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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

#161
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really know why you seem to have an axe to grind here. Not sure about the "axe to grind" thing -- I didn't call any names, and it kind of calls for people to see any kind of reply from me as further "aggression". I merely stated my opinion based on what I've seen 15+ years in IT (including using QT to write some KDE API based apps). I believe I have a quite good understanding on where QT stands in the "comm…

> As for Qt being a "800k developer ecosystem", a lot of them work on internal enterprise tools, automation software and stuff like that Many of which run on Windows, FWIW.

Sure, but our original discussion, lost in the sands of time, was about UI libs and how "regular windows users" have lots of QT apps. In the enterprise all bets are off, and all kind of crap is used, including tons of Swing, Flex, old VB6 apps, etc.

In fact, as I've just checked it again to be sure, the whole initial point was a non starter, trying to paint Windows as equally fragmented, UI-wise, as Linux.

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

#162
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for Qt being a "800k developer ecosystem", a lot of them work on internal enterprise tools, automation software and stuff like that Many of which run on Windows, FWIW.

Sure, but our original discussion, lost in the sands of time, was about UI libs and how "regular windows users" have lots of QT apps. In the enterprise all bets are off, and all kind of crap is used, including tons of Swing, Flex, old VB6 apps, etc. In fact, as I've just checked it again to be sure, the whole initial point was a non starter, trying to paint Windows as equally fragmented, UI-wise, as Linux.

I'd say Windows is a bit more fragmented UI-wise than Linux, even if you remove Qt from the conversation entirely. There simply hasn't been a strong notion of "this is how a Windows app looks" since the, say, Win 98 days between multiple different generations of MS-blessed designs, the skin-heavy era and a myriad of toolkits. The classic "Windows app" design in my mind is Notepad, and few apps look like Notepad. I admittedly don't use Windows heavily, but the few apps I use occasionally inside a Windows VM or on the dual-booted Windows on my laptop all sport widely different UI appearance:

- iTunes (built on a port of some of Cocoa I think)

- Spotify (custom UX, also on Linux - using Qt - but I don't bother)

- Steam (custom UX, own toolkit - also on Linux)

- EA Origin (custom UX, made with Qt)

- KakaoTalk (custom UX, I think using a native toolkit though)

- LINE (similar to Kakao)

- Telegram (custom UX, built on Qt - actually this runs fine on Linux, but I keep it in the VM alongside KakaoTalk because it's the same use case)

- Firefox (custom UX, with native-ish theming by its own XUL toolkit grabbing stuff from Windows APIs)

- Chrome (custom UX, built on a custom toolkit called Aura with some Windows exceptions)

- Kodi (custom fullscreen UX)

All of these are apps with user numbers in the range of hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, and they're all unicorns. (You may never have heard of KakaoTalk or LINE, say, but both have 50+ million desktop installed bases.)

Some of the above (Telegram, Firefox, Chrome, Steam, Spotify) show up on Linux just the same, no better or worse. Outside of that, most apps people actually use on Linux:

- KDE/Qt apps, which import a lot of standard structure from kxmlgui and DE settings (e.g. dialog button order, standard dialogs) from Qt's QPA plugins

- Gnome apps, which follow a strongly defined HIG

- Non-Gnome GTK+ apps imitating the Win98-style HIG for the most part (which overlaps a fair bit with the kxmlgui standard structure)

Sure, there's a long tail of other toolkits on Linux (just as on Windows), but my argument is basically: Going by the most-used apps, Windows and Linux suffer this problem (if you consider it one) to a similar degree, but Windows slighly worse because outside the apps showing up on both platforms, the remaining popular Windows apps are more fragmented UX-wise than on Linux with its three broad categories.

Heck, Windows 10's bundled apps are fragmented UI-wise to a much greater degree than any competing offering due to the classic/Metro divide.

It's an utter mess. An interesting question is whether this messyness hasn't had some benefits (like allowing app designers to iterate and innovate individually, with no concern for following a system HIG, allowing the overall platform not to fall behind the curb). But arguing the mess isn't there is very strange to me.

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

#163
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What comes to mind by 4), is "tee", which powershell also has - but that's perhaps not what you want/mean ?

Almost, but not quite. Tee writes the pipeline to disk as text; you can't trivially take the written output and pipe it back in as objects. It's lost the magic.

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

#164
post #80
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's Law is slowing down, and PCs and laptops are having longer effective lifetimes. I've got an eight year old laptop that's still serviceable - actually runs better with Windows 10 than it did with the Vista that came on it. It's not obsolescence every eighteen months any more. That's where phones are now. In a few years, they'll mature, and it'll be how VR goggles or the next gewgaw are killing the PC. Meanwhil…

Which is exactly the point I (the parent comment of this thread) was trying to make: The desktop/laptop (which I described using the term computer in my original post) market is declining. Not because they aren't used anymore, but because I don't need to replace them anymore.

Fair enough. I didn't meant to start a "thing" with my comment but thought maybe it would make you explain what you meant. I'll word my comments better in future.

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

#165
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's good to know. Thanks!

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

#166
post #159
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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" I suppose this depends on the workflow. Powershell is just as powerfull for me as bash (I can't help to learn the syntax for either of them - I just google the expression for iterating a command over files and whatnot) I start appli…

You're confusing the OS with the UI. This is sadly commonplace.

Sorry, did you answer to a wrong message? I don't know how your response applies to my message.

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

#167
post #87
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly the point I (the parent comment of this thread) was trying to make: The desktop/laptop (which I described using the term computer in my original post) market is declining. Not because they aren't used anymore, but because I don't need to replace them anymore.

You do realize that that's a totally different argument that "nobody cares about computers anymore".

The market doesn't care anymore about getting the hot new computer. They care about the new, shinier gadgets. I don't think it's a different argument.

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

#169
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you want to run Windows applications on an Open Source OS, the Wine approach is much more realistic. It's also nicer because for everything that Linux can already do, you don't have to mimic Windows. Anyway, desktop applications are not that relevant today, and most of those that are (like web browsers, developer tools) are cross-platform anyway.

> Anyway, desktop applications are not that relevant today, and most of those that are (like web browsers, developer tools) are cross-platform anyway.

Yes, but PC games are very relevant. They are the entire reason I have a Windows machine at all.

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

#170
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I barely notice the difference between Linux and Windows these days. A lot of that has to do with having a common scripting language between the two.

Is there a common scripting language that they both speak natively?

I am not sure what "natively" means. I use Tcl because it's a conservative choice; very nearly any of the usual suspects will run on both. There are of course many small and irritating differences.
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