ReactOS is an open-source operating system which wants to provide support for windows applications and drivers. It’s in alpha stage and not recommended for normal use – yet. I tested the operating system on several computers.
You have to download an ISO image from the ReactOS page, that’s an CD image file you have to burn on a CD-R(W) to boot the installation program. It takes only 16 MB (!). Use a burning program like Nero Burning Rom or DeepBurner or something similar.
Your computer must support booting from a CD. If CD booting isn’t enabled, you have to enable it in your computer’s BIOS. Inject the CD. The screen should show something like this:
Sie müssen ein ISO-Abbild von der ReactOS-Homepage herunterladen.
I’ve installed it on my desktop. On my notebook the setup assistant said “failed to read the boot sector”. Perhaps my hard disk was too big?!
When there is a blue screen with some text, the setup is ready. The setup application tells you what to do.
The setup application is similar to the setup of Windows 3.1.
Now you have to be careful. You have to choose where to install ReactOS. It has to be a FAT12/16/32 partition, NTFS is not supported.
Here you can choose whether to format the partition or to keep the current file system. If you have chosen an NTFS partition, you have to format it (all data will be killed!!! If you want to keep your data, you’ll have to convert your NTFS partition to FAT32 with a special utility).
“This may take several minutes to complete.” is funny: on my computer it takes about 30 seconds 
Installing the bootloader on your harddisk may be dangerous, so if you’re unsure it would be better to install it on a floppy disk. If you skip it, you won’t be able to load ReactOS. On my computer I had no problems with the bootloader: after restarting LILO (linux boot menu) appeared. When I choosed Windows, there was another boot menu (Windows XP boot menu) which let me choose between Windows and ReactOS. If it doesn’t appear on your computer, press F8.
Now you have to restart your computer.
This boot menu should appear. If not, press F8 and switch to it.
ReactOS has its own boot menu: after 10 seconds the first line (“ReactOS”) is chosen. You can press “Enter” or choose “ReactOS Debug”. I don’t know exactly what that is, but probably you’ll need it if there are problems.
That’s the boot screen. I think it has no use. I didn’t see it longer than 3 seconds, because ReactOS is very fast. After booting is finihed, you have to set-up ReactOS.
Of course, you don’t need a serial key . You can choose between many languages and keyboard layouts. I didn’t count them, but there are more than on a multilingual Palm
When the wizard is finished, you have to restart the computer. Now ReactOS is finished. With me, the installation process didn’t last more than 5 minutes.
So what do you say?! It looks much like Windows 9x / 2000, but a little but like Linux too. I could install Mozilla Firefox, PhotoFiltre (image editing) and XnView (very good image viewer, editor, …), that’s why those icons are on the desktop.
As you can see on the task panel, it has a start button, a “quick start” feature (there you can place some apps), four virtual desktops and a clock. After I installed XnView and Firefox, they appeared immediately in the quick start panel.
In the start menu there are some tools and apps, and two games. Later I noticed the other menus like “Settings” or “Search”. The Settings-menu is comparable with the Windows control panel. Many of the setting dialogues look like they look in Windows! But you can’t set very much: there is the desktop background panel, like in Windows, but can’t enable it – yet. What you can set is the screen resolution: Because of VESA-drivers I could enable 1024×768 pixels and 65536 colors. There is a network setting dialogue, too. I couldn’t test very much but I think you can connect it to TCP/IP networks! My network card was detected.
I had one problem with ReactOS: after a few minutes the mouse didn’t work anymore unless the computer restarted. It was a PS/2 one. I took a serial one and ReactOS crashed when it was starting because of a crash (sermouse.sys). I had to delete that file with Windows. Then I realized that the problem was my keyboard: after I pressed a key, the mouse gave up. It was a USB keyboard. I took a “normal” one and I could work with both the mouse and the keyboard.
The file manager: I found some bugs. When I tried to access one of my drives (C: , D:, …) I got the following message:
Nevertheless I could access drives, folders, files.
In the next parts of this article you can read if third-party apps, drivers etc. work, how you can test it with an emulator, what about a Live CD, …
What do you think about ReactOS? Will you give it try?
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