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DEVELOPER ReactOS: An OS With the Look and Feel of Windows It’s not , but it has the Windows’ look-and- feel and may as well behave identically. It’s not GNU/, but it is open source and can be downloaded free of charge. Here, we introduce you to ReactOS — Hiren Mehta hort for React , ReactOS is a project to develop a alternative SNAPSHOT (most of its code is licensed under the GNU GPL) Sto Windows with binary compatibility for hardware Applies to: System Developers and software. Development of the project may continue to US: Run Windows apps without using Windows/Linux provide innovative value-added features (features won’t be added to Windows itself) once the required compatibility Primary Link: http://www.reactos.org level has been achieved. The latest version, 0.3.14 is still in Search Engine Keywords: ReactOS, free Windows NT alpha stage and developers have lots of work to do before , open source Windows the system can be considered suitable for everyday use. You can download ReactOS free of charge from http://ld2. in/4dy . present it is pretty lightweight in size, although What’s the problem with existing the exact file size for downloading would depend on what alternatives --Unix, Linux or the costlier of file you download. ReactOS at present contains a Mac OS X? set of bundled applications and tools, most of which are Among other reasons, there exist binary compatibility built into Microsoft Windows. At present it runs pretty fast issues and inconsistent flaws between all of the different even in a virtualized environment. On our system, we used derivatives of Unix such as the ones given above. ReactOS under VirtualBox. Standardization in UNIX/Linux too is inconsistent. According to the ReactOS team, the which provides the graphical , might well possess one of the worst designs in software . Still, modern UNIX derivatives are trying to catch up with recent innovations and some of them already possess important What is ReactOS based on? features like access control list support. The Windows NT architecture. Not to be confused with In contrast to UNIX, ReactOS was designed for people the historic Windows NT 4, the NT family of Microsoft’s familiar and comfortable with the Windows environment. Windows operating systems has been evolving for a long Everything can be done through the well known Win32 . Even Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT user interface and advanced users are free to automate as well as Windows Server 2012 have their roots in the tasks with scripts or use the console. While ReactOS Windows NT architecture. The of re-implementing does make use of objects, it states that there are many the Windows NT architecture was taken because, according downsides to the file metaphor-based approach used in to the ReactOS team, the Windows NT architecture Unix and it’s derivatives, which has been continuing for combines the best of UNIX, VMS and OS/2 systems. The decades. ReactOS takes the file metaphor-based approach team has used the public documentation of Windows OSes further and implements an object-based approach to many in their re-implementation efforts. They have made several other things, such as processes, threads, shared memory, tests to understand how Windows works. the global registry, etc.

56 PCQuest February 2013 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] What about compatibility? What is ReactOS’ stand on security? In order to achieve the goal of the user changing The ReactOS team believes that despite contradictory the OS without needing to change the applications belief, NT is secure by design and that it was the or the hardware, ReactOS maintains a compatibility first mainstream operating system with a proper database of both device drivers as well as applications implementation of a very flexible security model based on at http://ld2.in/4dz . From popular audio controllers access control lists. such as Realtek AC 97 to network controllers such Windows XP came with default security settings at a as Intel PRO/1000, some of Realtek’s RTL81xx series level lower than what an NT architecture should ideally be to some video controllers from NVidia’s popular used at for the sake of compatibilIty with it’s predecessor GeForce series, many devices have been known to versions. According to ReactOS, this decision alone work either with public release versions without any invalidated many of the security features in NT. ReactOS tweaks/workarounds or with development revisions will incorporate proper default security settings and has with specific driver versions and in some cases out- been built from scratch since 1996. of-the-box. On the applications front, there is much ReactOS believes that instead of normal/typical larger support. Modern browsers like 15.0 are computer viruses, most malicious applications these days compatible, as shown in the screenshot: are scripts that target common network software like browsers and email applications and software with built- in scripting support like various Office products. ReactOS claims to contain no software that contacts the ReactOS team or analyzes the user’s behavior. A problem with achieving compatibility with applications from a security point of view is that focus on ease-of-use (as compared to security, which was implemented but not activated by default in some cases) in Microsoft Windows Mozilla Firefox running in ReactOS. Notice how the Menu resembles that of a Windows OS? during the XP days led The ReactOS design is aimed to provide portability to applications refusing to work without administrative across different types of processors including but not privileges. This may change in ReactOS in order to take limited to Intel , CISC and RISC. The ReactOS team better advantage of the security features offered by the NT states that portability can be easily achieved with the architecture but doing so will require careful checks and of ReactOS because in order to port the system to a rechecks of application compatibility. different architecture, only the lowest abstraction layer(the one which talks directly to the platform hardware) What about support? would need to be changed. ReactOS uses the concept of We were able to use an ISO image of a provided to the subsystems to provide compatibility for legacy applications guest VM of ReactOS in VirtualBox. ReactOS has support on different platforms. for FAT32 and plans to support NTFS too although support ReactOS works very closely with the project too. for the same is not stated to be a critical priority at this Many of the non-core DLLs which can be used with Wine point of time. There are also chances of support for other can be used with ReactOS too. file systems such as /, JFS, etc. pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] February 2013 PCQuest 57