The ReactOS project recently initiated a Kickstarter campaignin the form of Thorium Core, a cloud desktop environment that allows one to have a consistent computing environment with the same applications and settings anywhere one has a reliable broadband connection. To achieve this, Thorium intends to complete the work needed to bring ReactOS to a state where it is useable for day to day activities as well as tune it for usage in various virtual environments. Due to ReactOS' lightweight nature, a Thorium Core instance will have more resources to dedicate to the things that matter most to a user, running their applications.
Of course, Thorium isn't about just a cloud desktop. It's very much about ReactOS itself. The project has gotten close, very close, to being ready for general use. Rough edges are being polished at a daily rate and in the preparation for 0.4.0, the team has put significant effort into not just the system's stability but also the user friendliness of a new explorer shell. With Thorium's success, the project can work on other issues that stand in the way of ReactOS being ready for day to day use. So for ReactOS supporters, Thorium offers the chance to bring ReactOS out of alpha, into beta, and maybe even into production. If you've been waiting years for ReactOS to be to the point where you can replace your soon to be retired Windows XP install, then here's a chance to help the project make that final push to be ready.
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The ReactOS project recently initiated a Kickstarter campaignin the form of Thorium Core, a cloud desktop environment that allows one to have a consistent computing environment with the same applications and settings anywhere one has a reliable broadband connection. To achieve this, Thorium intends to complete the work needed to bring ReactOS to a state where it is useable for day to day activities as well as tune it for usage in various virtual environments. Due to ReactOS' lightweight nature, a Thorium Core instance will have more resources to dedicate to the things that matter most to a user, running their applications.
Of course, Thorium isn't about just a cloud desktop. It's very much about ReactOS itself. The project has gotten close, very close, to being ready for general use. Rough edges are being polished at a daily rate and in the preparation for 0.4.0, the team has put significant effort into not just the system's stability but also the user friendliness of a new explorer shell. With Thorium's success, the project can work on other issues that stand in the way of ReactOS being ready for day to day use. So for ReactOS supporters, Thorium offers the chance to bring ReactOS out of alpha, into beta, and maybe even into production. If you've been waiting years for ReactOS to be to the point where you can replace your soon to be retired Windows XP install, then here's a chance to help the project make that final push to be ready.
Hi,
I'm the author of Rufus [1], and I was pleasantly surprised to see it
referenced on the ReactOS Live USB creation wiki [2]. So first of all,
thanks for that.
Now, considering that the documented method of creating a Live USB using
Rufus can't exactly be qualified as very user-friendly, I have just
added native support for the ReactOS bootcd/livecd ISOs in Rufus, so
that you should just be able to point the app to one of those ISOs, and
it will automatically create a complete bootable USB, with no need to
download an invoke GRUB4DOS, 7-zip, etc.
If you want to test, you can pick the latest ALPHA from:
http://rufus.akeo.ie/downloads/
Currently, the way this works is through installing Syslinux (v4.07) and
mboot.c32 so that setupldr.sys can then be invoked (see the
/syslinux.cfg created by Rufus on the drive).
Also, for the time being, only setupldr.sys will be referenced (no
freeldr.sys) on account that:
1. The Syslinux's menu.c32 file is rather large, and I want to keep
Rufus small, so I don't want to embed it in the application (which is
also the mais reason why Rufus doesn't include native GRUB support). But
this means that user selection from a menu is not available.
2. When testing, I couldn't get freeldr.sys to do much when booted from
USB... though that was most likely because I hadn't actually installed
ReactOS anywhere.
Also note that, using 61492, even though the process seems to boot OK,
I wasn't able to get a live ReactOS actually running from USB. On 2 of
the machines I tried, the boot process eventually failed with "Fatal
System Error 0x0000007b" in the USB stack. But I also got the exact same
error with GRUB4DOS when following the steps from the wiki, so I don't
think this has much to do with Rufus. I haven't really had a chance to
investigate this issue yet, for lack of time.
Still, I'm hoping that making the creation of a bootable UFD easier for
ReactOS will help encourage more people to test it and help the project.
Of course, I'm also open to suggestions to try to improve support for
ReactOS in Rufus, if you want something specific. For instance, I should
point out that the syslinux.cfg created by Rufus is written before any
of the ISO files are copied over. Thus, if the ReactOS ISOs were to
include their own syslinux.cfg & menu.c32/vesamenu.c32, it would be very
easy to provide menu selection for the user when booting from USB, even
as the ISOs are not Syslinux/Isolinux based.
Regards,
/Pete
[1] http://rufus.akeo.ie/
[2]
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/LiveUSB#Installing_the_MBR_.28from_64-bit_Windo…
