ReactOS...Is it legal??? Is there any other free operating system that runs windows apps?

Question

I found this operating system on the internet called ReactOS. It seems to be a good operating system because it is free and it is able to natively run windows applications. They are currently getting there source code audited. I want to use this but not sure on the legality. Is there any other linux operating system that runs windows applications? Any help would be appreciated. I'm trying to get some computers to run decently with out Windows.

Answer 1

ReactOS is designed to run Windows applications. It started as a project called FreeWin95, with the aim of implementing an operating system that would be a clone of Windows 95.

As of March 22, 2007 the audit is 98.3% complete. The audit is to verify that ReactOS does contained code derived from disassembling Microsoft Windows and to purge any code that is. Once the audit is complete it will be absolutely legal to use.

A good article is written on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS

I do not understand your logic. Get a clone of windows that may or may not be compatible with your windows applications with probably no support that almost no one uses. In addition is is possible that development could become stalled as it was in the past.

What is the point. You are still running widows applications. Are you trying to save money?

Why not use Linux?
Most of the software is free.
Linux system requirements are much lower allowing you to use retired computers that can no longer run the latest version of windows.
A support network exist.
Many equivalents to Windows applications exist.

OpenOffice.org for Linux (free) = Microsoft Office
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Office-suites/OpenOfficeorg-for-Linux.shtml

Firefox for Linux
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

Opera 9.10 for Linux i386
http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux

Linux software lists:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software
http://www.linux.org/apps/
http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/linuxlist/linuxlist/linuxlist.html
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/
http://www.boutell.com/lsm/lsmsubject.html
http://linux.softpedia.com/
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html
http://commmunity.linux.com/
http://software.linux.com/index/

Answer 2

I had never heard of it till this question and I must say it intrigues me. From the looks of it and what they say there should be no legal implications with reactOS and windows (although once Microsoft gets word of this they wont be happy and will try somthing), they have not looked at the source code for windows and are only using the windows documentation as a guide line. It is like the Linux is to Unix...Linux is a Unix clone (many many Unix clones!) this is an attempt at making a clone of windows and it isnt based on DOS. By the looks of it they are trying to create something very similar to yet compatible with windows from the ground up as to not have the same mistakes that windows has.

Thanks for the heads up on this, I do a lot of messing around with operating systems and am often booting multiple operating systems to experiment with them (Currently I have Mac OS X and 2 copies of XP on the 1 PC)