When picking operating systems for a closer look here in the Daily Drivers series, the aim has not been to merely pick the next well-known Linux distro off the pile, but to try out the interesting, esoteric or minority OS. The need remains to use it as a daily driver though, so each one we try has to have at least some chance of being a useful everyday environment in which a Hackaday piece could be written. With some of them such as the then-current BSD or Slackware versions we tried for interest’s sake a while back that’s not a surprising achievement, but for the minority operating systems it’s quite a thing. Today’s choice, ReactOS 0.4.15, is among the closest we’ve come so far to that ideal.

For The N’th Time In The Last 20 Years, I download A ReactOS ISO

ReactOS is an open-source clone of a Windows operating system from the early 2000s, having a lot on common with Windows XP. It started in the late 1990s and has slowly progressed ever since, making periodic releases that, bit-by-bit, have grown into a usable whole. I last looked at it for Hackaday with version 0.4.13 in 2020, so have five years made any difference? Time to download that ISO and give it a go.

Installing ReactOS has that bright blue and yellow screen feeling of a Windows install from around the millennium, but I found it to be surprisingly quick and pain free despite a few messages about unidentified hardware. The display driver it chose was a VESA one but since it supported all my monitor’s resolutions and colour depths that’s not the hardship it might once have been.

Once installed, the feeling is completely of a Windows desktop from that era except for the little ReactOS logo on the Start menu. I chose the classic Windows 95 style theme as I never liked the blue of Windows XP. Everything sits where you remember it and has the familiar names, and if you used a Microsoft computer in those days you’re immediately at home. There’s even a web browser, but since it’s the WINE version of Internet Explorer and dates from the Ark, we’re guessing you’ll want to replace it.

Most Of The Old Software You Might Need…

There’s a package manager to download and run open-source software, something which naturally Windows never had. Back in 2020 I found this to be the Achilies’ heel of the OS, with very little able to install and run without crashing, so i was very pleased to note that this situation has changed. Much of the software is out of date due to needing Windows XP compatibility, but I found it to be much more usable and stable. There’s a choice of web browsers but the Firefox and Chromium versions are too old to be useful, but I found its K-Meleon version to be the most recent of the bunch. Adding GIMP to my installed list, I was ready to try this OS as my daily driver.

I am very pleased to report that using K-Meleon and GIMP on ReactOS 0.4.15, I could do my work as a Hackaday writer and editor. This piece was in part written using it, and Hackaday’s WordPress backend is just the same as in Firefox on my everyday Manjaro Linux machine. There however the good news ends, because I’m sorry to report that the experience was at times a little slow and painful. Perhaps that’s the non-up-to-date hardware I’d installed it on, but it’s evident that 2025 tasks are a little taxing for an OS with its roots in 2003. That said it remained a usable experience, and I could just about do my job were I marooned on a desert island with my creaking old laptop and ReactOS.

… And It Works, Too!

So ReactOS 0.4.15 is a palpable hit, an OS that can indeed be a Daily Driver. It’s been a long time, but at last ReactOS seems mature enough to use. I have to admit that I won’t be making the switch though, but who should be thinking about it? I think perhaps back in 2020 I got it right, in suggesting that as a pretty good facsimile of Windows XP it is best thought of as an OS for people who need XP bur for whom the venerable OS is now less convenient. It’s more than just a retrocomputing platform, instead it’s a supported alternative to the abandonware original for anyone with hardware or software from that era which still needs to run. Just like FreeDOS is now the go-to place for people who need DOS, so if they continue on this trajectory, should ReactOS become for those needing a classic Windows. Given the still-installed rump of software and computer controlled machinery which runs XP, that could I think become a really useful niche to occupy.