ReactOS

ReactOS is an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Microsoft Windows applications and drivers.

Console Applications

ReactOS supports a limited range of console (text based) applications, and support for more is increasing as we expand our console libraries. Notable examples of supported console software are GCC (which means that ReactOS can be compiled on ReactOS) and the GNU Midnight Commander (text-based file manager).

GUI Applications

The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and User32 is not yet complete. The VGA driver that comes with ReactOS also has some way to go, although the standard Microsoft VGA driver can be loaded. Test applications such as WinHello and WineMine demonstrate current capability.

Driver Support

At the moment, work to support 3rd party drivers (Microsoft Windows compatible) is restricted. The focus is more on only basic drivers that are written in conjunction with the various kernel facilities.

Other Subsystems

The JOS project has agreed to use the ReactOS kernel to develop a Java subsystem, to help bring their goal of a Java based operating system to realization.

Although we approached several groups that wish to implement an Open Source OS/2 operating system, none of them wanted to use ReactOS as a kernel. There is, however, at least one person who has joined the project that is interested in developing an OS/2 subsystem for ReactOS.

Although there is interest in a DOS subsystem, we have not yet moved to get interested people working on such a system.