfection*. I maintain, to this day, that Windows 2000 is the best Windows ever published by Microsoft.

[@craigdavidson2278]

I still use W2k, the only real issue is web browsing. Any idea how I coukd get "mypal" 29.1.1 running(excellent browser for XP) I do not want to use OS spoofing as that always causes issues. ReactOS would be a great way to go for us "old'uns"

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Would the 32MB of video ram you gave the VM change anything about which resolutions worked with the 32 Bit colour?

[@szr8]

Microsoft has "1.3 million programmers" working on it but 20 to 30 year old bugs remain untouched...

[@SweatySockGaming]

I wonder why 🧐

[@david203]

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft's focus on marketing means that bug fixing has near the lowest priority of all its engineering tasks. It is amazing to search the Web for some of your favorite Windows problems and see how long the threads are and how many years back they stretch. And it's almost amusing how the initial response by "experts" is always to recommend the basic troubleshooting tools in Windows (particularly the System File Checker), which almost never fix the problem for frustrated users. These experts almost never simply replicate and confirm the problem, which would be my first step. I wonder that they don't recommend restarting the computer more often, as in the funny TV show The IT Crowd.

[@imeakdo7]

I think it's actually for backwards compatibility. Yes, many programs actually actively exploit windows' bugs.

[@david203]

@@imeakdo7 I don't understand how your reply relates to my comment.

[@SweatySockGaming]

@@david203 it doesn't, it relates to the original comment

[@romaneberle]

what about hardware driver support? can it use Windows (XP?) drivers to drive some hardware?

[@HuseynMemmedov]

Instead of Firefox, you can use Basilisk UXP (Firefox fork optimized for Windows XP)

[@IngrownMink4]

I agree with you, runs much better than Firefox on older machines.

[@HuseynMemmedov]

@@IngrownMink4 I can easily watch KZbin :D

[@greghowell9986]

I’ll be just pedantic enough to say.. Vista was Windows NT 6. It was the last time, before Windows 10, that the Windows kernel got a complete overhaul. Windows 7 was NT 6.1, Win8 was NT 6.2, etc. Yes, Microsoft reset the numbering with Win 10, but probably to avoid massive confusion and internal problems with version checks, because in purely linear terms, Win10 is NT 7.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

XP is still my favorite windows and that being said, i hated it at the beginning and wanted to stick with 98... because the DOS underlayer was very practical for running DOS games without any extra software and it also was still working with basically everything i did with it. But in 2003 there really was no way around it anymore and it started to grow on me and i saw how good it was (and way more stable than 98). I keep 2 XP systems on 2 dedicated Thinkpad laptops for various purposes because the Nullties Nostalgia is just so strong. It is the only windows i used for the longest time. Pretty sure React OS will find a way onto one of my machines soon. My Desktop still runs on Linux and so does my main-Laptop. Only my Video Editing machine still has a Windows 7 in the bootloader. But it never goes online so it doesn't matter anyway. :P

[@gooorylin]

Can you have a GPU accelleration in that react os? - i currently use Gtx 1060 - 6GB of Video RAM and i use Open Source Software,like: Krita,Blender,OpenToonz,MyPaint.

[@Stjaernljus]

family techsupport requests went from one a week to one every six months after i installed linux on their machines.

[@CommodoreFan64]

None of my family uses their computers for games, so I put them on Neverware Cloudready OS Home Edition(Chromium OS that still has full Google sync features) on some older, but still very usable eduseries Lenovo Thinkpads, and I've had no tech support issues other than hey reboot the internet, or turn on the wireless printer once in a bluemoon after I showed them the basics, and it's been great getting them off Windows.

[@tasmedic]

I'm just wondering why you installed virtualbox first? What's the point of installing an operating system, then virtualbox, in order to then test a lower quality operating system. To me, this doesn't prove anything other than Reactos's compatibility with virtualbox? We're not seeing how well it performs natively, just whether your virtualbox is happy with it.

[@ThatGreenSpy]

ReactOS has been going at a snail pace. I'd say it would most likely release in the year 2525. Of course, that would all depend on IF mankind is still alive. }||[Z&E]||{

[@jllucci]

Advanced cockroaches will use it.😏

[@Larry821]

2525. IF man is still alive. Apologies to Zager and Evans.

[@hansdegroot652]

Nicevideo. But what i really missed is you trying to download and install firefox or any other windows program from the original source. Or does react os only run stuff from it package manager?

[@bamdadkhan]

5:26 GNU hurd looooool the existance of that always cracks me up

[@MI7DJT]

Last release was 4 years ago. We can call it a dead project.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@MI7DJT I'd agree with that as even the website has not been updated since Feb 28, 2017 according to Google search, and mentions the 0.9 build as the latest with no stable build insight.

[@TheDukeOfZill]

ReactOS needs to tackle the original 2003 longhorn concept. WinFS powers a backend file catalog making the "My Stuff" interface possible. Please, someone do this!!!!

[@TanabiGoat]

Thanks for making this -- I've been ReactOS curious for years. I'll admit, it was exactly as broken as I thought it would be. That said, I really cheer these guys on. They're underdogs for sure and if they were able to make a true, functional replacement for windows, that would be an incredible achievement.

[@S1M0N3-LXXIV]

looks good for a nostalgic who wants to do some retro gaming using .exe programs but how does it deal with security, does it have the same problems windows had long ago with regards to viruses and spyware or does it make a difference?

[@lucius1976]

33:00 Two billion testers? I guess that is us.

[@CoolDudeClem]

By the way, VMware workstation player is way better than Virtualbox, I've always had trouble with 3D acceleration when I ran Windows XP in virtualbox, but in VMware and everything works so much better than it ever did with Virtualbox, even 3D accelerated games work!

[@DeepfriedChips]

I play a lot of games that are windows only but I mean I could turn my integrated gpu back on and isolate my nvidia gpu to a virtual machine and use hyper-v to play my games

[@jment34]

It's surprising how microsoft didn't stop this project. Is it possible to make it look like windows 10?

[@gyanarihant7113]

I would rather hope I would get everything on Linux without being part of the microsoft eco system

[@samshort365]

I moved to Linux about 20 years ago. The only reason I needed Windows was for pdf editing. Once I found a decent pdf editor, coupled with Gimp, Krita, Blender and Open Office, Windows lost its appeal entirely. I have tried ReactOs many times, but it's just too unstable for real work. I do keep a Windows 2000 PC for my legacy programming in VB3, my motto being why fix it if it ain't broke.

[@neilgillmore]

Really like the look of REACT os. Looking forwards to the release version !!!!!

[@glenwaldrop8166]

What did you install 98SE in that took 45 minutes? I used VMWare, i5 6300HQ w/8GB of RAM at the time, I gave the OS 1 core and like 512MB of RAM and it was done in just a few minutes, boots instantly, this was before I had an SSD. NT4 was about the same.

[@azezd5539]

Looking forward to actually using ReactOS on an actual computer even if it is only at XP stage. Congratulations on the effort and hard work so far to the developers!

[@encycl07pedia-]

Did you actually watch this disaster of a demo? You want that? Why not use an OS that can actually use the Internet and doesn't bluescreen on software that's 5+ years old?

[@mircorizza5609]

I've tried to install ReactOS into an old Pentium 4 1,60 GHz - 700 MB Ram with Windows XP with no success (it doesn't recognize mouse PS/2 but even USB mouse) instead the live version it works, it's weird.

[@SabretoothBarnacle]

Right, given this a good hammering for a while and the experience is pretty much the same as Dan's. May revisit this project in a couple of years to see how things have progressed. Great effort by the team though, it's never going to be easy to replicate a Windows OS!

[@tomsmansvards]

I'm more of a Linux person, so I got less knowledge of Windows or Mac, but tell your friend to disable file sharing on his computer. I doubt it is really the fault of a network and you need the VPN for that if the person herself or himself shares files... On Linux (GNOME at least) you usually can go to settings -> File sharing (or similar names with the same idea) and just turn off the file sharing that is usually off by default. If ON, it just shares the files in the 'Shared' folder. Because anyone who guesses home network password will have access to your friend's shared files too... And disable the remote access on your Mac (or whatever it is called) - I recently got to know that you can simply with three clicks get access to basically all files of a Mac user by default-I don't know why it shares ALL user files-if you know (or find out) the username and password of a Mac user. I don't know why Macs are so insecure, it blows my mind. So, when I think about it, maybe if you use Mac, just, indeed, buy a secure VPN.

[@johnclothier4366]

Thanks for this! Great feeling to know that this ReactOS alternative keeps pace (a step behind) and we can safely jump into this sea when W10 has become just too, too bloated and too, too self-centered for this older man's (age 88) patience. But really, except for Excel, Microsoft apps are obsolete and no longer a reason to follow Windows over the cliff of consumerism. I mean, how much intrusion does Gates think we humans can tolerate? Don't answer that...because maybe we consumers really ARE sheeplike

[@Planetdune]

Gates hasn't been involved with day to day stuff for many, many, many years now. Stepped down as chairman of the board from Microsoft in 2008.

[@ilpojaaskelainen1552]

Some peer support: I also kept my A1200 from 1993 to 2001 (and never sold the machine). Also went to the dark side by Windows XP, and still simply dislike the Windows OS due to "The World's Lousiest File-Selector" amongst some other things. The Rise of the Mobiles didn't comfort me much and now, for the last 3 years, I've been an active Amiga user again with Linux OS as daily driver.

[@ThomasGrillo]

Thanks for going over ReactOS with us. Does it have a screen magnifier? I ask, because I'm legally blind, and I'm frantically exploring alternative operating systems, for when Microsoft stops support for Win10, in 2025. Oh, I was a hardcore Amaga user, all the way up to the early 2000s. I still dabble in Amikit, now and then. :)

[@ThomasGrillo]

@Vincent Arnaud Ok, thanks for the info. :)

[@EVPaddy]

I abandoned my amiga 1000 in the early 90ies and even went mostly to text mode first of a 286 and then 386 upwards… just because I was very much in the bbs scene then and amiga couldn’t really keep up with fast modems.

[@phatmeow7764]

hmm maybe they can get it up to Win 7 soon and modern browsers like Edge running on it that would be awesome IMHO and i commend them for their efforts and ingenuity even if it has been 26 years now ^^

[@قلإنالأمركلهبيدالله]

What the release version on this video , because reactos dont work on laptop??

[@EpicB]

It's impressive that ReactOS exists in any form at all but it's still a long way from becoming ready for prime time.

[@DVankeuren]

which means never because other OS's are actually making progress

[@rhotau3325]

Amiga? Had an A1000 w/ the design team signatures inside the cover, including Jay Minor's!

[@FuZZbaLLbee]

Unfortunately the Dutch Amiga event has been canceled, so I don’t get to seen Dan Joe and Ravi in real life 🙁