Hey All!

August 29, 2026

"We are pleased to announce the release of ReactOS 0.4.16! After a year and a half of development, we’re excited to showcase the improvements we’ve made between a new graphical installer; a unified bootcd and livecd image; video, audio, networking, and storage stack improvements; a new installation type; and third-party code syncs."

I remember Nightfox brought this up a while back when it was fairly stagnant. Anyone try this out?

Regards,
Accession

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
--- AmberEdit/linux 0.8.1
* Origin: thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100)

Re: ReactOS release
By: Accession to All on Wed Sep 09 2026 17:54:00

"We are pleased to announce the release of ReactOS 0.4.16! After a year and a half of development, we’re excited to showcase the improvements we’ve made between a new graphical installer; a unified bootcd and livecd image; video, audio, networking, and storage stack improvements; a new installation type; and third-party code syncs."

I remember Nightfox brought this up a while back when it was fairly stagnant. Anyone try this out?

I tried it out years ago. It was actually pretty decent except it didn't run the Windows version of Synchronet. I would get some runtime error or something even after installing all the required runtimes and whatnot.

I read somewhere it might have been something to do with ipv6 but now I think 32 bit OS's are being phased out on the Win side and I thought ReactOS was 32 bit only. Again, it's been a few years so things may have changed or improved or maybe not.
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (46:1/194)

Re: ReactOS release
By: Accession to All on Wed Sep 09 2026 05:54 pm

"We are pleased to announce the release of ReactOS 0.4.16! After a year and a half of development, we’re excited to showcase the improvements

I remember Nightfox brought this up a while back when it was fairly stagnant. Anyone try this out?

I haven't tried ReactOS in quite a while. I remember first learning about ReactOS around 2006 or so, and after all these years, with it still being a sub-1.0 version and still in an alpha state, I feel like its development has been glacially slow.

A couple years ago, I tried using ReactOS in a VM to host TradeWars 2002 Game Server (which is a newer version of the game, with a telnet host as a Win32 app). I remember ReactOS not being fully stable at the time, and I stopped using it. I recall checking the ReactOS VM at one point and it seemed to be frozen.

As far as alternative open-source OSes, I'm more interested in following Haiku OS these days. That one is based on BeOS, which was originally developed in the 90s, and I think it was pretty awesome, but it never really caught on. I think Haiku might be a little more stable than ReactOS, but similarly, its development is a bit slow.

Nightfox

Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, Oct 08 2026 18:04:22 -0700, you wrote:

As far as alternative open-source OSes, I'm more interested in following Haiku OS these days. That one is based on BeOS, which was originally developed in the 90s, and I think it was pretty awesome, but it never really caught on. I think Haiku might be a little more stable than
ReactOS, but similarly, its development is a bit slow.

Ah, yes. I knew it was one of the two you had brought up in the last couple years. I just didn't remember which one.

Anything with too slow of development would probably lose my interest anyway, but I read the announcement of ReactOS and had thought it was discussed in these parts in the past. ;)

Regards,
Accession

... He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
--- AmberEdit/linux 0.9.1
* Origin: thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100)

On 09 Oct 26 18:08:00, Accession said the following to Nightfox:

Anything with too slow of development would probably lose my interest anyway but I read the announcement of ReactOS and had thought it was discussed in these parts in the past. ;)

This 100%... I "wanted" to like ReactOS... I really did.

But just things I felt were common-sense Windows things just never got fixed, it did not support active-directory services, remote access nonexistant etc just kindof gave me the impression it was a lonnnnnnng way off from being taken seriously by anyone.

And its too bad because I was a huge fan of the concept, if it ever became on-par with Windows XP or 7 professional edition with the above mentioned functionality it would've really caught-on with a LOT of people.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (46:1/109)

Hey Atreyu!

On Fri, Oct 09 2026 19:59:20, you wrote:

But just things I felt were common-sense Windows things just never got fixed, it did not support active-directory services, remote access nonexistant etc just kindof gave me the impression it was a lonnnnnnng way off from being taken seriously by anyone.

That's a bummer. It seems they have a decent amount of developers now, but if it's that far off in this day and age.. I won't even bother looking at it.

And its too bad because I was a huge fan of the concept, if it ever became on-par with Windows XP or 7 professional edition with the above mentioned functionality it would've really caught-on with a LOT of people.

I think so too. But then again, I'm sure there would still be plenty of people running Win2kPro, WinXP, or Win7 if they were still actively supported.. at the very least with security updates.

Regards,
Accession

... Politicians and diapers should be changed regularly for the same reasons. --- AmberEdit/linux 0.9.2
* Origin: thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100)

Re: ReactOS release
By: Accession to Nightfox on Fri Oct 09 2026 06:08 pm

Ah, yes. I knew it was one of the two you had brought up in the last couple years. I just didn't remember which one.

Anything with too slow of development would probably lose my interest anyway, but I read the announcement of ReactOS and had thought it was discussed in these parts in the past. ;)
Regards,

I've probably talked about both ReactOS and Haiku. I think they're interesting projects, just a bit slow in development. It sounds like Haiku might be a little more developed & stable than ReactOS though.

Nightfox

Hey Nightfox!

On Mon, Oct 12 2026 13:54:38 -0700, you wrote:

I've probably talked about both ReactOS and Haiku. I think they're interesting projects, just a bit slow in development. It sounds like Haiku might be a little more developed & stable than ReactOS though.

All good, and while I probably wouldn't actually install either one of them, I don't mind reading about their progress when they have a big announcement.

With that said, have you heard anything about 'Windows Core OS'? What's this all about?

Regards,
Accession

... Politicians and diapers should be changed regularly for the same reasons. --- AmberEdit/linux 0.9.2
* Origin: thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100)

Re: ReactOS release
By: Accession to Nightfox on Mon Oct 12 2026 07:55 pm

With that said, have you heard anything about 'Windows Core OS'? What's this all about?

I haven't heard about that.

Nightfox

Hey Nightfox!

On Tue, Oct 13 2026 09:02:52 -0700, you wrote:

With that said, have you heard anything about 'Windows Core OS'? What's
this all about?

I haven't heard about that.

Apparantly they're going to make some kind of open souce 'core' where others can build on it. Obviously, Windows itself will still be closed/proprietary, though. I didn't read too much into it, nor do I know how much they're actually willing to give up that would take away from them making money.

Regards,
Accession

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
--- AmberEdit/linux 0.9.2
* Origin: thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100)