Although the ReactOS project is in no rush to dethrone Windows as the desktop operating system of choice, this doesn’t mean that some real changes aren’t happening. Most recently two big changes got merged, the first pertaining to the separate boot- and live CD images that are now merged into a single image, and the second being a new PnP-aware ATA storage stack for ATA and AHCI devices, with NT6+ compatibility.
Although there is still a separate live CD for now, this first change means that testing and installing ReactOS becomes easier, and that the old-school text-based installer may soon be on its way out as well.
Having the new ATA storage stack in place will translate into much better compatibility with real hardware, including the ability to use more hardware to install on and boot from compared to the old UniATA driver.
Combined, these two changes should bring the ReactOS installation and usage experience a lot closer to that of Windows, as well as many Linux distros. If you had issues with the OS on real hardware, this might be just the right time to give it another shake and provide detailed feedback to the developers if any remaining issues are encountered.
Thanks to [jeditobe] for the tip.
On 0.4.15 for over a year now.
The ReactOS ‘stable release’ schedule is very slow due to the way releases are being treated by the project, basically as checkpoints. Using the nightlies is the recommended way to use ROS and has been for pretty much forever.
And it’s still more practical to install Windows XP or 95 with KernelEx. Or use Wine in Linux if external hardware is not used.
Quarter of century late I’m afraid. Can you even buy 80-pin tape these days? 😂
Maybe if the ReactOS team works hard enough, they’ll reach Windows XP functionality around 2050.