ReactOS
ReactOS ( from the English react to " react " and operating system for "operating system" ), also called short ROS, is a software project to develop a free operating system of the same name. Characteristic is the goal of complete binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows.
- 3.1 dependencies 3.1.1 Wine
- 3.1.2 Network Driver
- 3.1.3 USB
Overview
ReactOS aims to be compatible with the kernel of Windows NT, which makes it possible to use programs and device drivers for Windows NT and its successors such as XP, Server 2003 and 7. For this purpose, among others, the Programming Win32 is simulated.
The operating system has largely been licensed under the GNU GPL, some of its constituents, however, under the LGPL or BSD license.
A problem in achieving binary compatibility with Windows is that some API calls that are used by programs that are not publicly documented. Moreover, almost all parts have to be reprogrammed for ReactOS, since nothing can be taken for example Linux or BSD or otherwise used. An exception are the independent Unix libraries of the Wine project, which can be adopted.
History
The project was launched in 1996 as " FreeWin95 " to life and should be only compatible with Windows 95 programs. After being stuck in a longer specification phase, in a busy 1998 Jason Filby as the project coordinator, the project is created, which has since known as ReactOS. The compatibility with Windows NT was defined as a new project goal.
For a long time the ReactOS team was involved in the development of the kernel, so that hardly a success was visible. With the release of version 0.2 ReactOS first offered a graphical user interface. Thus, the press was more aware of ReactOS. The support of Java, OS/2- and DOS programs was put on the agenda, but so far not pursued. An implementation of the Internet protocol suite, however, is already usable, it is based on the IP stack of FreeBSD. On installation of the USB and associated plug-and- play functionality is carried.
On 8 January 2007, the first 4,000 - euro donation campaign was started and completed on 11 February 2007, a sum of 4,450 euros. The money is mainly used for server maintenance and increasing the awareness of ReactOS. This way new developers and testers hope the programmers, thanks to an increasing public interest in the project to attract them.
The project was presented on February 25, 2007 for the first time at the annual meeting of European developers of free software in Brussels ( FOSDEM ).
In early 2009, the previous development plan ( roadmap ) removed from the site. Meanwhile there is a new plan, but only up to version 0.5. In particular, no more information now be made about how high compatibility with Windows shall be single ( in percentages) coming ReactOS beta versions or which applications are to be supported in specific betas. The development of free NTFS driver is so far advanced that such has been announced for version 0.5. Other drivers such as ext2fsd for the ext2 and ext3 file system have already been announced.
Under the old version of the project plan should already get 0.5 beta status and support ReactOS productive work with the most important standard applications. The previous compatibility testing and optimizations for Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org, the current work on a new improved user interface and the goal of the implementation of printing services and WDM driver support into the 0.5 versions show that is held on this goal. Even at a junction of Boot CD (for installation) and live CD ( first setup step in graphical mode, already 0.4) is clearly recorded.
In subsequent versions are to be used primarily with the aim of the kernel, complete the "beta" stage of development with a stable 1.0 version. ReactOS will then meet the requirements for a productive use than Windows compatible operating system.
On 16 January 2010, expressed Alexei Bragin, currently coordinator of the project, through conceptual weaknesses of the Win32 subsystem and is planning an alternative 32- bit subsystem with the goal of being a functioning system in more detail. According to the Win32 subsystem, the software design Windows is closer to that of Wine, be temporarily supplemented by a new subsystem, which is based upon the current Wine source code (as opposed to the outdated versions that are used in the current Win32 subsystem ) instead of developing this new. The former subsystem is further developed until further parallel in the background. Not affected by the new feature is the current video driver to the kernel mode win32k enables efficient graphics calls compared to X Window Wine with system calls.
Presentations to policy makers
ReactOS has been repeatedly presented to politicians, especially from the Russian Federation. In 2007, Viktor Alksnis met with the project coordinator Aleksey Bragin, who gave him an introduction to the project and this the ReactOS was working with Total Commander and Mozilla Firefox. 2011 was Dmitry Medvedev, the then President of Russia, an introduction to ReactOS by a project member.
July 31, 2012 presented Karatov Marat, one of the developers of the project, ReactOS, during his visit to the Seliger youth forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the Seliger 2011 meeting the ReactOS project also won the prize for the best presentation, worth 100,000 rubles.
Google Summer of Code
2006 ReactOS was the first time participant in the Google Summer of Code ( GSoC ), then the project took part regularly. When GSoC 2011 ReactOS could place such as six projects, of which four were completed by students. These include a new TCP / IP driver based on lwIP ( lightweight IP, " lightweight IP" ), a new GDI font driver, a test environment for the kernel and supporting Windows XP desktop designs visual design of the user interface.
On 1 May 2012, a 30,000 - euro donation campaign was started and completed by the end of the year with a donation of 14,392 euros reached. As this could not even be reached half the set objective, it was decided to continue the fundraising campaign to reach the 30,000 - euro mark. With the accumulated money Developers projects to be funded (similar to the Summer of Code ). The finances are managed by ReactOS Germany eV. As a registered charity, it is fiscally very difficult to pay developers for their work. In the future, students may apply for ReactOS Germany eV for scholarships.
Project thorium Core Cloud Desktop
In June 2013 ReactOS was awarded the SourceForge project of the month in the accompanying interview was project coordinator Alexei Bragin known for an early campaign on Kickstarter.com. On December 23, 2013 were a cloud computing project based on ReactOS, called thorium Core Cloud Desktop, launched on Kickstarter with the goal of $ 120,000.
Versions
Note: Some steps of development are periodically with each new released version (english release) carried out, such as general bug fixes, synchronization of the DLL libraries of the Wine project, drivers, updates, etc.
Development
The source code of ReactOS is primarily written in C, some parts such as the Explorer and the sound (English sound system ) have been implemented in C . The project used MinGW to compile and also works closely with the developers together.
Dependencies
ReactOS used, where possible and appropriate, the source code of other open source projects. This not only helps to speed up the development but also to provide a more stable system.
Wine
In ReactOS parts of the Wine project will be used to implement the Win32 API. Because of differences in the architecture ( Wine is on the work, for example, aligned on Linux) However, not all components are used in Wine ReactOS. These include the following Windows components: NTDLL, USER32, KERNEL32, gdi32 and Advapi. You need to be rewritten.
Network driver
As part of the Google Summer of Code 2011 student developed a new network stack based on lwIP. Previously ReactOS had the network stack in FreeBSD is used which, at least in ReactOS, turned out to be unstable.
USB
The USB driver from ReactOS were developed based on the Haiku operating system drivers. Since USB in Haiku was already largely implemented, the USB stack could serve as a reference for ReactOS.
Community
There are several IRC chats and discussion forums for the exchange between ReactOS users and developers. Many of the users are from the English - and Russian-speaking countries, but it has also a German online community (community) emerged. It is represented among others by ReactOS Germany eV, an association for the promotion of the project. Some of the developers are regularly represented at the Chemnitz Linux Days or Linux days in Berlin. The developers get together once a month to a meeting in the chat, a short summary of the proceedings will be published shortly afterwards on the website. One can directly participate in the development process Also, by submitting bug reports or suggestions about the Jira web interface.
Current Development Goals
Currently, basic system components are still being improved in order to improve the interaction with system components at a higher level. For example, is described by the end of March 2010 Newsletter No. 70, how problematic are the time-out error of the UniATA driver for data communication with the connected equipment. For their remedy the developers still expect considerable development work. Furthermore, the development of plug- and-play and ACPI components will result in further additions to the own bootloader to be. The developers are currently expecting even so, that still undiscovered errors in kernel components are discovered through improvements to system drivers and utilities.
Beginning of January 2010 it was announced that USB support is re-implemented. Currently, the EHCI host controller is newly developed, then the USB stack.
Furthermore, the support of DVB - T television is currently being developed. Functioning television reception is useful despite the early stage of development, as documented and analyzed by this application of the practice test and the interplay of a variety of video and audio components can and is supported by further development.
Status
The project is currently still in the alpha phase, which is why ReactOS is not intended for everyday use. Currently all classes of devices such as printers, scanners or TV cards are not usable with ReactOS, since their support is not yet implemented. Especially on newer hardware can still often crashes occur. Also software subsystems such as the Speech API of MS is still missing completely. Others, such as sound, are been only partially implemented ( eg, no MIDI).
The development of basic system driver is already well advanced, even a few foreign drivers of the device manufacturers are registered in the compatibility list as stable. Stable working standard applications are currently among other things VLC media player, SoftMaker Office 2006, and Firefox, as well as basic utilities (eg 7 - zip ) and already a large number of games such as Paintball 2, Quake III or Civilization II
A challenge for the developers is the fact despite aspired compatibility " recreate " no security vulnerabilities of the prototype.
If you want to avoid an installation for testing ReactOS is a bootable live CD before each version. More experienced testers and developers use but mostly a virtual machine. To this end, ready-made QEMU, VirtualBox and VMware images available.
Hardware Requirements
The requirements of ReactOS allow the use of older hardware. Thus, the system is still quite cope with processors from the Pentium first generation. Memory usage has been reduced by fixing a number of errors in memory management to 32 megabytes. The functionality on real hardware is still very limited due to the alpha status, basically works on older hardware better than newer ones. ReactOS has IDE and SATA support. The USB support yet erroneous currently includes, inter alia, input devices, drives ( for booting ) and some controllers.
Some useful programs can make higher demands on the hardware.
Legal issues
As an internal project discussions, the development was stopped briefly on 26 January 2006. To ensure that the principles in the development process for the re-implementation of undocumented Windows functions by reverse engineering with the U.S. Copyright Law are in line was a thorough review of the source code - a so-called code audit - started the first in December was completed in 2007. At the beginning of this review, a counter was placed on the project website, by which interested people could learn about the progress of the review. The counter indicated what percentage of the ReactOS source code have already been worked through. This status display fluctuated for several months prior to the completion of the audit to the 96 - percent mark. The reason for this was that the developers had removed the most complex tasks to the last and had occasionally even decided in buggy code, parts of it completely rewrite.
Controversial issue was whether and how the development of the operating system should be continued during the audit. In early February advocated a clear majority for a process in which the development at the old code is parallel to the audit continued. According to this plan over next version will only contain 0.4 exclusively audited code. The favored by a smaller group of developers plan called contrast, before a complete closure of the old code and a cancellation of ReactOS releases from the download servers. The development should have been carried out exclusively on the already tested code according to this plan, which led to several months of delays, however, the legal certainty would be maximized.
During this phase, several developers have left the project.
Previously, legal challenges were encountered with the source code plagiierenden project in November 2004 for the first time. Therefore, the formation of a " Legal Defense Fund " was planned with the help of the legal interests to be represented by ReactOS.