ReactOS is a free and open-source, Windows-compatible OS that looks similar to Windows XP.
Designed to be a Windows replacement that behaves just like Microsoft’s flagship OS, the operating system has just been updated to lay the groundwork for running Windows Vista/8/10 software.
Read more about what ReactOS can do, and check out this visual guide to what ReactOS looks like and the apps it can run.
Here you can see balloon notifications on the ReactOS desktop, a feature that has been fixed with the latest update. Be warned, however, that ReactOS is alpha software, so expect a lot of bugs and missing functionality.
The new Taskbar settings feature in the latest release.
The new DrWatson32-style crash-reporting software.
The lightweight OS uses just 96MB of RAM.
QuickTime Player for Vista and Windows 7 running on ReactOS.
Read spreasheets with Excel Viewer.
You can check out hex dumps using the HxD tool.
The OS runs the Opera web browser.
The photo-editing software running on ReactOS.
The popular open-source document-editing software.
Nick Heath is a computer science student and was formerly a journalist at TechRepublic and ZDNet.
