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

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

#141

Post by flavor8 »

cm2187 wrote: post #136
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…

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 editi…

Regedit is not "discoverable".

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

#142

Post by flavor8 »

dingaling wrote: post #118
SwellJoe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility is an excellent reason to choose Windows, probably sufficient even on its own, if you need an accessible system. Accessibility is hard, and requires a ton of resources to do well...Microsoft has been willing and able to expend those resources. I do know users who require assistive technologies to work who use Linux, but it's rare and they're extremely technically savvy themselves (usually software devel…

> The default firewall on a Fedora system is fine It really isn't. Try blocking one particular program from accessing the Internet. You'll end-up messing around with assigning programs to group ownership and then adding ip tables rules. Linux-Android goes all the way and sandboxes programs which makes firewalling easier. But desktop Linux is far behind.

You mean like this? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gufw

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

#143

Post by marcosdumay »

derefr wrote: post #65
marcosdumay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody cares about computers anymore You know, it was annoying when people started to say those computers you carry with yourself the entire day were not "personal computers". Now you are trying to say they are not even "computers"! I just hope the world ignores your labels.

Every label gets stuck to its progenitor. The first things that we owned that were computers get called computers. The second set of things we own, that are also computers, but have some other defining qualities, get called something else to distinguish them from the first thing.

I'm perfectly ok with naming them "telephones", or "smartphones". As I'm quite ok with naming those older ones "desktops" and "laptops".

I find the name "PC" for distinguishing desktops/laptops from phones/tablets mildly annoying, and very amusing because of how badly the name fits its meaning. But yes, there is a need to differentiate open computers from locked-down computers, and from that point of view the name isn't that bad anymore.

Now, there's no need at all to assign the label "computer" to any form-factor. We have plenty of label already, and that would make a huge mess on communications.

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

#144

Post by cm2187 »

flavor8 wrote: post #141
cm2187 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 editi…

Regedit is not "discoverable".

Arguably it's not that bad, you can visually go through sections / sub sections, which is an order of magnitude better than having to call individual keys with a command line. But I wouldn't call that a good GUI either.

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

#145

Post by restalis »

DanBC wrote: post #131
alok-g wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A local firewall can be set up along with an external firewall. Having a firewall only somewhere on a separate machine doesn't address the use-case alok-g described - he (and many others including myself) may want to "easily control which application can access the Internet".

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

#146

Post by iso8859-1 »

michaelmior wrote: post #55
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?

New operating systems are still being created. Barrelfish[0] for example is quite promising. The "commercially ready" part is much more challenging. [0] http://www.barrelfish.org/

Genode has commercial support: http://genode.org/

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

#147

Post by rogeryu »

ikurei wrote: post #98
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…

> if there's something I want an OS to do that Linux can't do, I would be motivated to work on making Linux able to do that thing so I could do that thing on an Open Source OS I enjoy using, rather than work on replicating Windows so I could do that thing on an open source OS I don't enjoy using. That's a great ethos, but it's not that Windows can do something Linux can't. If you want to play a game/use a CAD made on…

Exactly. I have some apps that don't run on Linux, like Photoshop and at work the printer driver. It seems that ReactOS is much faster than XP running in Virtualbox, and if Photoshop and that printer driver work in ReactOS, then I'm all for it.

I hope this does provide a better user experience than Wine, because I've tried that, and after a while Photoshop breaks down somehow. Elements on the page disappear, file operations don't work and in the end it all stops. I want something that is stable, and I hope this works better than Wine, even if both share much code.

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

#148

Post by restalis »

krylon wrote: post #93
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…

Personally, I strongly prefer Unixoid systems, too. But in my day job, I am a Windows admin (and helpdesk monkey). If there was a system that is both free software and binary compatible with Windows, that would be pretty nice, if only to give Microsoft some competition. And on the corporate desktop, Windows totally and utterly dominates. Replacing it is next to impossible, because most of the applications (at least i…

ReactOS aims to be compatible with Windows 2003 only on the kernel level. Compatibility on the user-space level is not restricted to that.

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

#149

Post by iopq »

pjc50 wrote: post #140
iopq wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It still won't run caffe because you don't have a powerful GPU to train neural nets on

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

#150

Post by blisterpeanuts »

coderjames wrote: post #21
e12e wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's entirely clear what you can use an OEM Windows disk for. Isn't that just for new hardware? And that's at least 50/vm if I understand things. The thing to compare reactOS to is probably a datacenter licensed copy of Windows server. Productivity applications will (mostly) run in Wine - I don't think anyone expects ReactOS to be a viable alternative to bare-metal Windows install for gaming.

Exactly. The Windows "OEM" or "System Builder" edition is only valid for computers that are sold on to the final end user. They aren't legal for personal use by the original purchaser. [1] [1] = http://www.howtogeek.com/197232/microsoft-is-misleading-cons...

Can't you sell yourself the system? The OEM edition is intended for system builders, and you have to provide the device drivers separately, but that seems to be the only difference between the home/business distro and the OEM one.
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