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I'd like to bring up a point about ReactOS that I never see. Why does this exist? Obviously the teams behind this are incredibly talented, but will it ever be w
by MH15 8y ago
I'd like to bring up a point about ReactOS that I never see. Why does this exist? Obviously the teams behind this are incredibly talented, but will it ever be worth it to use a blatant copy of Windows that just doesn't work as well? These developers could have spent the last 20 years working on something that actually moves the free software movement forward, instead of wasting time on a pipe dream with no practical motives.
While I understand that some would like to run Windows software without being attached to Microsoft, Linux exists. Linux is free and superior to Windows in many ways. For the few legacy programs that need to be run on Windows- JUST RUN IT ON WINDOWS. Then use the 20 years you just got backto develop something that protects user's data or helps developing countries or actually pushes the boundaries of the field instead of redoing an archaic platform on which no growth can occur.
Again, I'm not dissing the effort that any of these devs put into the project- it's extremely impressive. There simply exists no reason for this project to have procured the funding and man-hours that is has.
- throwaway2048 8y agoPeople are allowed to work on what they want, nobody cares that you think it is useless.
- shawnz 8y agoIt is highly useful to be able to see the source code of the platform you are developing against, for research/reference purposes. Obviously that's not possible for Windows developers, but ReactOS at least provides an example of how a compatible implementation might do things.
- viraptor 8y ago> For the few legacy programs that need to be run on Windows- JUST RUN IT ON WINDOWS. This works as long as you can get the version your application is compatible with and have hardware that version of windows can run on. At some point one of these will not be possible anymore and your choice will be either Wine or ReactOS.
- navjack27 8y agoOld windows isos & virtual machine
- throwaway2048 8y agowindows 3.11 dosent run well on any VM.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoReally? I never had trouble with dosbox.
- throwaway2048 8y agodosbox has lots of problems with windows 3.11 support, especially anything involving calls to realmode dos, or networking related.
- zingmars 8y agoThe performance of that wouldn't be too good. Also wouldn't work if older hardware includes an older PC. Also what's the state of being able to directly pass through devices to VMs on Windows? I know you can do this with USB devices, but PCI etc? Even on Linux it might be a bit tricky.
- simion314 8y agoWhat do you think about DOSBox and FreeDOS ? people are using those projects, same as Wine. I think ReactOS will be used on old computers and laptops to run old programs and games and probably to use some old peripherals where you need the driver compatibility.
- cecja 8y agoSo all hospitals should just run old winxp on their crt/mrt and other vital hardware? ReactOS has a use case and it's saving all of us money. In healthcare and in production for cnc machines and the like.
- bitcraft 8y agoThe same argument could have been made to Linus while he “wasting time” making a clone of an existing operating system.