Keir Thomas takes a walk on the wild side of desktop operating systems that offer an alternative to Windows and Linux
The desktop wars are over and the surprise result is that we don’t care who won. It’s all about what you can do online nowadays, and Microsoft’s even giving away the latest update of Windows. That said, the desktop is still the jumping off point for PC users, and those who find Linux as irksome as Windows might be wondering if there’s a third choice – something that’s neither, yet provides the basic capabilities we’ve all come to expect.
Below we look at four candidates. Bearing in mind the tremendous time and expense that’s gone into creating Microsoft’s product, along with most Linux distros, we simply can’t say the operating systems are a straight swap-in. However, for the user who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty, they offer more than you might think.
ReactOS
ReactOS (www.reactos.com) was a child of the mid-1990s desktop war. The project’s goal back then, as now, was to provide an open source and free clone of Windows. That’s an actual, binary-compatible swap-in and not a version of Linux/Unix that merely apes the look and feel. The goal has since mutated into an attempt to recreate the Windows NT architecture and APIs, which means binary compatibility with not just software but also device drivers. In other words, you should not only be able to install the latest Microsoft Office direct from DVD/download, with no additional hacks, but also the latest Nvidia 3D drivers.
Well, you’ll be able to do that at some point in the future. Since its inception in 1998 the project has been in pre-release stage (alpha) because, as strange as it might sound, a group of enthusiastic volunteers struggle to keep up with a million-billion-dollar corporation that’s constantly redefining its product. That ReactOS has come so far is laudable, and it works via a combination of original code created by the project members (including an NT kernel), along with some bolt-on bits from the Wine project (winehq.org), which creates a Windows emulation layer on Unix/Linux.
What you get when ReactOS boots is a desktop that looks spookily similar to Windows XP in classic mode (and the ReactOS team have promised never to embrace Metro design concepts). This includes everything from the Start button to Windows Explorer, and basic apps like Calc, Notepad, WordPad and Paint. Pop-up windows like driver installation wizards or the task manager are essentially identical to Windows.
One of the biggest and most welcome nonstandard features is the Application Manager, which links straight to freeware, shareware and open source Windows apps that are known to work with ReactOS. Examples include Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, 7-Zip and more. Most seemed to work just about okay in our tests but, to be honest, freezes and crashes weren’t hard to bring about.
The ReactOS YouTube channel shows somebody installing and using Microsoft Office 2007, which is pretty impressive. We wanted to install Office XP but couldn’t find a way to get the installation files into our virtual machine. We couldn’t get Windows file sharing (that is, Samba) to work, for example, and an attempt to access a home-made web server resulted in a web page with distorted text.
With its potential for the fuss-free recreation of Windows, which surely is a desire of many business users, and its ability to be compiled for ARM hardware, it’s a small mystery why ReactOS has never picked up corporate custom in the way eComStation has (see below). That said, ever keen to avoid imperialistic American influence, the Russian government has shown interest in ReactOS, and even Vladimir Putin has pushed a cursor around its desktop. Indeed, despite its longevity and the fact that right now ReactOS isn’t ready for primetime use, its story is still being written.
eComStation
OS/2 provides a fascinating chapter in the history of computing that features once typical Microsoft treachery versus the striving of IBM to be relevant for desktop computer users.
IBM failed, of course, but not before garnering significant corporate clients including a chunk of the worldwide banking and manufacturing industries. Most Westerners are heavy users of OS/2 without knowing it, because it continues to run older cash and ticketing machines, while companies like Siemens use it to run industrial machinery. This is at least partially because OS/2 scratched multitasking and security itches that were mere pipe dreams for Microsoft of the era.
Of course, this being the world of computing, there’s also a community of die-hard OS/2 fans out there, so when IBM decided to finally step away from it in the late 1990s a handful of third-parties continued development via the eComStation project. The latest release – 2.2 Beta II – came out in December of 2013 but the project is still very much alive.
It’s important to note that although eComStation is a proprietary, commercially oriented project that has the original OS/2 at its core, it isn’t an open-source hobbyist recreation or an emulation. You can download a live CD/ISO demo from www.ecomstation.com, but if you want to run eComStation full time you’ll have to pay an $82 yearly subscription fee if you’re a business or $41 if you’re a home or student user. Bearing in mind Windows 10 will soon be free for most people, this is a bit tough to swallow.
Don’t release the moths from your wallet just yet, though, because eComStation is an operating system that has fallen badly behind the technical times. It’s 32-bit only, for example, so can only address up to 4GB of RAM, and it simply won’t work on modern UEFI-based computers. Very limited hardware driver support means there’s no USB 3.0. On the other hand, eComStation will install and run just as sweetly as OS/2 ever did on older hardware, and it works well as a virtual machine (which was how we tested it and how many corporations now make use of it).
Booting eComStation is pure 1990s nostalgia, with a variety of desktop tools and widgets that give a feel of Linux of that same era (or perhaps Amiga OS?). Who doesn’t want a six-screen virtual desktop tool or a CPU usage graph built right into the taskbar?
It’s hard to overemphasise how dated eComStation feels. We’re not even sure on-screen fonts are anti-aliased, for example. A concession to the modern times is the Firefox web browser, which is the extended support release (ESR) version 10 that’s pretty ancient now but still offers basic HTML5 support. A lack of web fonts like Arial and Tahoma makes browsing a little strange, but it can be done, and while there’s no Adobe Flash support, this is less of an issue than it used to be. Some HTML5-based video playback is possible, and YouTube should therefore be a possibility, but it choked on the old version of Firefox.
eComStation also involves a pretty solid DOS platform (and an authentic one, thanks to Microsoft’s input back in the day). Despite eComStation’s bravado in attempting to remain relevant to modern users, it’s blindly obvious that its purpose is to act as a roll of virtual duct tape for systems that shouldn’t exist any longer. For the rest of us eComStation is an interesting curio, and it should be remembered that the subscription fee includes tech support to get it up and running. You really can use it on your desktop PC, if you’re that way inclined.
Haiku
Talking of history lessons, BeOS was the little engine that could – and then didn’t. Developed from the ground up in the 1990s as a multimedia operating system, it also introduced user interface design concepts that meant it was genuinely easy to use – compared to alternatives at the time, at least. Most importantly, audio and video playback and manipulation was blazingly fast in an era when watching a 352x240 resolution music video from the Windows 95 installation CD made us feel sci-fi.
The fact that BeOS was not sold to Apple in 1999, as many expected, heralded the Steve Jobs era when he sold them his NextSTEP operating system instead. Deflated like a leaky balloon, BeOS would be sold off to Palm (remember them?) and within a few years had a headstone in the crowded operating system graveyard.
Fans of BeOS weren’t about to let it go, however, and Haiku (www.haiku-os.org) is an attempt to recreate the magic. In an age when even your gran’s crappy mobile can play 1080p video, Haiku has dropped the multimedia boasts and instead focuses on “targeting personal computing” via a “fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn, and yet very powerful system.”
Once again this is a complete ground-up recreation of an older operating system rather than a skinned version of Linux/Unix. That said, Haiku is itself open source, and the folks behind it aren’t afraid to judiciously borrow here and there – the network drivers come via FreeBSD, for example, which means Haiku should support the majority of wi-fi hardware. Compared even to Windows, that’s an extraordinary boast. Some components even come from the original BeOS, which was partially open-sourced before pallbearers arrived.
Using Haiku is almost identical to using BeOS back in the day, and it retains the characteristic yellow ‘stacked’ menubar system that was a precursor to modern tabbed interfaces. Right-clicking on the desktop shows a menu by which apps can be accessed, alongside configuration options, and open windows are minimised to the Deskbar at the top of the desktop. A full and very readable user guide is provided by which you can learn tricks and terminology that can make Haiku very productive.
New software can be installed via the HaikuDepot package manager, based on the same principle as most Linux package managers. We simply couldn’t find this on the myriad app menus provided by Haiku, however, but we did find its website catalogue (depot.haiku-os.org) and it shows a healthy list of apps such as VLC Media Player, BeZilla (a Firefox derivative), MailNews (a Thunderbird derivative) and Caya (an IM app). The only tool missing is an office suite, although the Haiku developers point out ThinkFree Office (www.thinkfree.com) works fine because it runs on top of Java, which Haiku supports. You could also use any online office suite, of course, thanks to BeZilla being HTML5-compatible.
Of all the alternative OSs reviewed here, Haiku is perhaps the best contender for everyday desktop use, thanks to the HaikuDepot apps and broad wi-fi support. Don’t expect it to be optimised for modern hardware (the Nvidia graphics driver doesn’t even support 2D acceleration, never mind 3D or modern compositing techniques), and Adobe Flash support is again missing. However, Haiku’s a competent effort that despite its alpha testing status was stable and speedy during our time with it.
Syllable
Syllable (web.syllable.org) is something of a Heinz 57 operating system. It grew from the ashes of AtheOS, which was apparently abandoned because its creator wanted to learn how to fly (in an airplane, not by jumping off buildings). Begun in 1994, AtheOS had been an attempt to build on the Amiga OS legacy, although it would end up borrowing a little from BeOS for its file system and program interfaces, and pursuing a path independent of both Amiga OS and BeOS in any case (and not being binary compatible with either to boot, meaning you couldn’t run Amiga or BeOS software).
AtheOS raised eyebrows for what at the time were technical triumphs such as support for symmetric multiprocessing, preemptive multitasking and multithreading. Some anticipated AtheOS one day providing a third man to the duelling partnership of Windows and Linux.
Because time and technology have since moved on, the folks behind Syllable no longer make such boasts and instead talk of it being an easy-to-use operating system for the common man. Booting Syllable shows a desktop styled a little like Amiga OS of old, but borrowing much from the classic Windows XP-style taskbar and Start button arrangement – except here the taskbar is at the top of the screen by default. Desktop icons should be familiar from most Linux users because they’re borrowed from the popular Tango set.
A handful of core apps are provided out of the box, including a WebKit-based browser, basic email client and media player. Support for typical video formats is provided by FFMPEG inclusion, as you might find in Linux or Unix, and graphical configuration tools are provided for most system requirements.
What you get, then, is a capable operating system for basic everyday tasks if you’re a truly undemanding user. What you don’t get, sadly, is the ability to add your own choice of apps. There simply aren’t any beyond those preinstalled. Because of this there’s not been any need to create the likes of a package manager. Also missing is support for wireless networking, and although we tested Syllable inside a virtual machine, we’d guess that hardware driver support for other PC components is basic at best.
What struck us most about Syllable is that it looks and feels like a Linux desktop such as Xfce. And if that’s the case, then you might as well just use a Linux distro and get a wider range of hardware support to boot, as well as a bigger range of software. At least Haiku, mentioned above, is distinct and unusual in its look and feel, as well as its aims.
None of this should diminish the achievement that is Syllable in its current state. It’s just that it lacks anything to make it genuinely appealing or to make it stand out from the crowd.