Windows with an open-source core: Check out ReactOS

By Nick Heath April 16, 2018, 8:03 AM PDT

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Windows with an open-source core: Check out ReactOS

Open-source Windows alternative

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.

Taskbar

The new Taskbar settings feature in the latest release.

New crash tool

The new DrWatson32-style crash-reporting software.

Light footprint

The lightweight OS uses just 96MB of RAM.

Apple QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player for Vista and Windows 7 running on ReactOS.

Excel viewer

Read spreasheets with Excel Viewer.

HxD

You can check out hex dumps using the HxD tool.

Opera

The OS runs the Opera web browser.

Adobe Photoshop CS2

The photo-editing software running on ReactOS.

LibreOffice Writer

The popular open-source document-editing software.

By Nick Heath

Nick Heath is a computer science student and was formerly a journalist at TechRepublic and ZDNet.

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