There have been several attempts to make an unencumbered version of Windows. ReactOS is perhaps the best-known, although you could argue Wine and its progeny, while not operating systems in the strictest sense of the word, might be the most successful. Joining the fray is Free95, a GPL-3.0 system that, currently, can run simple Windows programs. The developer promises to push to even higher compatibility.
As you might expect, the GitHub site is calling for contributors. There will be a lot to do. The src subdirectory has a number of files, but when you consider the sheer volume of stuff crammed into Windows, it is just a minimal start.
As for the “Does it run Doom?” test, we are pretty sure the answer is no, not yet. While we applaud the effort, we do think it is a long road to get from where the project is to where even ReactOS is, much less Windows itself. Besides, Windows is a rapidly moving target.
As virtualization becomes easier and faster, the need for these programs diminishes. You can easily run a Windows OS inside your host operating system. If it outperforms the original on period hardware, maybe that’s good enough. On the other hand, if you are trying to run old hardware, maybe something like this will let you get a few more years out of it, one day.
We’ve looked at ReactOS before. If you are just looking to reduce bloat, there are other ways to go.
While I very strongly applaud sucb efforts, why? There alrrady exist wine and reactOS? Why bot cobtribute their instead? Whybdoes one thibg ‘I can do better, jist not the way you do it’? Sure, sometimes its the right call maybe, x11, xorg, wayland come to mind (and In sure certain argumebts can be had there)…
BTW afaik reactOS began as a wine-OS, and maybe it still uses wine at its core.
My point veing people reversed and evolved wine for decades, not to make it some bloated clone, but a compatible alternative …
yeah i’m a huge fan of reinventing / rearchitecting something from the ground up, ‘just because’, but really only in places where you can elide a bunch of complication with a better model of the problem. so many problems are hard only because you’re looking at it the wrong way, and a better way of looking at it will make a lot of troubles evaporate.
but windows compatibility is just a huge surface area to cover! there’s no simplifying assumption that is going to obviate the enormous amount of work that has already gone into wine. if i really wanted to tear it down, i would start with bold world-changing hacks to wine, not starting over from nothing.
react os hasnt made any progress in the last decade.
Push all they want for developers (some will answer the call), but I’ve found Linux the best alternate to Apple and M$ . Does everything I need doing and you have the freedom to pick a distro, pick whatever DE you are most comfortable with. Etc. Freedom of choice. Load this. Not load that. Use snaps, don’t use snaps. Need a compiler? it’s available. Updates? Shoot, you don’t ever have to do that if you don’t want to. Your choice. You are not confined to the .net world way of doing things, or the Apple way… Might say the whole world is at your beck and call, now what do you want to do with it … so to speak. Oh and it too runs a lot of Windows applications for those that feel they can’t break clean (or just load Windows in a VM for those times you ‘must’ run it). Choices! :)
If Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and other “big-OS” companies were savvy, they would release their “old/obsolete” OSes and other products to the hobbyist community on some sort of schedule.
I’m thinking “release binary images at no charge 5-20 years after the end of support for,” “release source under some kind of hobbyist/non-commercial-use license” after another 5-10 years, then put the entire source “on deposit” with the US copyright office with instructions that it be published when the copyrights expired.
Using Apple as an example, all pre-OS X versions of MacOS and all Apple/Claris software for those operating systems “should” be free-as-in-beer for binary download (minus third-party material). Ditto the ROMs for the older computers. Source code for the Apple II- and III-series OSes and software should be available for at least non-commercial use. Ditto Apple-created firmware for its peripherals and other 20th-century hardware (Newton, cameras, etc.).
Microsoft is a bit trickier – they would reasonably be reluctant to release source code for parts of Windows 95 if that code (with updates, but still recognizable) in Windows 10/11. But 16-bit code shouldn’t have this “we aren’t done making money from it” problem.
Obviously (and sadly), bits and pieces whose rights aren’t clearly owned by the OS vendor would have to be excluded unless the respective rights-owners allowed it (which I strongly encourage, of course).
Why is this smart? It’s called marketing. It’s nearly-free publicity.
My understanding is that there are still parts of the original Win NT kernel (and probably other sources — I think DOS is probably long gone) that are still present in the current Windows core.
Someone did an article a while back (I can’t find right now) saying that no one at Microsoft any longer really knows what all the components do. There’s just legacy stuff in there no one ever touches.
That means if they ever released a code base, people would be crawling over it in droves looking for zero days and other holes.
I like the idea of open OS’s but windows is so embedded everywhere (nuclear plants and US naval ships IIRC) that exposing code to bad actors would be a rather fraught exercise. Might be worth it just to help kill the bazillion bugs in there but still …
current windows is windows NT. at the moment it’s NT v 10.0
I looked it up. First NT release — 1993. Older than many HaD readers. I mean Unix was released in 1969 but at least you can see the code …
“— 1993. Older than many HaD readers”
Many… but not all! Haha, I graduated highschool in ’92! I switched to Windows NT in the mid-90’s because it was required for the DPS Perception Video Recorder. I forget if it was version 3.1 or 3.5, but I do remember it was 4.0 before the Windows 95 UI (task bar, start button, etc.) came to NT.
Fair points on the heritage components still being in use and… incomprehensible(??) to current developers. 😬
Security through obscurity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity), solely by keeping it closed source, is surely not a justifiable security strategy especially for juicy international targets… Not that open source is immune from long-term open bugs (OpenSSH vulnerabilities for example?); however, finding, knowing, and potentially fixing it yourself (and contributing back) outweighs sitting, waiting for updates from your trusted vendors [cough] if/when/how it is fixed with closed source, right?
I am always open to a new compatibility tool for windows executables. I even use a 16 bit layer to run Windows 3.1 programs in Windows 10. In Linux I frequently rely upon wine and proton for compatibility, not everything works but what does is a blessing.