Looking for Free Windows OS? ReactOS is here.

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I keep looking for free stuff available online. In the early days when my searches were only limited to torrents, keygens, patches etc, didn't get much of a exposure to free legal stuff. FOSS came for rescue and then many different things lined up. Thanks to Ubuntu!!! Its been more than 3 years that i quit windows for daily use... But what haunts me at times is the when there is some software that i need to use desperately and its setup is only available for Windows. Wine helps many a times but not always. At times i felt, if Windows could be free too ... :(

Then on one fine day i wanted to make a doc. I use Libre generally. But this one needed to be highly compatible since i was suppose to send it to some windows user. I got Office 2007 installed in Wine. I used it for quite sometime and then it started throwing some weird error and got closed time and again. At this instance the first thing is googled is Free and open source windows like OS. While there were many linux pages pulled up that i already knew about, this one caught my attention. "Free and Open Source Windows like OS - ReactOS ".

So, what is ReactOS? Its an effort to provide Free and Open Source alternative to Windows. The term "React" also comes from a reaction of dissatisfaction of Microsoft's monopolistic position(source Wikipedia).

ReactOS is an Open Source implementation of NT family of windows. A part of the implementation has been assisted from Wine. The OS is still in its alpha stage and has been selected as a best project from Forge Magazine.

Many alternatives for the set up are available i.e VM images, iso images etc for everyone to have maximum access. The site has all kind of download options available. If in case you happen to find some issue in the installation, you can always report it to the team in their JIRA. The installations are both automated and manual for testing purpose.

You can even contribute to the community as a Dev, QA, Release or Tech Writer. Wishing to get this one released soon. :)