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ReactOS
- TehCorwiz 6y agoWas there a new release?
- offtop5 6y agoHow well does this actually work ? Wouldn't Ubuntu+ Wine be a better combo for most ?
- chungy 6y agoFor the moment, yes it will be a better combo, with much greater hardware support and compatibility with Windows applications/games. ReactOS is still in alpha, it's a very unfinished operating system. On the plus side, there's a lot of low-hanging fruits to attack if you want to work on a operating system, especially if the Windows NT design intrigues you.
- Koshkin 6y agoThe goal of ReactOS is the binary compatibility not just with application programs but also with Windows device drivers.
- offtop5 6y agoForgive my ignorance, what's the advantage here. It's perfectly fine if this is effectively ' we did it to prove we could ' thing. I've heard of React OS before and it's been in development for such a long time.
- trynewideas 6y agohttps://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ#Why_use_ReactOS.3F https://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ#Why_use_ReactOS.3F > There is currently no other operating system that implements the kernel architecture design of MS Windows NT™ so if you are unhappy with the direction or goal of Windows there is little real alternative. ReactOS was started as a “clone” of Windows NT to alleviate this situation. To demonstrate the concept of o/s cloning, GNU/Linux is the best for comparison here: Linux was started as a “clone” of Minix and Unix, eventually going on to be a Unix replacement. ... > Linux+Wine is never going to be a complete replacement for a full Windows system. It's not only because of Linux (despite some user-friendly Linux distributions out there) and not only because many users might find a transition to Linux/BSD difficult but it is largely due to design and implementation decisions of Linux and Wine architectures which prevent 100% compatibility. You aren't the audience, in other words.
- zokier 6y agoReactOS is most useful for stuff that needs kernel level compatibility or comparable things. For most userland things I'd expect Wine to be smoother overall experience for now.
- yaseer 6y agoDoes anybody use ReactOS regularly? What's your experience with it? Very curious to see how far it's come for practical usage.
- nobody9999 6y agoI set up a VM every year or so to see how things are going. It's still alpha, so it's pretty rough, and a lot of things don't work so well. That said, it's a wonderful project and I will continue to follow it and hope it continues to progress.
- pyentropy 6y agoFor readers unfamiliar with the project: it's been in alpha for 24 years, although it now targets Server 2003/XP instead of Win95 which it originally did in 1996.
- kossTKR 6y agoit's been in alpha for 24 years Reading stuff like this is good perspective on projects that make me want to pull my hair out after slow progress for a few weeks. Patience is good. Persistence is good. Something that is rare in today landscape.
- jamesu 6y agoEvery time I’ve tried it, it falls apart within minutes of using it. You’d think after 20 years of development it might be somewhat stable but I guess not.
- pizza234 6y agoIMO, the is a monumental underestimation of the man-hours put into make Windows as compatible as it is, even ignoring the fact that Microsoft's engineers are/were highly skilled. I like the ReactOS idea, but I think it will take decades to be compatible enough - and I'm even talking about enough. If the objective was to run obsolete software, I personally had to distribute resources, I'd just do assign them to Wine. It's surely much more productive to make software compatible on a per-case basis, rather than writing a whole operating system with the objective of being compatible.
- keb_ 6y agoI remain optimistic for the future of ReactOS. Kudos to the team for all their hard work so far.
- 2bitencryption 6y agoI just realized - what does the Google vs Oracle ruling mean for ReactOS, and also Wine?
- kube-system 6y agoIt doesn't mean anything yet because it hasn't been decided :) But it seems that an Oracle win would mean you couldn't implement any interfaces compatible with another piece of software without a license.
- kemonocode 6y agoIn practice I don't see too many companies going full on litigious towards small players or end users- especially not Microsoft as many of their moves as of late hinge on interoperability. But it'd be certainly a worry as it'd be very much weaponized when it comes to big companies against each other, which of course will affect the end user one way or another.
- sushicalculus 6y ago> In practice I don't see too many companies going full on litigious towards small players or end users We should introduce you to Oracle. This is exactly what they do. They audit their own customers in a very hostile way. Never underestimate a company in decline, as they grasp for ways to increase revenues and profits for shareholders (or founders)
- bdcravens 6y agoAs long as ReactOS doesn’t challenge their enterprise revenue, they should be fine.
- croes 6y agoYou just don't read about it if small players are involved. They don't have the media attention and the money, they just vanish.
- ckocagil 6y ago
- iainctduncan 6y agoIf they ever get to the point of enabling audio folks to run windows audio apps with a low-latency pre-emptible kernel, they'll get big adoption in that world. Right not it's ridiculous how crappy the options are for low latency given how fast our machines are.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoDoes anyone try to shift audio mixing to the GPU and use the audio output of HDMI? I don't know if modern GPUs can take buffers and move them to the audio buffer without going out and back in through PCIe but it seems plausible.
- smrq 6y agoEven if that was possible (no idea), I don't know that it would help. Graphics processing works on GPUs because it's a massively parallel task. With audio, increasing buffer sizes for more parallel processing will inherently increase latency. And if you're not dealing with massive buffers, then you're just shipping data over to the GPU for no good reason.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoThe point is more that data could be closer to where it is going to be used instead of needing the cpu to move it around at precise times. If audio is on the GPU before it is mixed, then only the mixing/filter values would need to be sent to the GPU. Maybe this would take some sort of programmable scheduling on the GPU though.
- iainctduncan 6y agoI'm not sure, but that's a different issue. The latency problem with everything except linux is we can't tell the OS to elevate our audio apps priority above the rest of the kernel, so operating system calls randomly happen and jump in front of the audio callback, hosing latency. I used to get 0.7ms latency on linux with the CPU at over 90%!!! I'm lucky to get 7ms on OSX with the CPU at 30-40%ms, sigh. It sucks so bad, it's like being allowed to use 1/4 of your computer power for real time audio. Even Windows 98 was better, you could tweak it pretty well. If you put your audio latency down to 2-3ms nowadays you can use very little of your CPU without under-runs. :-/
- qwerty_123 6y agoHow does this work with different versions of Windows? I know a few apps that are broken on Windows 7+ and it would be nice to have a modern OS that can run older Windows apps without having to have that actual OS in a VM.
- ForHackernews 6y agoUnless they've moved their target, ReactOS was aiming for binary compatibility with Windows XP.
- forgotpwd16 6y agohttps://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ https://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ To be exact they aim for compatibility with Server 2003.
- Jaruzel 6y agoI'm saddened a little bit to see stuff like theming has been built. I was hoping that ReactOS would stick with the Windows 2000 look and feel. I also think that with the limited resources they have, the project team would be better focusing on improving compatibility, over shiny desktop effects. That said... I firmly believe there is a place for ReactOS. Eventually, XP will fail to run on new hardware, and when that happens a lot of great software will die also. Having ReactOS around means we can continually target new hardware, but still remain XP compatible. Personally, I view software like I do books. We can read books written 100s of years ago, but we struggle to run 10 year old software. This has to change, else we'll endlessly repeat ourselves rewriting the same programs over and over again.
- unicornfinder 6y agoTo be fair I'd imagine the people writing the theming support probably aren't the same people writing the compatibility layers for the OS. Wholeheartedly agreed and it's also why I have so much respect for Microsoft and the backwards compatibility they've achieved in Windows.
- lhoff 6y agoMaybe the people who did the theming stuff aren't the ones that would working on compatibility issues. Thats usually the case in company driven projects but not necessarily in community driven open source projects. If you would be the project lead and a person comes to you and tells you that he would like to create a newer modern theme. If you tell him/her no and that he/she should work on something completely different i wouldn't be surprised if you would never see him/her again.
- DominoTree 6y agoI would be way more comfortable hacking on that than debugging some arcane undocumented Windows internals
- jupp0r 6y ago> else we'll endlessly repeat ourselves rewriting the same programs over and over again Doing this is ok. We are also rewriting the same books all over again. Knowledge is forgotten and reinvented and rediscovered. You see this in computer science and programming all the time, but also in other fields. Rather than the programs themselves, preserving the concepts and learnings is much more important. Don’t get me wrong, I think vintage computing is great, but we shouldn’t necessarily solve todays problems with it.
- ChrisArchitect 6y agothis gets posted about pretty regularly so maybe reference the discussion from 6 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839563
- barbs 6y agoI've always had some admiration for ReactOS, but I also find it a bit baffling. It's been in development for so long, and it doesn't appear to be particularly stable. Granted, it's a difficult project, but I also struggle to see a valid use case for it. Why would I want to use this when I can use WINE or a virtual machine? And if it's aiming to emulate windows xp, surely this use-case gets less and less relevant over time? Then again, the fact that it exists just makes me feel good in ways I don't completely understand.
- rnd0 6y agoIt seems like it's more for learning and hacking than it is for actually using. At least, that's the appeal to me. I'd love to see it advance far enough that one could drop in the open source code from Microsoft in it and run it. I doubt that'll happen any time in the next 20 years, however ...
- projektfu 6y agoThere was an interesting talk a while ago about using ReactOS to teach low level Windows internals to Microsoft personnel. I can’t find it right now, unfortunately.
- signaru 6y agoI've read/heard others express their concern about how the XP code leak might be a problem for ReactOS. I hope they are taking appropriate measures.
- holtkam2 6y agoThis looks cool, how can I get involved helping with this project? I'm a full stack web app developer but I've never worked on an OS before (I'm self-taught). I don't really know where to start.
- rnd0 6y agoMy suggestion would be to download the build environment[1], read how to build it[2], try it out in a virtual machine (eg virtualbox) and then work with their jira[3]. [1]https://reactos.org/wiki/Build_Environment https://reactos.org/wiki/Build_Environment [2]https://reactos.org/wiki/Building_ReactOS https://reactos.org/wiki/Building_ReactOS [3]https://reactos.org/wiki/File_Bugs https://reactos.org/wiki/File_Bugs
- flatiron 6y agobefore you get involved and put your name on it take a look at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341022 former MS kernel engineer saying that in no way is is possible its not using stolen MS code.
- jeditobe 6y agoThis was just an insult from a private person, which was not supported by the position of his employer
- sergeykish 6y agohttps://reactos.org/wiki/Audit https://reactos.org/wiki/Audit
- jeditobe 6y agoReactOS needs help with its web infrastructure. Joun the official chat and discuss the details https://chat.reactos.org https://chat.reactos.org :)
- jeditobe 6y agoIt is worth noting that they can hire developers at competitive market rates thanks to donations obtained from private individuals. Example: https://reactos.org/project-news/victor-perevertkin-hired-full-time/ https://reactos.org/project-news/victor-perevertkin-hired-fu... Donate if you have some spare dollars https://reactos.org/donate/ https://reactos.org/donate/ Apply for a job if you are a C\C++ developer https://reactos.org/contributing/#paid-jobs https://reactos.org/contributing/#paid-jobs
- bencollier49 6y agoAm I right in thinking they'll be sued into oblivion if Oracle win their case against Google?
- colinfinck 6y agoNo. The project has no legal entity in the US.
- bencollier49 6y agoWhat about people using it in the US?
- skissane 6y agoI think ReactOS is mainly being used by hobbyists, and I doubt Microsoft would want to sue hobbyists. Little commercial or financial gain, lots of bad press. The situation is a little bit comparable to Hercules, the IBM mainframe emulator (although not quite the same – Hercules is of course a hardware emulator, ReactOS is an operating system clone). You can use Hercules to run z/OS, but not legally, IBM only licenses z/OS to run on IBM's own hardware, or authorised proprietary emulators that cost $$$$. Thankfully though, IBM doesn't appear interested in suing hobbyists – IBM treats the hobbyist community as if they don't exist. But, try building a business on Hercules, as the company TurboHercules SAS did, and IBM's lawyers will start sending nasty letters to you.
- paulsmal 6y agoI know ReactOS has a different purpose and they aim to do a clone of Win32 API and kernel but if you feel nostalgic about Windows look and feel and wonder how a UNIX-kernel windows could be there's serenityos[0] [0]https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity
- nixass 6y agoHow would recent leak of Windows XP source code help these guys? Would they be able to use some of it for reverse engineering and then create their own solutions?
- feldrim 6y agoWell, leaked proprietary code is not open source. Just having a peek at the leaked code would create bias for the dev, which would eventually harm the project. Noone contributing to ReactOS should take a glance at the leaked code. So the leaks hurts both MS and ReactOS, simultaneously.
- amelius 6y agoNote: this has nothing to do with the React web framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(web_framework) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(web_framework)
- T3RMINATED 6y agoWe are making even more improvements to ReactOS, now that the Windows XP Source code has leaked!
- mastrsushi 6y agohttps://reactos.org/gallery/ https://reactos.org/gallery/ The majority of examples are either open source software or games from the 90's...lmao
- xvilka 6y agoIt would be interesting to integrate[1][2] ReactOS inside QubesOS so it can run proprietary Windows software in proper isolation. [1] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 [2] https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480 https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480