Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust.
That's the mission of ReactOS!
Our first VCF Southwest booth I had no idea how unprepared I was until it was too late to back out. I had just set up my booth, with nothing to show off. Bracing for the worst, I reached out to strangers who quickly became friends. I expected to confidently show off ReactOS but instead found a resourceful and friendly community willing to help me when my plans fell apart.
Happy Birthday ReactOS! Today marks 30 years since the first commit to the ReactOS source tree. It’s been such a long journey that many of our contributors today, including myself, were not alive during this event. Yet our mission to deliver “your favorite Windows apps and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust” continues to bring people together. Let’s take a brief look at some of the high and low points throughout our history.
For many years, the ReactOS test suite was neglected. It was a random collection of our own tests and old Wine tests that were only checked against Windows Server 2003 and sometimes a random newer version of Windows up to the discretion of the contributor. The Wine tests we imported were heavily modified and the changes made weren’t always well documented. I’m here to clean up this mess. I have been deeply involved with the ReactOS project since 2023 and in May of 2024 I became an official project developer.
The history of ReactOS spans a wider range than the lives of many of the people who work on it today. Incredible individuals have come and gone from the project with vastly different goals for what they want to see developed. In recent years, better hardware support has emerged as one of those goals. As ReactOS gazes towards the world of Vista and beyond, a few questions about how hardware works emerge.
