Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That's the mission of ReactOS!
ReactOS is an operating system. Our own main features are:
ReactOS is able to run Windows software
ReactOS is able to run Windows drivers
ReactOS looks-like Windows
ReactOS is free and open source
What is ReactOS?
ReactOS is a free and open source operating system written from scratch. Its design is based on Windows in the same way Linux is based on Unix, however ReactOS is not Linux. ReactOS looks and feels like Windows, is able to your run Windows software and your Windows drivers, and is familiar to Windows users.
Free and open source?
Free and Open Source. Free as “you can download it for free”, and open source..which means…you can see how ReactOS is coded, you can modify it, you can provide patches for any bugs you find, and even more: You can create your own ReactOS versions! You’re using Open Source software daily if you use Firefox, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, GNU-Linux distributions among zillions of Open Source projects out there. The Open Source projects, as ReactOS, are driven for and by its Community, so being active translating, donating, or coding is a way to help ReactOS boost forward.
What are the differences between Windows and ReactOS?
There are mainly two. Firstly ReactOS is open source. Secondly ReactOS is Free. Also Windows (especially the newer versions) are known to monitor all your activity by default. So if you’re concerned about your privacy or just don’t want to share any personal info, we promise (and you can check our source code) that we don’t track any of your data.
Can I install ReactOS and run any software compatible with Windows on it?
Probably yes. However we highly recommend to check first if your favourite app runs in ReactOS. ReactOS is still an on-going project and not all the apps and drivers runs perfect on it. The best way to check the compatibility is to install ReactOS inside a virtual machine (a step by step and video guide can be found here) and try your own needs. There are tons of pieces of software and, as you may imagine, is impossible to track all of them.
