In case you aren't familiar with the ReactOS project in a nutshell, the aim is to produce an open source operating system that is fully Windows compatible. I've been intrigued by the project for years, and as the developers push toward the release of version 0.4, there's every reason to get excited.

The latest version, 0.3.9, sports reduced memory requirements and major speed improvements, as well as a number of other enhancements. ReactOS requires only 32Mb of memory (it will run with as little as 20Mb), and the installer weighs in at just under 34Mb. Preliminary AC97 sound support has also been added, and GDI fixes have taken care of a number of graphics issues.

Want to take it for a spin? You can play with ReactOS a number of ways. There's an installation CD, LiveCD, VMWare virtual machine, and pre-packed Qemu setup, all ready to download. Just keep in mind that ReactOS is still considered an alpha release at this point.

Once you've got ReactOS running, fire up the downloader to get some apps installed, like Firefox, mIRC, AbiWord, IfranView, or even the Diablo 2 Shareware release. Nice!

[via TuxRadar]

It sure seemed like a good idea. CodeWeavers, the makers of CrossOver software that lets you run Windows applications like MS Outlook or games like Half Life on Mac andLinux machines, held a tongue-in-cheek promotion where the company promised to give away free copies of its software if one of a number of economic goals were met in the US. While it's likely that the US government had little to do with the recent dip in gas prices, this week CodeWeavers decided that $2.79 gas meant it was time to give away a copy of CrossOver to anyone who wanted it within a 24 hour period.

And then all heck broke loose. The story made the front page of Digg and was reported on countless tech blogs. The CodeWeavers website crashed, although the company quickly got the download links back online. When the smoke cleared, the company gave away about 750,000 copies of its software.

Let's let that sink in for a second here. A company that many people may not have even known existed, had its software downloaded three quarters of a million times in one day. CodeWeavers sent an email this week stating that the move expands the company's customer base by 400%. The value of the free software given away tops $45 million.

In other words, the whole thing might have backfired and ruined the company's bottom line. On the other hand, it could be awesome news in the long run for CodeWeavers. A whole lot of people who weren't aware of the software are now potential customers. Many of the people who downloaded free copies may not really wind up using it, but those who do may decide to upgrade when a new version is available or pay for another year of support when the 1 year of free support expires in a year.

Still, CodeWeavers has decided to cancel the promotion going forward. There had been plans to do another giveaway if housing prices fell, US job numbers went up, or Osama Bin Laden was captured. But that just doesn't seem like a good idea anymore.

CrossOver is the commercial version of WINE, a tool that allows users to run many Windows applications on Mac or Linux machines. And today, you can download it for free.

You see, earlier this year the CEO of CodeWeavers, the company behind CrossOver issued a challenge to president George W. Bush. If the outgoing president of the US could accomplish one of a handful of goals before leaving office, the company would give away free licenses for all of its software (with a limit of one per license per user). Surprisingly, one of those goals has been met: CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White recently noted that he was able to fill up his tank with $2.79/gallon gasoline.

In order to claim your reward, just visit the CodeWeavers page today to snag a coupon good for one software license. CodeWeavers makes CrossOver for Mac and Linux, and also has a special CrossOver Games version that brings support for a number of popular Windows video games to those applications. While CrossOver won't necessarily let you run every Windows app on your platform of choice, it does boast support for some programs that won't run under the free and open source WINE utility.

CodeWeaver products typically start at $40. So if you think there's even a chance you might want a free copy, today's the day to grab one. Or you can wait until George Bush meets one of the other goals that Jeremy White has set for him, including capturing Osama bin Laden, creating jobs, or bringing average home prices back to the level they were at last year.

[via OStatic]

If you want to use Google Chrome but are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data, you might want to give Iron a try.

Iron, developed by German software company SRWare is Chrome stripped of all the user ID information that gave the German government cause for concern.

I don't speak German, but the guys at the Incomplete-News Project have helpfully published an English translation. According to them, Iron is essentially the Chromium source code, with the following modifications:

• No unique user-ID
• No user-specific information is sent to Google
• No alternative error messages
• Crash information is not sent to Google
• No Google updater

I personally don't have a problem with having my search data transmitted to Google (as I'm sure it is in Safari and Firefox with my search bars now), but I do understand the concerns about data-collection potential.

I downloaded Iron, and other than featuring the same squished blue logo that CodeWeavers uses in its version of Chromium on the default tab page, everything worked exactly as expected.

XP and Vista users can download Iron from SRWare's site.
[via the Incomplete-News Project]

It may have taken 15 years, but the developers behind Wine have finally decided the Windows emulation layer for Linux and Unix-based systems is stable enough to wear a 1.0 label. Now, don't get too excited. That doesn't mean every last Windows app will run on Linux under Wine. But it does mean that Wine's more stable than ever, and thousands of Windows applications have been reported to work.

Wine 1.0 installation instructions are available for a whole slew of distributions, including Fedora, Red Hat, SUSE, Mandriva, Slackware, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD and Solaris. Or if you wait a few days there's a good chance the latest version of Wine will be added to your distro's official repositories.

To be perfectly honest, you might not notice a ton of changes from previous versions of Wine. But the latest build does include a ton of fixes for specific applications including WinRAR, Skype, Dragon Naturally Speaking, and video games like Call of Duty 1.0

[via Digg]

Been spending the week gearing up for SXSW and then realized that you forgot to book tickets to Austin? Worry not, Download Squad will be bringing you blow by blow coverage from SXSW Interactive over the next few days. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and check out some of the top stories from the week that was.

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 beta

Microsoft released the first beta version of IE8 this week, and while it's explicitly for developers and not early adopters, we rushed out to test it, and were severely disappointed with its performance. Sure, it renders the Acid2 test properly -- sometimes, but it does a pretty poor job with many other sites, including Download Squad. And many of you told us you were having even bigger problems. Check out the IE8 reviews and comments left by Download Squad readers.

Microsoft launches Office Live Workspace beta

IE8 wasn't the only Microsoft beta to launch this week. The company also pushed the first public version of Office Live Workspace out the door. And while the service does provide users with a way to store and share Office documents online, we can't help but wonder whether people who have gotten used to actually being able to create and edit documents online with services like Zoho and Google Docs are going to care.

Adobe hasn't officially ported Adobe AIR to Linux yet, but Ubuntu Unleashed figured out that you can install AIR using the WINE windows emulation layer for Linux. Installation isn't exactly painless, and when all is said and done, there are a bunch of AIR applications that won't run. But some will.

Note that the instructions at Ubuntu Unleashed tell you how to install Adobe AIR beta 3. But read on and we'll show you how to install Adobe AIR 1.0.

Linux users aren't exactly known as big fans of proprietary software, but sometimes a big commercial app comes in handy. iTunes has been up and running on Linux for a while now, but it was missing one big reason to choose it over an open source music player: iPod Touch and iPhone syncing. These two Apple gadgets need to be unlocked to work with a third-party music player.

But now iTunes on Linux is reportedly able to recognize and sync all iPod models, including the Touch and the iPhone. Maarten Lankhorst recently alerted the wine-devel mailing list that he got iPod-iTunes syncing to work on a Linux system with Wine, iTunes 7.6, and minimal patches. Good news for anyone whose 'Pod wasn't supported by the available open source apps.

There's still a little more work to be done before this will work on unpatched Wine: direct access to the device in explorer is not supported, although it should be coming soon. For now, at least there's a solution for Windows users who also want to keep their iPhones and iTouches locked - even if it's still proprietary.

[via Tombuntu]

Anyone who has been on the Internet for any amount of time has undoubtedly stumbled across something that sounds like a scam. Nigerian bankers, p-p-p-powerbooks, get rich quick schemes, there seems to be no end to suspicious products and services online.

When we first heard about I-Doser, we were understandably skeptical. The makers of this program sell "doses" for it, which are basically scripts that help the program generate a series of binaural beats to simulate various effects in the user. Some of the doses include Alcohol, Cocaine, Heroin, and "designer doses" such as Hand of God.

The free download of I-Doser includes the alcohol dose as a free demo, so we fired it up, almost expecting it to be a screamer or RickRoll. Instead, our ears were assaulted with the ordered chaos that is binaural beats. We patiently listened to the entire dose, stood up, and proceeded to sit back down rather sloppily. Amazingly enough, the dose did what it claimed!

Whether or not this program is powered by the placebo effect or real science is certainly debatable, but with a free trial and no known risks, this is a download worth trying. If nothing else, it's sure to make alcohol and drug deprived teens happy. I-Doser is only available for Windows, but it runs just fine in WINE (it even rhymes!).

The ReactOS project has one simple goal: to create an Open Source implementation of Windows. It borrows heavily from the WINE project for obvious reasons, but despite this, it is a stand alone OS. Since the last time we covered it, development of ReactOS has progressed very nicely. It now supports several components of OpenOffice, Firefox, and even Remote Desktop sessions.

The OS is still in Alpha state, making it more of a developer's plaything than anything else for the time being. However, anyone can try out premade images from the official site for giggles and grins. If you're not brave enough to try it out yourself, the site has plenty of screenshots as well.

Some wine, good food, good company, and now a social network. If you have a passion for grapes, OpenBottles could be your new hub of activity. This wine driven community boasts information and consumer reviews about 19,000 wines, and 2,100 wineries.

Members of OpenBottles can rate, review, and recommend wines, and wineries. They can also send and receive wine recommendations between users. Have a little stock of wine at your house? Online cellars can be organized with current collections and wishlists.

This site definitely gets your pallet quenching. Check out the Tools section for some helpful PDF's that you can take along on wine tours so you can remember the wines you sampled and whether you liked them or not, and a tasting guide that helps you analyze the quality and components of a wine.

If you have a dry mouth that needs quenching, you can also check out ThisJustBrewed, a social news site for beverage lovers.

[via centernetworks]

ThisJustBrewed serves up some discussions around your favorite beverages, coffee, tea, wine and beer. Social news is everything, so why not one have one targeted around social beverages?

This social news site plays off of the Digg, Netscape model. Users submit stories and articles, and users vote them up or down. Of course the news on ThisJustBrewed is targeted around coffee, tea, wine and beer instead of tech and politics. If you can't get enough Arabica, Earl Grey, Stout or Lager, this is the site for you.

ThisJustBrewed is built off of the Pligg Content Management System. Pligg is a way for designers and developers with little knowledge of PHP and MySQL to install and work with a highly customizable personal content management system.

[via Emily Chang]

I'm reporting in from LinuxWorld, letting the fine folks who read DLS know about the latest & greatest news from the Land of Free & Open Source Software. A few weeks ago, Apple made quite a stir with their announcements about their spiffy new Mac Pro and Xserves, as well as cool new updates to Mac OS X. Lost in all the hubbub, however, was an announcement by a great open source company that they are porting their software over from Linux to Mac OS X. Yes, Codeweavers, makers of the amazingly cool and useful CrossOver Office, are going to release betas of their software for Mac OS X later this month.

What's CrossOver Office, you ask? Linux users have been taking advantage of it for several years now. Basically, CrossOver Office is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use version of the WINE project, which basically fools Windows apps into thinking they're running on Windows. Why is this possibly better than Parallels Workstation, which lets you run Windows itself? Because with CrossOver, you don't need to open Windows; instead, you just click on the Word icon, or the IE icon, or the Outlook icon, and the program opens, just like a regular ol' Linux program. Can you smell the convenience? (Still want more info? Read the posts I made about CrossOver on the now-retired Open Source Weblog: Introduction to CrossOver Office in PC World, CrossOver version 5 released, & More on CrossOver ... and Win4Lin ... but please don't read Codeweavers' CrossOver Office support disappoints and apply it to the company today ... that issue was resolved to my satisfaction.)

Well now, ladies and germs, CrossOver is going to work on Apple machines that use the Intel processor. Want to run ONE Windows proggie but don't want to have to install Windows? Or need to run Outlook but don't wanna go through the hassle of setting up Parallels and then install Winders, being forced to reboot a gazillion times and then deal with the endless hassles of security? Or - and this is sooooooo cool, and it's coming up in the latest version of CrossOver - want to run Half-Life II or many other Windows-only games without requiring Windows? Then use CrossOver! It's a good company and a great product, and it just utterly fantastic that it's now going to be available to Mac users. Now that's great news!