alternative os

my friend bought a used comp. and discovered the xp os is illegal. is there a free alternative os to xp that i can dl and put on disc for her? she has searched and can not find xp anywhere to buy and vista is way too much.

well she could use Linux, but if she has certain windows programs to run this will do her no good, but it will give her a functional computer, to get it go to

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

this is a user friendly version of linux she could proboly get used to (unless she wants certain windows based apps... i use ubuntu everyday and i love it!

i think she prefers windows. any other help would be appreciated.

Yes, the only way to get Windows is to buy it, or buy a computer with it. You can get OEM versions of the software quite cheaply, though.

Have you ever heard about ReactOS?

The main site is http://www.reactos.org/. You can also visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS to get the picture of the OS. In-depth review can be found in http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/reactos-the-next-windows/

It said to be FREE, but still in development phase. Maybe it worth to try.

Cheers

yes react os will be great. WHEN ITS FINISHED, its still in alpha i wouldnt use it everyday, but this might be the only free answer to windows

yet with a 20mb install download it might be a pretty cool little thing to have on hand

you can still buy XP/Pro on the Internet -- just be sure you get the FULL RETAIL
version if you expect to perform an UPDATE in preference to a CLEAN install.