ReactOS has always been a bit of an enigma. At its core, ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system that aims to be compatible with Windows software. It uses reverse-engineered versions of proprietary Windows code, and one of its selling points is being able to replicate the NT kernel and run Windows executables.
It kind of sounds like the antithesis of Windows and, in many ways, an anomaly. However, ReactOS is not Linux, and uses a custom Windows NT kernel.
Which is what makes it all the more fascinating. I spent a week running ReactOS on both a virtual machine and real, supported hardware — and realized why it ultimately matters.
Installing ReactOS on a virtual machine
Surprisingly easy
To get started with something easy, I decided to install ReactOS onto a virtual machine using QEMU. This would also let me test out the OS and have a feel for its layout and functionality.
The installation process went quite smoothly, although I used the Nightly BootCD 32-bit image instead of the regular build to get some of that bleeding-edge goodness. One reboot later, and I was within the ReactOS desktop, which felt eerily similar to Windows 98 and 2000.
However, after spending a few minutes with it, it became apparent that a virtual machine would be very limited in usability. There was no GPU acceleration, and the desktop wasn’t exactly usable. I needed to switch to real hardware for the more “authentic” experience.
Getting ReactOS installed on real hardware
A real roller coaster
Installing ReactOS on real hardware was even more difficult. After a few days of swapping ISOs and disk drives, I discovered that both Ventoy and BalenaEtcher had issues with the old laptop.
Onward to flashing with Rufus, then, which worked out well. Still, I had to explicitly use the BootCD image instead of the LiveCD, which caused issues with the installer, at the cost of being able to try out the live environment.
Flashing the Nightly ISO onto a USB drive, I was finally able to boot into the installer. I opted to use the default “ReactOS Installer” as is (the first option). There was a graphical installer, but in my experience, it was never stable enough to reach the installation screen.
After that, it was (mostly) smooth sailing. I did manage to hit two snags along the way, though. The first was fixable by switching from Btrfs to FAT for the file system. The second issue was with the drive being used — for some reason, the SATA SSD would not appear in the installer, which meant I had to switch back to the old, painfully slow mechanical hard drive.
Which didn’t seem to matter much, as I found out a while later.
The installation took a mere few minutes, and one restart later, the driver installation and initial setup wizard appeared. I could never get this to work. It could be a combination of partially supported hardware and a lack of drivers in ReactOS, but the initial setup wizard could not download Wine or any other drivers for that matter.
Still, in true Windows fashion, it let me proceed regardless, and with the setup somewhat partially complete, I could finally use ReactOS.
It might seem a bit pointless at first
Preservation takes many shapes and forms
The first thing that came to mind when I fired up ReactOS, was how similar it was to Windows 98, and that would seem intentional. From the menu accents to the overall layout of the start menu, it all looked refreshingly retro.
As far as built-in applications go, I did manage to test out equivalents of Notepad and MS Paint, which ran fine. There were a few games, but since I didn’t have any GPU acceleration on this install, they ran quite poorly.
ReactOS does come with a few additional themes and apps — none of which are particularly exciting.
The OS as a whole was incredibly unstable, though, and I had BSODs every few minutes. Not to mention, I couldn’t get any drivers installed, and they all failed for some inexplicable reason.
All of which begs the question — is ReactOS even worth it? After all, it is far from being polished, has numerous bugs, and lacks support for a lot of things. For most folks willing to experiment, a lighter Linux distribution or even Windows 9x itself might be an easier pick than debugging through ReactOS.
I still wouldn’t call it a pointless endeavor, though. ReactOS aims to implement the Windows NT architecture (with support for Windows drivers and software), which isn’t the same as running software on Linux under Wine.
This makes ReactOS a bit of a unique open-source project, and if nothing else, is important from a preservation standpoint.
ReactOS has been slowly gaining development traction
ReactOS is not new. The project is still in alpha status, 28 years after its release, and there is a lot of work to be done. Compatibility is hit or miss, and the OS is generally quite unstable and not recommended for daily use.
That being said, there have been signs of life recently. ReactOS has reached a few milestones, the latest of which is running Half-Life 2, according to our sister site, XDA Developers. It’ll be exciting to see how it shapes up in the coming few years.
react
