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ReactOS 0.4.6 released
- apeacox 9y agoKudos to ReactOS team! I've never used it in production, but I tried it several times during the years and I was always fascinated by the efforts made to improve this OS.
- dzmitry_lahoda 9y ago`In order to track ReactOS compatibility with Windows behavior, 1,088,893 unit test cases have been added since 0.4.5. This new release has been tested through 14,238,159 unit test cases, failing just 18,419 (a 0,129% ratio failure). Still, ReactOS is marked as Alpha for the moment.` 14M tests are impressive.
- niklasrde 9y agoI'm guessing they haven't been written manually?
- bonzini 9y ago3 nested for loops may count as thousands of tests (not that it diminishes the value of the tests). Probably most of them come from Wine.
- bluefox 9y agoThat's nothing, I made my computer count to 4 BILLION...
- JdeBP 9y agoThe tests appear to be at https://github.com/reactos/reactos/tree/master/rostests https://github.com/reactos/reactos/tree/master/rostests
- VladVlad1 9y agohi
- shamerd 9y agoCool
- digi_owl 9y agoAnd the livecd is just a 70MB zip file, interesting.
- kronos29296 9y agoIt does make me wonder where did the rest of the space in a Windows CD go to? I mean they needed a full cd for it and it wasn't even a live cd. And React OS should atleast have most of WinXP's features and yet is much smaller. What did microsoft use the rest of the space for?
- bonzini 9y agoLots of drivers, for one, and a lot more functionality (the live CD certainly doesn't do Active Directory!). Plus, everything in the base system is in two copies, one for the boot environment and one for the installed version, similar to initramfs and RPMs for Linux.
- Endy 9y agoResource storage (codecs, etc), software not necessarily built into the OS, and similar.
- Const-me 9y agoJust because it shows an Explorer doesn’t mean it includes most WinXP features. Device drivers: Driver.cab is 60MB. Localizations: LANG folder takes 100MB. .NET Framework: 41MB. Various migration tools to upgrade from Win95: 32MB.
- kuschku 9y agoRoughly 20% of the space used in Windows’ exe’s and .dll’s is EXIF and similar metadata in image assets. It’s very wasteful. They probably never tried to reduce the size.
- mmastrac 9y agoThis seems unlikely, but giving you the benefit of the doubt - is there some research on this?
- barking 9y agoI can see that this is an awesome achievement but why would people, not involved in the project, choose to use it instead of other operating systems such as windows itself?
- vbezhenar 9y agoOne reason would be price. Another reason would be software compatibility. Many people praise Windows backwards compatibility, but that's not the case in my experience, a lot of poorly written software breaks with new Windows versions, so people forced to stay with XP. I'm not sure if ReactOS would have better compatibility, but it's a chance. Also some people just want to use free software for their own reasons.
- gbajson 9y agoI keep trying to use each version of ReactOS in order to run the Windows XP programs, I still need some of them. In 2017 I can't even buy Windows XP in Microsoft Store.
- kinleyd 9y agoDo Win XP programs run yet?
- matthew349hall 9y ago...for good reason? Technologies from XP are by now insecure and obsolete. Why would Microsoft sell XP still? Does Ford still sell 1998 F150's at their dealerships?
- nunobrito 9y agoIt is getting much better with each release. I'm seeing it each time more as a good replacement for the office machines that need to run the legacy software. Plus, with this Windows exists no state surveillance involved nor costs with licenses, perfect for VM deployment.
- dingdingdang 9y agoMy department will be adopting ReactOS as soon as is possible - the amount of issues being purposely built into newer versions* of Windows is borderline hilarious. If we could pay for using LTSB installations we would do so but for a smaller charity this is near impossible. *When car manufacturers reach peak saturation with a given model they expand/consolidate their position by improving their product, NOT by making the consumer buying their car the product...!
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoWhat's the security situation? Is it safe to have ReactOS networked?
- t90fan 9y agoWell, on account there isnt really a working AD or SMB implementation, little printing support, and most NICs arent supported (also: no wireless at all), then I would say there is little attack surface :)
- Koshkin 9y ago> little attack surface Well, PCs had been suffering from viruses long before they got network adapters...
- oneweekwonder 9y agoYip, I remember a virus that hi-jack your bios to draw a flag of some country before every boot; this was in 1998/dos years. You were "sharing" games with your friend they downloaded from geocities... good times. To think a intel ME like vulnerability was already possible back then(if not more) for your bios.
- steinuil 9y agoDoes anybody have experience with using ReactOS for hosting e.g. videogame servers? I wanted to host the servers of a few old games in a vm (just for some friends), and I'd obviously much rather run ReactOS than some outdated Windows.
- nailuj 9y agoWine would probably be worth a shot as well.
- goffi 9y agoWould it make sense (understand: is it now stable and compatible enough) to use it as a development platform for Windows version of a software (supposing that we haven't any real Windows available)? Any experience with it? I would be really interested in this use case. Congrats for all this work through years!
- bonzini 9y agoThe mingw cross toolchain works surprisingly well; pesign and msitools (living under the GNOME umbrella) can also be used to produce UI-less .msi installers through a (very) minimal Linux-native version of Wix called Wixl. (I was one of the two original authors of msitools, taking care of porting Wine's msi DLLs to a POSIX environment. The other guy took care of making the API less Windows-like, ported .cab file support and wrote Wixl).
- SXX 9y agoAnd if project using CMake then it's even better with MXE [1]. It's basically let you build toolchain with no effort by typing few commands and while I didn't test Wix it's perfectly capable of creating installer with CPack / NSIS. Another option is to use AppVeyor CI + Microsoft's Vcpkg [2], it's also integrated with CMake and require no manual setup. [1] http://mxe.cc/ http://mxe.cc/ [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg
- bonzini 9y agoNSIS (imperative) is much inferior to MSI (declarative). MSI tracks each file's users and is able to automatically uninstall packages as well as rollback installs that fail in the mid of a transaction.
- SXX 9y agoThanks for the information. Now I have a reason to check Wix. Though so far NSIS worked well enough because we efficiently only have one component, all libraries needed just bundled inside and it's just 15-50MB in size.
- matthew349hall 9y agoI really despise this. These developers could give the world someone new, instead they clone exactly what they believe is evil.
- roblabla 9y agoWhy do you think they believe ms to be evil, and why do you think it is their motivator ? There are practical reasons behind reactos : programs and drivers written for old windows versions are not compatible with newer ones.
- igitur 9y agoThe great thing about developers working on a project in their free time, is that they can choose anything they want. They're not constrained by what other people think they should be doing, despicable or otherwise.
- dimillian 9y agoCan it run Doom? Edit: Ok I'm impressed, apparently it can even run Doom III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY
- wiz21c 9y agoDoom most probably use a very superficial part of windows. Mainly, whatever is needed to put a framebuffer on screen. So although this is definitely a good news, it's not that impressive. Does it run MS Word or Visual Basic ?
- badsectoracula 9y agoAssuming you mean VB6, apparently yes but with some glitches: http://s14.postimg.org/7xggyma75/VB6_React_OS.png (not my image and it is 3 years old so it might work better now)
- Koshkin 9y agoNote that VB6 was released in 1998 and thus was expected to work on Windows 95/98 and NT4 (and Windows 2000 when it came out). It is kind of sad to see that ReactOS is not there yet...
- badsectoracula 9y agoMy guess is that most of API is generally there, but the issues i mentioned elsewhere in this post with the region stuff cause the glitches. This looks like a simple thing to fix (i've implemented regions at the past in an experimental winsys i was writing on Linux [0] so i have a general idea of how they work) for someone with knowledge about ReactOS' graphics stack, so i suppose there are reasons it hasn't been fixed yet (maybe it relies on driver support and they plan to change the driver model? Just an assumption). [0] https://i.imgur.com/v6NaqNW.png https://i.imgur.com/v6NaqNW.png
- unicornporn 9y ago> apparently it can even run Doom III Can run? That was unplayable choppy. Guess it could be the machine though.
- esistgut 9y agoWhy should I choose this over a Linux/Wine configuration? Maybe it is compatible with Windows drivers?
- bonzini 9y agoYes, it is compatible with some older Windows drivers.
- listic 9y agoWhich Windows version are they emulating now?
- jeditobe 9y agoWindows 2003 sp2
- gpvos 9y agoIt's not possible to say that precisely; the closest thing I could find is this: https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Missing_ReactOS_Functionality https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Missing_ReactOS_Functionality .
- gpvos 9y agoOn the outdated page https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Version_Status https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Version_Status you can see that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) is a bit of a target.
- wyldfire 9y agoIs there any popular CI-testing service providing ReactOS as a build/test/deploy target? It would be interesting if someone like Travis or Appveyor could offer that.
- flashdance 9y agoIf I was trying to run a legacy Windows application, would I have more luck with ReactOS or linux/WINE? I know both projects share a lot of code, so if one is better, why is that the case?
- coolspot 9y agoOne major difference is that ReactOS uses windows drivers for your hardware.
- flashdance 9y agoCool!
- DonnyV 9y agoIt supports .NET 2.0!! https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-0.4.2-Released https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-...
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThis might be a good candidate for running my automation software in the future. I actually run it headless, but on Windows with a GUI for compatibility reasons with the way I wrote it (Visual Basic, WinForms, etc.). I was a little sad buying a Windows license for a single-app headless PC, and had to do a lot to mitigate unwanted Windows 10 behavior.
- ducttape12 9y agoUsing a third party implementation of the Win32 API reminds me of vegan cheese. It's great in theory, but it's never quite good enough. You'll either end up giving up and eating real cheese (using Microsoft Windows) or use some other ingredient (a different software product that runs natively on your OS of choice).
- veganjay 9y agoSlightly off topic but you mentioned it. There have been some great developments in vegan cheese, most notably Daiya. The first time I tried it at a restaurant I sent it back thinking they made a mistake by giving me dairy cheese.
- Koshkin 9y agoGoing back to the topic, I hope that ReactOS/Wine will sometime become a better Windows than Windows itself. (This, at least, is what was said about OS/2). In some ways it already is, I am sure.
- veganjay 9y agoI agree. Although "better" depends on opinion and usage. For some of my needs, such as developing for HoloLens, ReactOS has a long way to go. But for other things, such as solving Windows crackmes, ReactOS might be a good candidate.
- kbenson 9y agoThink about it more like a substitute ingredient which provides a vital service in a recipe, such binding (like egg). You need something for that purpose to complete the recipe, so it's eggs or some replacement. There's lots of legacy software targeting win32 out there.
- horusthecat 9y agoThank god, I was wondering what I'd replace Solaris with
- listic 9y agoI guess I should have bought a GeForce 9 series videocard instead of GeForce 10, as it's the last one having drivers for Windows XP. Might have worked with ReactOS.
- computerwizard 9y agoWill it ever be able to run Adobe Creative Cloud programs?
- coolspot 9y agoDon't see why not.
- jancsika 9y agoDoes it run msys2?