Windows, macOS, or Linux. If you use a desktop or laptop computer, you're probably using
one of these three operating systems. But did you know that they don't have the market
completely cornered? There are, in fact, alternatives you can use on your PC right now.
React OS is a good place to start if you're a Windows user and don't want to dive into
something completely unfamiliar. It started all the way back in 1996 and was intended
to be a clone of Windows 95 with React referring to how the project was meant to be a reaction
to Microsoft's market dominance. React OS looks and feels a lot like Windows and has
much of the same functionality. Many Windows applications run on it without needing extra
layers of emulation. Hold on a minute, if it's so much like Windows, wouldn't Microsoft
try and shut it down due to copyright infringement? Well, the folks behind React OS avoided running
a foul of the law using a technique called clean room reverse engineering. Basically,
they're taking the code apart, looking at it, and then writing their own code, which
is based on it, but not the same. One unintended side effect of this approach is that React
OS exists in a perpetual alpha state with features several generations behind the current
version of Windows, along with very shaky hardware support. But it's free, so if you
only needed it for some basic tasks and you have a deathly allergy to Linux, it might
be worth checking out. Or maybe not. I think Microsoft hasn't gone after it because they
just don't see it as a serious threat. Up next, let's talk about Haikou. Free and
open source. It's not a Japanese poem based on BOS. BOS was an operating system initially
designed for power PC CPUs, the same ones Apple used before 2005. The idea was to have
a media editing optimized OS intended to run on the Mac. One small problem though, Apple
decided not to buy BOS' parent company, so instead the project was modified to work on
Intel and AMD x86 processors instead. By this point though, they had a much bigger problem.
Windows had already dominated the x86 space. BOS was ultimately bought by the same people
who brought you the Palm Pilot who also did not do much with it. So Haikou was born, yay!
An open source re-implementation of BOS that's still being updated to this day. Haikou is
currently in beta and might not be a bad option if you're looking to accomplish simpler tasks
with it. There are a number of apps written specifically for it you can download from
a dedicated package manager, similar to desktop distributions of Linux. Despite its circa
2000 retro look, it can render modern webpages properly if you're looking just to browse
the web. Hardware support is hit or miss, but it runs on even low spec systems, so it's
quite lightweight, just like a real Haikou. To wrap up today's episode, we've got free
BSD. Based on the Berkeley software distribution, that is where they got the BSD from and also
the name of my new hippie rock band. The original BSD was based on Unix, a famous OS developed
in the early 70s that gained popularity due to its portability, meaning it could be used
on different types of hardware configurations, which was uncommon at the time. BSD ended
up becoming common in workstations, and later free BSD became a popular open source descendant
that's much more than just an alternative desktop operating system. In fact, iOS, macOS,
and the software for the newer versions of the PlayStation all incorporate large amount
of free BSD's codebase. There are a couple of other places you might have seen free BSD
or even used it before without knowing it. Both FreeNAS, a free network storage operating
system with ZFS support, and PF Sense, which you can use to transform your commodity computer
hardware into your own network router, are based off free BSD. And although free BSD has
tons of other applications, you can still use it as a desktop operating system, and
it's a lot more refined than Haikou and ReactOS, for whatever that's worth. Now, your NAND
isn't going to be installing it anytime soon, it doesn't even come with a graphical
interface by default, but that doesn't mean that you're completely out of luck if you're
a novice. There are free BSD based solutions such as Furry BSD, name of your sex tape,
and Ghost BSD that come with their own GUIs. Is there another alternative OS that you're
interested in? Let us know in the comments and we'll see if we can cover it in a future
episode. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an urge to dig out my HDDVDs and Betamax tapes.
Well thanks for watching guys, get subscribed, and I'm off to apparently get HDDVDs.