ReactOS® is an advanced free open source operating system providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.

ReactOS is the most complete working model of a Windows® like operating system available. Consequently, working programmers will learn a great deal by studying ReactOS source code and even participating in ReactOS development.

ReactOS has and will continue to incorporating features from newer versions and sometimes even define the state of the art in operating system technology.

In short, ReactOS is aiming to run your applications and use your hardware, a free operating system for everyone!

And most important it will also be available for powerpc!

http://www.reactos.org
and
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/PowerPC
and
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/PowerPC-Old

..and why would anyone run a Windows
emulator on.. something other than x86?

It happens that some specific programs only run on Windows unfortunately. I never tried ReactOS (don(t know about compatibility, efficiency or stability) but if it is supported ... why not, it could help some PPC users.

- reactos is not a windows emulator.
- reactos is an opensource os that is nt4 compatible.
- also sometime ago nt4 was also available for the powerpc platform for ibm servers.
- reactos is not going the help run x86 windows apps on powerpc.
- the state of reactos as it now is provides a minimal powerpc kernel.

and as osx is migrated to x86, why cant windows be migrated to powerpc

Microsoft has Windows running on Xbox 360! :-)

As long as ReactOS does not include an x86 emulataor, this argument is void. Only apps compiles espacially for ppc or which are avaialble as source code will run.

..and I still don't get the point for why a PowerPC port
of ReactOS would be necessary.

During the ReactOS presentation at FOSDEM 2007, the
only impression I got, was that this was supposed to be
a FOSS NT4-kernel to run Windows and Windows apps
on.. Since all readily available versions of Windows are
for x86 or AMD64, I really don't see why someone
would make this port?

@ironfist: please do not be so negative. e.g. why would we need powerpc at all when even osx is x86.

I personally would favour reactos above linux. Only because i am more familiar about the way windows is constucted together (the best constructed os is beos). To make my point a bit clearer on linux when you want use hardware most of times you need to (re)compile the kernel or put support for different kinds of hardware in the kernel. With windows this is not needed.

Besides i think it is easier to write an application for the windows platform (being it x86 or powerpc does not matter).

And when taking thing a step further qemu is capeable of running x86 applications on powerpc in user emulation if and when that is constructed togeter it could even be possible to run x86 windows applications on powerpc reactos.

I'm not negative - I'm simply beeing realistic.

Most of us live in free countries and we can code whatever
we want. I think this project sounds like wasted efforts,
but I'm sure others don't. And I'm sure the coder can
learn one or two things about PowerPC. Then it's great.

Great for learning, but I don't see how it would benefit
the rest of us, or the PowerPC industry.

This is just my point of view.

benefits of reactos on powerpc:

- Even without ReactOS, lib/ppcmmu is a spiffy minikernel for working in early boot on PowerPC.

- Easier porting of windows application to the PowerPC platform. In theorie only a recompile to the powerpc platform should be needed since most software nowadays is written with a c compiler.

- A native .NET environment (i know this works via linux also (Mono.NET))

- The windows nt4 kernel is lighter then the linux kernel.

- And when taking thing a step further qemu is capeable of running x86 applications on powerpc in user emulation if and when that is constructed together it could even be possible to run x86 windows applications on powerpc reactos.

Indeed, ReactOS is much like the AROS effort. When Aaron Digulla and some other people started, many years back, people didn't see any sense in it. Why rewriting AmigaOS from scratch?
Nowadays, not only AROS is almost a usable operating system, it looks fantastic, and, being targeted mainly to x86, it benefits from a huge user base, compared to others forcing themselves to other non-mainstream hardware.
Last, but not least, the source code of AROS has helped to develop this other operating systems.
In the end, all is Amiga.

There is one little difference: Windows is not on the verge of extinction. This means, that nobody needs to save it, especially not on a platform, where it died away more than a decade ago...

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

I take it you haven't done much porting of software from x86 to ppc before...

I have done a conversion of a opengl windows app to osx. The hardest part was to get it to work with the osx framework. With the windows api available it should be much easier.

my point is that imho you underestimate the amount of problems that endianness differences will bring to the surface.