In Forum: Microsoft Operating Systems
By User: hounsell
WinOCM/Kenneth/rms did something similar with XP's own kernel files. Admittedly it wasn't a pure CLI (it still rendered bitmaps and such), but it had no windowing system - see here
Alex Ionescu also did one with Windows 7 files that was posted on BA far more recently too, that Pwned translated and posted here.
I'll concede these aren't pure CLI - there's already a display adapter loaded by these points, and as evidenced by rms' example, it's perfectly capable of displaying bitmaps. This actually wasn't the case in earlier NTs - hell, for NT 3.x, the display adapter was still user-mode in those days, but NT 4.0 moved it into the kernel for better performance, and it's been closer ever since. No surprise when you consider that the GPU is essentially becoming more akin to a co-processor than a peripheral component in the modern PC.
ReactOS is useful, but there are a few caveats - it's NT-like, not NT. Because of legal constraints, they are restricted to clean-room reverse engineering, which means in practice that only externally-accessible parts are going to be structured the same as NT itself. It's also only targeting NT 5.2 compatibility, which means it misses the wealth of improvements that NT 6.x bought. And that was a heavy restructuring and rethinking of NT in itself.
By User: hounsell
WinOCM/Kenneth/rms did something similar with XP's own kernel files. Admittedly it wasn't a pure CLI (it still rendered bitmaps and such), but it had no windowing system - see here
Alex Ionescu also did one with Windows 7 files that was posted on BA far more recently too, that Pwned translated and posted here.
I'll concede these aren't pure CLI - there's already a display adapter loaded by these points, and as evidenced by rms' example, it's perfectly capable of displaying bitmaps. This actually wasn't the case in earlier NTs - hell, for NT 3.x, the display adapter was still user-mode in those days, but NT 4.0 moved it into the kernel for better performance, and it's been closer ever since. No surprise when you consider that the GPU is essentially becoming more akin to a co-processor than a peripheral component in the modern PC.
ReactOS is useful, but there are a few caveats - it's NT-like, not NT. Because of legal constraints, they are restricted to clean-room reverse engineering, which means in practice that only externally-accessible parts are going to be structured the same as NT itself. It's also only targeting NT 5.2 compatibility, which means it misses the wealth of improvements that NT 6.x bought. And that was a heavy restructuring and rethinking of NT in itself.