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ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

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Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#81
post #52
post #10

I feel like ReactOS has gained more attention lately and hope some of it will spill over to support of this project. It’s a bit like you need to reach a critical mass in features and usability, and until then it’s an uphill battle to maintain enough traction. Haiku is another cool project, especially as someone who will always have a warm spot left for the Amiga. But until the long waited for beta is out, I think the…

Haiku OS[0] is a BeOS inspired OS, though I do see some articles about a port of it to Amiga hardware. [0] https://www.haiku-os.org/ [1] http://www.generationamiga.com/2017/09/03/haiku-os-for-amiga...

They must've meant AROS http://www.aros.org/

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#82

One day when Windows drifts too far away from its golden age functionality, it will be great if ReactOS can fill the gap. However, I feel like MS could one-up them overnight by providing a sandboxed 32-bit XP VM as part of current windows. We’d get back DOS support and compatibility with old programs would be better. Call it Windows Subsystem for Windows or whatever. That would also pave the way to removing a lot of…

What's the point in doing this for MS? There's no money in it and they'd need a serious team backing it. And by no money, I mean at scale - there are going to be small companies needing something like that and there are going to be huge companies. Huge ones already got a public offer of "pay an increasing tax for XP support" and likely a private "this corporate deal is possible" if they're important enough. The small ones put together, I don't think could collectively fund ongoing xp support.

If anything ReactOS picking up those small companies is beneficial to MS by keeping them in the MS ecosystem.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#83

This has been one of my favorite software projects to watch, because it's such an insanely monumental undertaking and moves so damn slowly. There were people working on this two decades ago, putting in tiny fixes and little bits of code and whatnot, and they did it even knowing that basically nobody would see their work for decades. Hell, I have never seen a ReactOS installation in the wild, and I'm the kind of perso…

How long did it take for Windows 95 to be developed? It would be an interesting contrasts between Enterprise and Charitable development.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#84

What I like about this project, besides the dedication and professionalism of the team behind it, is that it offers PC gamers a possible way to play Windows-era games moving forward. In a decade or two, we likely won't be able to activate a Windows XP machine (and wouldn't want to with all of the security hazards either) so it's great to have a free and open source project to run our Windows stuff.

Cracks will always be around... and XP is one of the "simpler" ones compared to the newer Windows. "security" isn't a big deal either, just keep all your ports closed and don't run untrusted code or unnecessary services. AFAIK all the exploits have been on services and such, which shouldn't be exposed to the Internet anyway.

Life gets a lot better when you start running Win10 security.

IE: Win10 can run the password manager service on a separate VM now automatically. Hell, you can start new version of Microsoft Edge in a clean and isolated VM, requiring the attacker to use a hypervisor zero-day to pwn your box. And since the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor is often running through UEFI secure boot with assistance of the TPM modules on the motherboard, and because the Hypervisor has very few services running (really: any service is in its own VM), its a much, much harder attack surface to go through.

https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/09/27/application-g...

Security features that add convenience (ie: group policy allows admins to automatically open websites in "Application Guard" mode) helps a lot. When the user literally only has to wait ~5 to ~10 seconds to boot up a clean version of IE isolated inside of a VM (separated in a RDP session), its much easier to have widespread security throughout a network.

I mean really: think about the security model needed to pwn AppGuard + IE. You either need to pwn the RDP session (unlikely, but hey its possible). Or, you figure out how to escape an isolated VM, when said VM has virtually all applications locked out. I saw a security demo of AppGuard recently. You can't run cmd.exe, you can't run powershell, you have zero permissions inside of your VM. If you somehow escape the sandbox, you STILL have to break through a hypervisor to get to the user.

Its way, way WAY easier to do "proper security" with Win10 + all of the virtualization tricks (AppGuard, Credential Guard, Device Guard). The modern Win10 security model is beginning to be immune to even kernel-mode exploits.

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With that being said: WinXP has security problems with modern Win Vista+ because that's the edition where Microsoft decided that direct-hardware access is a BAD IDEA for standard usermode applications.

WinXP allows any user-mode application to directly talk with the hardware. Win Vista+ does NOT allow it. And that broke a ton of programs (old controller hardware, printer drivers, etc. etc.)

Fixing security issues causes compatibility problems.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder why Microsoft never did. I'm assuming it's because of the size of the codebase, available engineering resources, return-on-investment calculation, and a business prioritization of new features over refinement. Most engineers can look at their own work or codebase and think, "well, that's a bit shit but it works well enough." I can't imagine their backlog. I'm sure it's lurking in an issue queue somewhere.

The reason could be stated in one word: "architecture", or perhaps less positively, "bureaucracy". In other words, either they could've designed it originally in such a way as to make fixing such a bug very difficult to do without rewriting massive amounts of code, or the fix could be simple yet the politics around actually getting that fix into code are not. Having worked at large corporations (not Microsoft) before…

Vista and 7 had a well known bug where a contextual window would stay on screen forever, until you changed the resolution or logged out - I think Microsoft commented on this officially, saying that fixing it would need to be done somewhere low at the kernel level and it's simply too much work. I think it was resolved fully in 10.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#87
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you (seems a bit harsh), but just so you know ReactOS development has been going for over 20 years, which is a lot longer than ReactJS (which is approximately 7 years old).

I expected to be downvoted for not knowing this.

I think that this comment has been downvoted is highly unfair.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#88

Genuine question: What advantage does ReactOS provide over Wine? https://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE explains a bit but still doesn't answer the question. P.S. oh by the way, the developers of both projects are apparently collaborating and ReactOS uses Wine's DLLs for their userspace, so my question is not meant to criticise the "double-effort" or anything like that.

Primarily support for drivers, I think.

https://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_History and https://www.reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS/History were interesting to look through.

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#89

Can anyone comment if I can install old Windows 2000 games on this, like C&C Red Alert? Would it work?

C&C Red Alert 2, both 1.0 and Yuri's Revenge: rating "everything works": https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Re: ReactOS releases 0.4.8 with experimental Vista/7/10 software compatibility

#90

Can anyone comment if I can install old Windows 2000 games on this, like C&C Red Alert? Would it work?

And simtower?

- Version 1.0: Game saving is broken, everything else works: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

- Version 1.1b (retail): Copy a DLL over for working sound, then everything works: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

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