14 ms·

ReactOS 0.4.14

198 points by jeditobe 5y ago

Koshkin 5y ago
From the About page: > ReactOS looks-like Windows But even Windows does not look like Windows anymore.
- Piskvorrr 5y ago
  Windows BFP (before Fisher-Price) ;)
- layer8 5y ago
  I’m disappointed that ReactOS seems to have adopted the flat UI design now.
  - feldrim 5y ago
    Flat? Where? I think it's just like Server 2003 or XP Classic theme. Is there a flat UI theme?
    - layer8 5y ago
      Look at the gallery, most screenshots use a flat theme: https://reactos.org/gallery/ https://reactos.org/gallery/
      - feldrim 5y ago
        Oh, you mean these themes, Mizu and Lunar: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/react-0-4-12-released-download https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/react-0-4-12-released-do... They look like flat UI but not exactly a Windows 8 or 10 way. Well, at least they are optional.
        jeditobe 5y ago
        It is just a theme, it is switchable ^)
Snetry 5y ago
Its great to see ReactOS still going. I wonder how much of the newer Wine gaming stuff could be used for ReactOS
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  I guess native GPU drivers are the biggest thing that's missing to enable gaming.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    Well, one of the main goals of ReactOS is in fact to be able to use native Windows drivers.
    - fps_doug 5y ago
      That's what seems to get a bit weird as time passes. IIRC, they aim at being NT5.2 aka Windows 2003 compatible, but if they don't support newer driver models, that would rule out using any recent GPU, as nVidia doesn't exactly ship XP drivers for the RTX 3080. Curious what their current plans are for this issue.
      - feldrim 5y ago
        Windows still has the same NT core, as you most probably know already. Yet, to be able compatible with NT 10, the ReactOS devs need to use the NT 5.2 > 6.0 > 6.1 > 6.2 > 6.3 > 10 path. Without 5.2, it's not possible and feasible to target further.
        The_rationalist 5y ago
        zamadatix 5y ago
        Implementing the XDDM driver model in 5.2 gets you nowhere towards supporting drivers in NT 10 as XDDM was completely removed in NT 8.2. This is true of a lot of things in the kernel, future versions are far from a superset of the previous ones like the userspace side of Windows often is. Particularly after nearly 2 decades.
ianai 5y ago
I wonder if this is anybody's ace in the hole yet? I've done plenty of legacy systems support to know there's value in being able to say "this is a currently supported and active project that supports some tech otherwise unavailable on a commercially supported OS." i.e. the people still supporting Windows XP for things.
mdp2021 5y ago
How does ReactOS attempt avoiding being affectable by malware? Does it "fully" inherit the "attack surface" of the system it tries to be compatible to? Or are there improvements? Is one supposed to run anti-malware software over it (or keep it networkless)?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Is one supposed to run anti-malware software over it (or keep it networkless)? As the biggest vector for malware is not an insecure operating system but user negligency (e.g. by opening malicious attachments in e-mails), it is advisable to have anti-malware software on every machine, regardless of the operating system.
  - maskedinvader 5y ago
    This seems no longer true with apples imessage 0 click example [0] for instance. Perhaps you can say using iPhone and iOS which has such a crazy bug is user negligency . - [0] - https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/19/zero-click-imessage-exploit/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/19/zero-click-imessage-exploit/
    - alophawen 5y ago
      This is nothing new, back in Windows 95 days you could run arbitrary code on a machine just by sending network data. It is also the kind of bugs that tend to get fixed fast once they are discovered. The biggest attack vector has for many years been user negligence like randomly opening email attachments, following strange links or just click yes on any pop up.
      - marcodiego 5y ago
        > following strange links or just click yes on any pop up If a system security can be compromised just by clicking strange links and clicking "yes" to pop-ups, then the system is to blame, not the user.
  - 5y ago
ankalagon 5y ago
Is there any known/public system that use ReactOS? Is there a goal for this OS? a use-case? Any dev-story I can read? I'm not criticizing their work or passion, au contraire, it's a spectacular effort the developers are doing, developing an OS with the same API than Windows 2000 from scratch. For me they are giants.
- ogogmad 5y ago
  Not a SWE, but I imagine ReactOS constitutes executable (and therefore rigorous) documentation for how Windows and its API works. This could be helpful if you are programming directly against the Windows API and the official docs are not complete. A long time ago, the ReactOS devs gave an example of someone consulting the ReactOS code to understand how some component of the Windows API worked.
  - donkarma 5y ago
    I know some communities use the kernel code as reference a lot
  - spicybright 5y ago
    It's pretty interesting how it does this too. Legally they can't copy source code from windows, so they have to do something called block box reverse engineering. That just means they can't look at the code, but they can try to copy exactly how the code works. This is for legal/copyright reasons. It's really impressive so far. Windows is a complicated beast that has been built up since the early 90's without much old functionality being thrown out.
- Klaster_1 5y ago
  There are numerous reports (all in russian) of ReactOS used for cash registers in an Ukrainian convenience store chain: https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/513804/#comment_21924270 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/513804/#comment_219... https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/303618/comments/#comment_9665440 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/303618/comments/#co... https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/164225/comments/#comment_5651135 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/164225/comments/#co... https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314 https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314 https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B5%D1%82_(%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%B0_%D1%81%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B2) https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B5...
LeSaucy 5y ago
I love watching Druaga1 install these on ancient hardware.
krylon 5y ago
In a former job, I was a sysadmin at a company that does process engineering for industrial plants, and sometimes the automation/SCADA people would turn to me for help. It was very exciting to me, because a) I got to leave the back office for a short while and actually engage with a customer and b) I got to see firsthand and learn (a little, at least) about industrial plants, which was fascinating. I find history fascinating, and I have soft spot for retro/vintage technology, so I got to see and touch some interesting stuff. One customer was doing an upgrade in 2015(!!!) from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP (!!!). They could not go further, because they were dependent on some piece of hardware whose vendor had gone out of business, leaving behind device drivers that would not work on any Windows after XP. For this kind of customer, I think, the prospect of an operating system where those device drivers would continue to work while also supporting more recent hardware would be very attractive. Industrial installations apparently have lifetimes that are far longer than what even "enterprise" operating systems offer, and replacing that Windows NT 4.0 box with a Windows 7 box (let's not even think of anything more recent) is a huge challenge just from the technical perspective. But it gets a lot more hairy when things like certification and compliance to legal requirements come into play, where you cannot just upgrade a box from Windows XP to Windows 10, because then you lose your certification, and re-certifying the installation is a costly and (I assume) tedious procedure. TL;DR: I believe there could be pretty lucrative market for ReactOS in industrial applications. It would require a fair amount of up-front capital to get going, but if you can provide support for large-scale industrial customer to keep their systems running for twenty or forty years, there has got to be a lot of money in it.
- oneplane 5y ago
  At some point I'd imagine that requiring the source code for such critical components for a long-lived machine is going to be the only sustainable way forward. At this point you'd end up reverse engineering device drivers or using 'unsupported' configurations to keep going. Of course the fact that a company that no longer exists can't support such a configuration doesn't matter because they aren't there anymore to care about any of it.
  - kk6mrp 5y ago
knowsuchagency 5y ago
How is this different from ReactJS? </s>
- Koshkin 5y ago
  One cannot be too careful there. Lindows was sued into oblivion, and so would “Freendows” or “FreeNT” or anything in that vein…

ReactOS 0.4.14

198 points by jeditobe 5y ago

Koshkin 5y ago

From the About page: > ReactOS looks-like Windows But even Windows does not look like Windows anymore.

Piskvorrr 5y ago
Windows BFP (before Fisher-Price) ;)
layer8 5y ago
I’m disappointed that ReactOS seems to have adopted the flat UI design now.
- feldrim 5y ago
  Flat? Where? I think it's just like Server 2003 or XP Classic theme. Is there a flat UI theme?
  - layer8 5y ago
    Look at the gallery, most screenshots use a flat theme: https://reactos.org/gallery/ https://reactos.org/gallery/
    - feldrim 5y ago
      Oh, you mean these themes, Mizu and Lunar: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/react-0-4-12-released-download https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/react-0-4-12-released-do... They look like flat UI but not exactly a Windows 8 or 10 way. Well, at least they are optional.
      - jeditobe 5y ago
        It is just a theme, it is switchable ^)

Snetry 5y ago

Its great to see ReactOS still going. I wonder how much of the newer Wine gaming stuff could be used for ReactOS

tmikaeld 5y ago
I guess native GPU drivers are the biggest thing that's missing to enable gaming.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  Well, one of the main goals of ReactOS is in fact to be able to use native Windows drivers.
  - fps_doug 5y ago
    That's what seems to get a bit weird as time passes. IIRC, they aim at being NT5.2 aka Windows 2003 compatible, but if they don't support newer driver models, that would rule out using any recent GPU, as nVidia doesn't exactly ship XP drivers for the RTX 3080. Curious what their current plans are for this issue.
    - feldrim 5y ago
      Windows still has the same NT core, as you most probably know already. Yet, to be able compatible with NT 10, the ReactOS devs need to use the NT 5.2 > 6.0 > 6.1 > 6.2 > 6.3 > 10 path. Without 5.2, it's not possible and feasible to target further.
      - The_rationalist 5y ago
      - zamadatix 5y ago
        Implementing the XDDM driver model in 5.2 gets you nowhere towards supporting drivers in NT 10 as XDDM was completely removed in NT 8.2. This is true of a lot of things in the kernel, future versions are far from a superset of the previous ones like the userspace side of Windows often is. Particularly after nearly 2 decades.

ianai 5y ago

I wonder if this is anybody's ace in the hole yet? I've done plenty of legacy systems support to know there's value in being able to say "this is a currently supported and active project that supports some tech otherwise unavailable on a commercially supported OS." i.e. the people still supporting Windows XP for things.

mdp2021 5y ago

How does ReactOS attempt avoiding being affectable by malware? Does it "fully" inherit the "attack surface" of the system it tries to be compatible to? Or are there improvements? Is one supposed to run anti-malware software over it (or keep it networkless)?

mschuster91 5y ago
> Is one supposed to run anti-malware software over it (or keep it networkless)? As the biggest vector for malware is not an insecure operating system but user negligency (e.g. by opening malicious attachments in e-mails), it is advisable to have anti-malware software on every machine, regardless of the operating system.
- maskedinvader 5y ago
  This seems no longer true with apples imessage 0 click example [0] for instance. Perhaps you can say using iPhone and iOS which has such a crazy bug is user negligency . - [0] - https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/19/zero-click-imessage-exploit/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/19/zero-click-imessage-exploit/
  - alophawen 5y ago
    This is nothing new, back in Windows 95 days you could run arbitrary code on a machine just by sending network data. It is also the kind of bugs that tend to get fixed fast once they are discovered. The biggest attack vector has for many years been user negligence like randomly opening email attachments, following strange links or just click yes on any pop up.
    - marcodiego 5y ago
      > following strange links or just click yes on any pop up If a system security can be compromised just by clicking strange links and clicking "yes" to pop-ups, then the system is to blame, not the user.
- 5y ago

ankalagon 5y ago

Is there any known/public system that use ReactOS? Is there a goal for this OS? a use-case? Any dev-story I can read? I'm not criticizing their work or passion, au contraire, it's a spectacular effort the developers are doing, developing an OS with the same API than Windows 2000 from scratch. For me they are giants.

ogogmad 5y ago
Not a SWE, but I imagine ReactOS constitutes executable (and therefore rigorous) documentation for how Windows and its API works. This could be helpful if you are programming directly against the Windows API and the official docs are not complete. A long time ago, the ReactOS devs gave an example of someone consulting the ReactOS code to understand how some component of the Windows API worked.
- donkarma 5y ago
  I know some communities use the kernel code as reference a lot
- spicybright 5y ago
  It's pretty interesting how it does this too. Legally they can't copy source code from windows, so they have to do something called block box reverse engineering. That just means they can't look at the code, but they can try to copy exactly how the code works. This is for legal/copyright reasons. It's really impressive so far. Windows is a complicated beast that has been built up since the early 90's without much old functionality being thrown out.
Klaster_1 5y ago
There are numerous reports (all in russian) of ReactOS used for cash registers in an Ukrainian convenience store chain: https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/513804/#comment_21924270 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/513804/#comment_219... https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/303618/comments/#comment_9665440 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/303618/comments/#co... https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/164225/comments/#comment_5651135 https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/164225/comments/#co... https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314 https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314 https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B5%D1%82_(%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%B0_%D1%81%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B2) https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B5...

LeSaucy 5y ago

I love watching Druaga1 install these on ancient hardware.

krylon 5y ago

In a former job, I was a sysadmin at a company that does process engineering for industrial plants, and sometimes the automation/SCADA people would turn to me for help. It was very exciting to me, because a) I got to leave the back office for a short while and actually engage with a customer and b) I got to see firsthand and learn (a little, at least) about industrial plants, which was fascinating. I find history fascinating, and I have soft spot for retro/vintage technology, so I got to see and touch some interesting stuff. One customer was doing an upgrade in 2015(!!!) from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP (!!!). They could not go further, because they were dependent on some piece of hardware whose vendor had gone out of business, leaving behind device drivers that would not work on any Windows after XP. For this kind of customer, I think, the prospect of an operating system where those device drivers would continue to work while also supporting more recent hardware would be very attractive. Industrial installations apparently have lifetimes that are far longer than what even "enterprise" operating systems offer, and replacing that Windows NT 4.0 box with a Windows 7 box (let's not even think of anything more recent) is a huge challenge just from the technical perspective. But it gets a lot more hairy when things like certification and compliance to legal requirements come into play, where you cannot just upgrade a box from Windows XP to Windows 10, because then you lose your certification, and re-certifying the installation is a costly and (I assume) tedious procedure. TL;DR: I believe there could be pretty lucrative market for ReactOS in industrial applications. It would require a fair amount of up-front capital to get going, but if you can provide support for large-scale industrial customer to keep their systems running for twenty or forty years, there has got to be a lot of money in it.

oneplane 5y ago
At some point I'd imagine that requiring the source code for such critical components for a long-lived machine is going to be the only sustainable way forward. At this point you'd end up reverse engineering device drivers or using 'unsupported' configurations to keep going. Of course the fact that a company that no longer exists can't support such a configuration doesn't matter because they aren't there anymore to care about any of it.
- kk6mrp 5y ago

knowsuchagency 5y ago

How is this different from ReactJS? </s>

Koshkin 5y ago
One cannot be too careful there. Lindows was sued into oblivion, and so would “Freendows” or “FreeNT” or anything in that vein…