Device drivers in ReactOS, as well as the kernel's overall architecture, are greatly simplified (simplified = lacking features and support for basic stuff) compared to Windows XP, or even Windows 2000. The primary area where ReactOS is lacking is in the very lowest levels of the operating system: the kernel. It may never be, but it certainly isn't now, as of April 2014. No, ReactOS is not a viable replacement for Windows XP. Is ReactOS a stable, functional replacement for Windows XP? I've had problems getting various bits of Windows software running happily out-of-the-box on WINE, so is using that just a matter of trying harder? To estimate the danger of inaction, what are the odds of a catastrophic security failure being revealed in Windows XP?įeel free to create the ReactOS tag for me. As such, the attraction of (the idea of) ReactOS is that it just drops in and replaces WinXP, whereas a non-binary-compatible OS (such as a Linux variant running WINE) would require re-installation and re-configuration of the user software. Even though "ReactOS 0.3.16 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes", WINE has been around more than 20 years. I've already paid once for an operating system, so a free-as-in-beer operating system replacement of the OS will make retaining this low-end hardware viable.Īs an example, one of the computers I'm concerned about is a EEE PC 1000H, which has a 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM and a 1.6GHz Atom N270.įrom what I can tell, ReactOS and WINE provide code to each other to broaden and deepen their compatibility with Windows, so I presume that if a program will run under WINE, it will run under ReactOS, and vice versa. However, netbooks and low-powered laptops and desktops that don't have a lot of memory or CPU capability won't survive with all the extra bloat of the more recent Microsoft OSes. More powerful machines could reasonably be "upgraded" to Windows Vista. There's a lot of Windows-specific software installed on these machines, and that locks the machines into a binary-compatible environment. As Windows XP is now out of support and any freshly discovered vulnerabilities will not be addressed, it's time to retire Windows XP from my Internet-connected computers.
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