A few easy newbie questions

[walterbyrd]

1) Can I download version 0.3.0? I have read that 0.3.0 is out. Of course that's beta, but I thought all ReactOS was beta?

2) If I have a system that won't boot from cdrom, can I still install ReactOS? Is there some 2 floppies + CD thing available?

3) What are the minimum system requirements?

4) Is ReactOS actually usable for my main OS? Or is ReactOS still bit unstable for that?

[Elledan]

1) Can I download version 0.3.0? I have read that 0.3.0 is out. Of course that's beta, but I thought all ReactOS was beta?

0.3 for now only exists as the development branch, i.e. in SVN. Unless someone here still compiles nightly builds, you'll have to download the source code yourself and compile it.

2) If I have a system that won't boot from cdrom, can I still install ReactOS? Is there some 2 floppies + CD thing available?

If it's anything like WinNT/2k/XP, you can use any bootfloppy which boots into DOS and start the installation manually (from the i386 directory).

3) What are the minimum system requirements?

486SX-50, ~16 MB RAM (more for the installation if there's still that bug), 50 - 100 MB HD space. I'd recommend at least a PII with 128 MB of RAM

4) Is ReactOS actually usable for my main OS? Or is ReactOS still bit unstable for that?

ReactOS is Alpha software, which basically means that not all features have yet been (fully) implemented, and those that are may be full of bugs. The 0.3.x branch should be the first one to focus more on stability and performance than purely features, though I'd wait until around 0.5.x before I'd attempt to use it as a main OS ^_-

[bastetfurry]

[...]though I'd wait until around 0.5.x before I'd attempt to use it as a main OS ^_-

And what does your crystal ball tell you about the question "When?" ?
I for myself have the time to wait, but it would be interesting to have a realistic roadmap.

[Gasmann]

0.2.7 is the latest release. But it is kinda old now. I would recommend you to try daily builds available at http://svn.reactos.com/iso/ , though it can be that some versions (revisions) may be really buggy if you're not lucky. But the vast majority is ok and its worth it because much work has been done since 0.2.7 release.

About how to install without booting from cd, that's not so easy. However, if you're compiling from source, you only have to install it once (to setup freeldr) and then can do a 'make install' to build the installation folder of a new revision. Freeldr can be installed from WinNT/2K/XP with the small utility install, whose source can be found in 'trunk/reactos/boot/freeldr/install' of SVN repository.

[Elledan]

[...]though I'd wait until around 0.5.x before I'd attempt to use it as a main OS ^_-

And what does your crystal ball tell you about the question "When?" ?
I for myself have the time to wait, but it would be interesting to have a realistic roadmap.

Without a firm leadership in place (read: dictator), creating a roadmap for ROS is about as useful as attempting to predict the weather for a single city for a year

I do believe, though, that 0.3.x will be quite revolutionary for ROS:
0.1.x and preceding were mostly there to put the basic OS functionality in place.
0.2.x extended this by adding much of the application API, a GUI and more OS features (API and internal).
0.3.x will see the application API mature (in as far as possible for Alpha software), extend the feature list with things like networking, USB, sound and other hardware support (drivers). This will make 0.3.x capable of most common tasks for a Windows OS.