Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#131

Post by DanBC »

alok-g wrote: post #84
SwellJoe wrote: post #31

I've always been strangely fascinated by this project. I don't understand it. I appreciate the technical skill involved, and the amount of effort expended. But, I can't imagine working on it. From my perspective, Windows is an inferior system to any UNIX-based system on almost every front. It has a very strong application ecosystem, but technically it's unpleasant to work on (for me). So, given that, if there's somet…

Below are the issues I face with Linux: - Windows has better accessibility support. (Windows 10 has messed some of it up.) - When there are issues, it is easy to find help with Windows than for Linux. Unless it is about a BSOD which are rare now. - While there are many claims that Linux does not need a firewall, I do not agree. Setting up a firewall on Linux is a lot more challenging (newbie here) than on Windows. Fo…

> While there are many claims that Linux does not need a firewall, I do not agree.

Aren't the claims more like "you shouldn't run the firewall on the same machine that you want to be firewalled"?

I know that programs like Windows Firewall or Little Snitch (OSX) are good enough for most stuff, but when they're not good enough you're going to regret not having a seperate firewall.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#132

Post by wila »

Ok, played with it in a virtual machine. Good to see they are making progress.

My experience so far from today's experiment run, .. it still is quite unstable, saw several BSODs (about 7 of them varying from processor locked to the real blue screen) Most of the times I lost data during the crash. Files disappearing etc.. Good part is that it reboots really fast.

VMware Tools installed -albeit complaining- and I could use VMware shared folders which was convenient.

Of course this is a release candidate and we are not at 1.0 so stability really isn't a promise. If they manage to get it more stable then it is starting to become usable.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#133

Post by pjc50 »

pjmlp wrote: post #102
userbinator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the nixes have a far superior CLI, but Windows' GUI is (at least pre-Metro, i.e. Win32 desktop) superior to the many disjoint alternatives that the Linux/BSD/OS X/Solaris/etc. world has. Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 and all apps have basically identical look-and-feel (except for those that go out of their way to reinvent the standard GUI elements, but in my experience this is mu…

Only if you ignore Powershell. You can orchestrate scripts in FP style, similar to the REPLs in Xerox PARC workstations, access any .NET, DLL or COM API as if it was part of Powershell, manipulate data without parsing it all the time, interact with running applications via Windows APIs....

I've tried to adopt powershell, and here are the obstacles I encountered:

1) You can't write or run scripts "out of the box", you need to do a security incantation first. A oneoff hurdle, but right at the start of the learning curve.

2) Perhaps because of (1), it's not very dogfooded: on a UNIX system, there are lots of already-existing shell scripts sitting around as parts of the OS. PS is not so rich in examples.

3) If you do actually want to parse data, it's not very good at this.

4) I've not worked out how to save intermediate stages in a pipeline to persistent storage.

5) Hasn't yet developed much of a "user culture", although I think that will come eventually.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#134

Post by chris_wot »

pjmlp wrote: post #101
SwellJoe wrote: post #31

I've always been strangely fascinated by this project. I don't understand it. I appreciate the technical skill involved, and the amount of effort expended. But, I can't imagine working on it. From my perspective, Windows is an inferior system to any UNIX-based system on almost every front. It has a very strong application ecosystem, but technically it's unpleasant to work on (for me). So, given that, if there's somet…

- Written for thread based applications, not processes - Asynchronous IO architecture only matched by Solaris - Object based architecture - OO ABI (more so with WinRT), besides the C one - Allows C++ in kernel space - Components as interoperability between applications - User space driver model, specially nice for graphics drivers - Pursues the mainframe ideas of safer languages for system and application's programmi…

To see the overall architecture, the following block diagram I created for Wikipedia some time ago might be helpful:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_2000_archi...

Incidentally, it annoys the living snott out of me that I took the time to put a PNG version of this together, someone redoes the diagram as an SVG then someone loads it to commons and I don't get any credit!

Update: I speak too soon. The image viewer doesn't show it, but the main page does.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#135

Post by mkesper »

pjmlp wrote: post #102
userbinator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the nixes have a far superior CLI, but Windows' GUI is (at least pre-Metro, i.e. Win32 desktop) superior to the many disjoint alternatives that the Linux/BSD/OS X/Solaris/etc. world has. Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 and all apps have basically identical look-and-feel (except for those that go out of their way to reinvent the standard GUI elements, but in my experience this is mu…

Only if you ignore Powershell. You can orchestrate scripts in FP style, similar to the REPLs in Xerox PARC workstations, access any .NET, DLL or COM API as if it was part of Powershell, manipulate data without parsing it all the time, interact with running applications via Windows APIs....

But beware of the pitfalls: https://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/powershell/a-plethora-o...

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#136

Post by cm2187 »

userbinator wrote: post #34
SwellJoe wrote: post #31

I've always been strangely fascinated by this project. I don't understand it. I appreciate the technical skill involved, and the amount of effort expended. But, I can't imagine working on it. From my perspective, Windows is an inferior system to any UNIX-based system on almost every front. It has a very strong application ecosystem, but technically it's unpleasant to work on (for me). So, given that, if there's somet…

IMHO the nixes have a far superior CLI, but Windows' GUI is (at least pre-Metro, i.e. Win32 desktop) superior to the many disjoint alternatives that the Linux/BSD/OS X/Solaris/etc. world has. Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 and all apps have basically identical look-and-feel (except for those that go out of their way to reinvent the standard GUI elements, but in my experience this is mu…

To me the superiority of the windows GUI isn't really beauty or consistency (which with Windows 10 is basically gone, you have three styles in the same OS - Win 8, Win 7 and Win XP). And Windows has many other rough GUI edges.

To me the real superiority of the windows GUI is that almost all of the settings are accessible with a GUI. In Linux or MacOX you very quickly end up having to write some command lines or editing a text file. That's great for already experienced users or administrators running batches. But to the common user, discoverability and intuitiveness is crucial and you are not helping them with an OS they can't understand or control. One should be able to visually see the state of the system.

If CLI had auto-complete/intellisense features, the gap would be smaller.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#137

Post by pjmlp »

chris_wot wrote: post #134
pjmlp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Written for thread based applications, not processes - Asynchronous IO architecture only matched by Solaris - Object based architecture - OO ABI (more so with WinRT), besides the C one - Allows C++ in kernel space - Components as interoperability between applications - User space driver model, specially nice for graphics drivers - Pursues the mainframe ideas of safer languages for system and application's programmi…

To see the overall architecture, the following block diagram I created for Wikipedia some time ago might be helpful: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_2000_archi... Incidentally, it annoys the living snott out of me that I took the time to put a PNG version of this together, someone redoes the diagram as an SVG then someone loads it to commons and I don't get any credit! Update: I speak too soon. The…

Quite nice. Have you though about adding the new WinRT changes?

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#138

Post by pjmlp »

pjc50 wrote: post #133
pjmlp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you ignore Powershell. You can orchestrate scripts in FP style, similar to the REPLs in Xerox PARC workstations, access any .NET, DLL or COM API as if it was part of Powershell, manipulate data without parsing it all the time, interact with running applications via Windows APIs....

I've tried to adopt powershell, and here are the obstacles I encountered: 1) You can't write or run scripts "out of the box", you need to do a security incantation first. A oneoff hurdle, but right at the start of the learning curve. 2) Perhaps because of (1), it's not very dogfooded: on a UNIX system, there are lots of already-existing shell scripts sitting around as parts of the OS. PS is not so rich in examples. 3…

Regarding 1), at least it avoids the curl | sh => send $HOME to the world of current UNIX users.

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#139

Post by pjc50 »

dustinupdyke wrote: post #51

A serious question: When will we see a truly new OS built from the ground up? If there is a space where there seems to be little innovation it is in the space of new OS paradigms. Flavors of Windows or Linux - are there really any commercially ready alternatives today or in the very near future?

The last successful launch of a "new" operating system was maybe iOS? Whereas there are plenty of expensively developed commercial failures littering the path.

A serious problem: who would pay for the development of a new OS, or sink a very large chunk of free time into it? What properties would it have that could not be achieved starting from one of the POSIX OSs? Who would port all the apps? Why would people - end users - adopt it?

Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate

#140

Post by pjc50 »

iopq wrote: post #53
paulddraper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait....are you telling me that used a computer today? And the day before that? And the day before... Ah, you're probably behind the times and not very techy anyway.

I'm using a computer right now. I use a cellphone when I'm out, and use a tablet in bed/on the couch. I use a laptop when not home. I use my computer to stream games on TwitchTV. I also run a Linux VM on my personal computer to run caffe for neural net things. Let's see your tablet do that...

BRB, installing vmware on my Win8 tablet.
Post reply on HN