6 ms·

I definitely admire their moxie, but I have to say that it surprises me that the developers keep on working on this project year-after-year. There was a time m

I definitely admire their moxie, but I have to say that it surprises me that the developers keep on working on this project year-after-year. There was a time many years ago when I was hopeful that ReactOS would end up providing us with an open version of windows to help break their stranglehold. But considering the ways the industry has changed since the project launched in 1998, I just don't think there is much demand for an operating system like this anymore. I would have lost motivation for this project a decade ago, but I still wish the devs the best of luck.

sounds 13y ago
The #1 story right now is "The Temple Operating System" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017 At least ReactOS isn't likely to incite a religious flamewar: LosethOS, the creator of TempleOS, pushes his religion on you. Ignore him: don't feed the trolls. I _like_ it that operating system news is posted on HN. Operating systems take _forever_ to get anywhere, unless you're a multi-billion-dollar company with armies of grunts working on it. Their goals actually are not that outdated: a non-trivial number of Fortune 500 companies continue to need Windows XP, but Microsoft is giving them the finger. Whether ReactOS can step up and fill in that need or not, wouldn't an entrepreneur want to know that this is possible?
- AdrianRossouw 13y ago
  The fortune 500 companies also need the large multinational corporation that supports the well tested and widely deployed legacy systems with bugs and more especially security fixes. Deploying a completely new codebase and opening yourself up to a frightening array of bugs is not really an acceptable risk, sadly. I do enjoy the OS postings too. I hope to see more interesting info on the BeOS ports like Haiku on here too. I also loved that I could finally mess around with RiscOS and Plan9 on a raspberry pi.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  FWIW, LosethOS pushes his religion on you as much as the crazy guy on the corner with a "the end is near" sign does. Half of his content seems to be generated by a Markov chain. I also suspect plenty of people here may be intrigued with the "brilliant but insane" aspect he seems to show.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Either that or he's just a troll.
    - ramchip 13y ago
      He's not just trolling, that's for sure. Often he posts a mix of real content, with nonsensical God quotes in the middle of it. And he doesn't even bother about the hellban, he just keeps posting in the same accounts and has been for years.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        Isn't that what a real troll would do? I mean , how do we know that the guy posting the weird comments is the same person who wrote the OS?
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Did you look at his site? There is stuff on there just as crazy as the stuff he posts here. The simpler explanation is that he is genuinely not well, not that somebody is pretending to be him and faking it.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        Maybe, or maybe he's just a guy with a strange sense of humour. One can never tell on the internet.
        barbs 13y ago
        He himself has admitted he's schizophrenic. You'll also notice that he continues to post on Hacker News, despite being hellbanned, and seemingly knowing that he's hellbanned. if you read said comments, it's difficult to believe they stem from a strange sense of humour.
    - TallGuyShort 13y ago
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  Losethos has a mental illness. There was a great write up about the situation by someone who knew him, here: http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html But it's down now. I can't find a cache of it because I'm on mobile.
  - Mithrandir 13y ago
    http://web.archive.org/web/20130116195743/http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130116195743/http://qaa.ath.cx/...
  - wbhart 13y ago
    Slightly off topic for this post, but since it is mentioned here: there is one part of that link which may appear slightly misleading without context. A twitter feed is mentioned, which ended up consisting of posts such as "and then God said", followed by some gibberish. This is actually a reference to a feature in one of his programs (a game I think) which allows one to "talk to God". When you press the button, it simply randomly spits out words. On Reddit, the author asks people repeatedly to tell him what God said to them. He's referring to this feature in his OS and obviously finds entertainment in hearing what words his program came up with for other people. This is reminiscent of fortune cookies. Strange behaviour perhaps, but not so nonsensical when placed in its context. As other people have pointed out, illness or not, this guy has managed to succeed at something highly nontrivial which most people will never do, at the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, namely "Pursue inner talent; creativity; fulfillment". And whether or not some of his writings may be unintelligible, his code certainly passes a strict syntactic check. I mention this here because I have met individuals with the same illness who have not managed to achieve even the bottom level of Maslow's pyramid. So it really is a credit to him that he has achieved so highly despite his illness.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- rsync 13y ago
  FWIW, LosethOS/TempleOS/whatever, which I had never heard of until this afternoon, has made me smile all day. It makes me exceedingly happy to know that things like this exist in the world.
zokier 13y ago
I think ReactOS' niche is situations where replacing some legacy system would be massively expensive but for some reason you can't (or do not want to) run legacy version of Windows. It might be a small niche, but even small niches should be catered.
- wtetzner 13y ago
  Maybe, but I would think WINE would cover most of that niche.
joe_the_user 13y ago
Well, Microsoft might have done ReactOS favor given the poor reception that Windows 8 has gotten. An open source OS that was a Windows 7 work-alike might see a broad market from OEMs.
- pionar 13y ago
  Yeah, but... This isn't a Windows-7 workalike. It's an XP "lookalike", and a poor one at that. Not dogging the project, it's just way behind any other OS.
  - userulluipeste 13y ago
    First, ReactOS actually targets (at least for now) Windows 2003, not Windows XP. Second, you may provide a clue on the metric by which an OS is measured when you say "it's just way behind any other OS".
Legion 13y ago
I don't think you're looking at the project the right way. Think about it like FreeDOS. FreeDOS facilitates running DOS software on modern hardware, and by its open nature, it can continue to evolve and make DOS software runnable on the next generation of hardware. Think about 10, 15, 20 years from now, and all that software written for XP. That is where ReactOS comes in. A sustainable, maintainable platform for running XP-era software on hardware systems yet to come. At least, that's how I see the project, as someone who is neither involved nor a close follower of it.
- nnq 13y ago
  If you'll need XP-era software in the future, you'll just run it inside a Win XP VM. Same for DOS software. Same for any software who will outlive its initial host (open-source or not) and will not be very simple to tweak and recompile (even if you could tweak and recompile it, you might choose to just run a damn VM anyway out of pure laziness or for cost/time savings...)
  - Drakim 13y ago
    I think a Win XP VM could solve most people's needs, but personally I think it's fantastic that we will have several different solutions such as ReactOS, Wine, and VMs. Eventually you will run into something that won't work on your preferred solution. It's also nice that they work on different levels. Wine let you run an legacy app on your regular OS, while a VM would give you the entire operating system to fiddle with.
  - straight_talk_2 13y ago
    Most people won't be able to legally run XP VMs once the XP activation servers go down.
  - EvanAnderson 13y ago
    That's where something like ReactOS fits in. Right now you can legally use a DOS VM running, say, FreeDOS (or an emulator, like DOSBox). There's no freely-available Windows XP equivalent. Sure, sure-- you can run Windows XP illegally w/ a volume license product key (to skirt product activation w/o modifying the product) but that's not a solution that "works" in many cases. It's technically very easy to run a Windows XP VM-- it's very challenging, legally.
kunai 13y ago
I'm quite amazed at the negativity and derision on this thread. We are hackers. We do things not because they're good for business, and not because we want to be pragmatists with every decision. We don't create startups because we're Harvard MBAs (apologies to Harvard business majors), we create startups because we change the world (or try our best to, anyhow). It's disheartening and a little saddening that after the amount of delight I had that one of my favorite open-source projects reached #1 on the homepage, discussion about how people have lost motivation for a system fully compatible with Win32 APIs ensues. Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's laggy. Yes, it crashed on me when I tried to install any applications depending on libgtk2.0. Yes, now my VirtualBox image is corrupted and won't boot anymore. But as I started testing it seriously for the first time ever 6 hours ago, it was undoubtedly a magical experience. I was able to install Audacity, FreeBasic IDE, Notepad++, the Windows version of Firefox, 7-zip, and Bloodshed's Dev-C++. I tried to install X-Chat 2, but it would not run, and segfaulted every time I tried to. Pidgin crashed the entire system and rendered it unusable. That unsupported GTK apps brought down the system is irrelevant, however. Installing this many Win32 applications without any hitches on an OS kernel and graphic environment developed from scratch is an incredible feat for an open-source project with very limited time and funding. Those of you that say that this is no way forward and that more resources should be given to Wine are completely misunderstanding the purpose of this project. The purpose is to develop a completely integrated Win32 compatible system with a similar look and feel so that it can function as a drop-in replacement for Windows NT. This is far easier to get going and give to a prior Windows userbase than installing Linux, and then Wine, and trying to run NT executables with Wine is. It also benefits greatly from being a fully integrated system, which Wine is not -- applications share none of the integrated L&F and the syscalls are translated JIT, so you still feel like you're running an application on a system it wasn't designed to run on. Some may say running a hypervisor like VirtualBox or VMWare in a seamless environment is the solution, but even that is not. First of all, you have slightly more performance overhead compared to Wine, and you still have to pay for Windows, thus rendering the entire point of a project such as Wine or ReactOS obsolete. So yes, it's a laggy and crashy piece of work in progress, but it's come a hell of a long way since 2006 when ars reviewed it. Words cannot express how much of an impact this OS would have had if the amount of time and resources dedicated to Linux, which is yet another UNIX clone in an age where 4-year CS majors do UNIX clones as assignments[1], were dedicated to ReactOS. Where might Microsoft be now if that had happened? In essence: this is not a project to be ignored, spat on, or buried far too soon. This is a growing project with growing potential, so let's be hackers for just a moment now and help build the open future. Building an open Web, open operating systems, open energy, and when possible, an open government -- is in reach. Let's build the future and help this little project out. ---- [1] I still love Linux, don't worry. :)
T3RMINATED 13y ago
you nailed it!

sounds 13y ago

The #1 story right now is "The Temple Operating System" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017 At least ReactOS isn't likely to incite a religious flamewar: LosethOS, the creator of TempleOS, pushes his religion on you. Ignore him: don't feed the trolls. I _like_ it that operating system news is posted on HN. Operating systems take _forever_ to get anywhere, unless you're a multi-billion-dollar company with armies of grunts working on it. Their goals actually are not that outdated: a non-trivial number of Fortune 500 companies continue to need Windows XP, but Microsoft is giving them the finger. Whether ReactOS can step up and fill in that need or not, wouldn't an entrepreneur want to know that this is possible?

AdrianRossouw 13y ago
The fortune 500 companies also need the large multinational corporation that supports the well tested and widely deployed legacy systems with bugs and more especially security fixes. Deploying a completely new codebase and opening yourself up to a frightening array of bugs is not really an acceptable risk, sadly. I do enjoy the OS postings too. I hope to see more interesting info on the BeOS ports like Haiku on here too. I also loved that I could finally mess around with RiscOS and Plan9 on a raspberry pi.
MichaelGG 13y ago
FWIW, LosethOS pushes his religion on you as much as the crazy guy on the corner with a "the end is near" sign does. Half of his content seems to be generated by a Markov chain. I also suspect plenty of people here may be intrigued with the "brilliant but insane" aspect he seems to show.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Either that or he's just a troll.
  - ramchip 13y ago
    He's not just trolling, that's for sure. Often he posts a mix of real content, with nonsensical God quotes in the middle of it. And he doesn't even bother about the hellban, he just keeps posting in the same accounts and has been for years.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      Isn't that what a real troll would do? I mean , how do we know that the guy posting the weird comments is the same person who wrote the OS?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Did you look at his site? There is stuff on there just as crazy as the stuff he posts here. The simpler explanation is that he is genuinely not well, not that somebody is pretending to be him and faking it.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        Maybe, or maybe he's just a guy with a strange sense of humour. One can never tell on the internet.
        barbs 13y ago
        He himself has admitted he's schizophrenic. You'll also notice that he continues to post on Hacker News, despite being hellbanned, and seemingly knowing that he's hellbanned. if you read said comments, it's difficult to believe they stem from a strange sense of humour.
  - TallGuyShort 13y ago
jessedhillon 13y ago
Losethos has a mental illness. There was a great write up about the situation by someone who knew him, here: http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html But it's down now. I can't find a cache of it because I'm on mobile.
- Mithrandir 13y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20130116195743/http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130116195743/http://qaa.ath.cx/...
- wbhart 13y ago
  Slightly off topic for this post, but since it is mentioned here: there is one part of that link which may appear slightly misleading without context. A twitter feed is mentioned, which ended up consisting of posts such as "and then God said", followed by some gibberish. This is actually a reference to a feature in one of his programs (a game I think) which allows one to "talk to God". When you press the button, it simply randomly spits out words. On Reddit, the author asks people repeatedly to tell him what God said to them. He's referring to this feature in his OS and obviously finds entertainment in hearing what words his program came up with for other people. This is reminiscent of fortune cookies. Strange behaviour perhaps, but not so nonsensical when placed in its context. As other people have pointed out, illness or not, this guy has managed to succeed at something highly nontrivial which most people will never do, at the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, namely "Pursue inner talent; creativity; fulfillment". And whether or not some of his writings may be unintelligible, his code certainly passes a strict syntactic check. I mention this here because I have met individuals with the same illness who have not managed to achieve even the bottom level of Maslow's pyramid. So it really is a credit to him that he has achieved so highly despite his illness.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rsync 13y ago
FWIW, LosethOS/TempleOS/whatever, which I had never heard of until this afternoon, has made me smile all day. It makes me exceedingly happy to know that things like this exist in the world.

zokier 13y ago

I think ReactOS' niche is situations where replacing some legacy system would be massively expensive but for some reason you can't (or do not want to) run legacy version of Windows. It might be a small niche, but even small niches should be catered.

wtetzner 13y ago
Maybe, but I would think WINE would cover most of that niche.

joe_the_user 13y ago

Well, Microsoft might have done ReactOS favor given the poor reception that Windows 8 has gotten. An open source OS that was a Windows 7 work-alike might see a broad market from OEMs.

pionar 13y ago
Yeah, but... This isn't a Windows-7 workalike. It's an XP "lookalike", and a poor one at that. Not dogging the project, it's just way behind any other OS.
- userulluipeste 13y ago
  First, ReactOS actually targets (at least for now) Windows 2003, not Windows XP. Second, you may provide a clue on the metric by which an OS is measured when you say "it's just way behind any other OS".

Legion 13y ago

I don't think you're looking at the project the right way. Think about it like FreeDOS. FreeDOS facilitates running DOS software on modern hardware, and by its open nature, it can continue to evolve and make DOS software runnable on the next generation of hardware. Think about 10, 15, 20 years from now, and all that software written for XP. That is where ReactOS comes in. A sustainable, maintainable platform for running XP-era software on hardware systems yet to come. At least, that's how I see the project, as someone who is neither involved nor a close follower of it.

nnq 13y ago
If you'll need XP-era software in the future, you'll just run it inside a Win XP VM. Same for DOS software. Same for any software who will outlive its initial host (open-source or not) and will not be very simple to tweak and recompile (even if you could tweak and recompile it, you might choose to just run a damn VM anyway out of pure laziness or for cost/time savings...)
- Drakim 13y ago
  I think a Win XP VM could solve most people's needs, but personally I think it's fantastic that we will have several different solutions such as ReactOS, Wine, and VMs. Eventually you will run into something that won't work on your preferred solution. It's also nice that they work on different levels. Wine let you run an legacy app on your regular OS, while a VM would give you the entire operating system to fiddle with.
- straight_talk_2 13y ago
  Most people won't be able to legally run XP VMs once the XP activation servers go down.
- EvanAnderson 13y ago
  That's where something like ReactOS fits in. Right now you can legally use a DOS VM running, say, FreeDOS (or an emulator, like DOSBox). There's no freely-available Windows XP equivalent. Sure, sure-- you can run Windows XP illegally w/ a volume license product key (to skirt product activation w/o modifying the product) but that's not a solution that "works" in many cases. It's technically very easy to run a Windows XP VM-- it's very challenging, legally.

kunai 13y ago

I'm quite amazed at the negativity and derision on this thread. We are hackers. We do things not because they're good for business, and not because we want to be pragmatists with every decision. We don't create startups because we're Harvard MBAs (apologies to Harvard business majors), we create startups because we change the world (or try our best to, anyhow). It's disheartening and a little saddening that after the amount of delight I had that one of my favorite open-source projects reached #1 on the homepage, discussion about how people have lost motivation for a system fully compatible with Win32 APIs ensues. Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's laggy. Yes, it crashed on me when I tried to install any applications depending on libgtk2.0. Yes, now my VirtualBox image is corrupted and won't boot anymore. But as I started testing it seriously for the first time ever 6 hours ago, it was undoubtedly a magical experience. I was able to install Audacity, FreeBasic IDE, Notepad++, the Windows version of Firefox, 7-zip, and Bloodshed's Dev-C++. I tried to install X-Chat 2, but it would not run, and segfaulted every time I tried to. Pidgin crashed the entire system and rendered it unusable. That unsupported GTK apps brought down the system is irrelevant, however. Installing this many Win32 applications without any hitches on an OS kernel and graphic environment developed from scratch is an incredible feat for an open-source project with very limited time and funding. Those of you that say that this is no way forward and that more resources should be given to Wine are completely misunderstanding the purpose of this project. The purpose is to develop a completely integrated Win32 compatible system with a similar look and feel so that it can function as a drop-in replacement for Windows NT. This is far easier to get going and give to a prior Windows userbase than installing Linux, and then Wine, and trying to run NT executables with Wine is. It also benefits greatly from being a fully integrated system, which Wine is not -- applications share none of the integrated L&F and the syscalls are translated JIT, so you still feel like you're running an application on a system it wasn't designed to run on. Some may say running a hypervisor like VirtualBox or VMWare in a seamless environment is the solution, but even that is not. First of all, you have slightly more performance overhead compared to Wine, and you still have to pay for Windows, thus rendering the entire point of a project such as Wine or ReactOS obsolete. So yes, it's a laggy and crashy piece of work in progress, but it's come a hell of a long way since 2006 when ars reviewed it. Words cannot express how much of an impact this OS would have had if the amount of time and resources dedicated to Linux, which is yet another UNIX clone in an age where 4-year CS majors do UNIX clones as assignments[1], were dedicated to ReactOS. Where might Microsoft be now if that had happened? In essence: this is not a project to be ignored, spat on, or buried far too soon. This is a growing project with growing potential, so let's be hackers for just a moment now and help build the open future. Building an open Web, open operating systems, open energy, and when possible, an open government -- is in reach. Let's build the future and help this little project out. ---- [1] I still love Linux, don't worry. :)

T3RMINATED 13y ago

you nailed it!