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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

#201

Post by x0x »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #172
smt88 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * I know plenty of people who would say that Windows had its peak usability around Windows 2000/2003 and only got heavier and more confusing later on.* Given Microsoft's mostly successful effort to make Windows more friendly to the user, I find it hard to believe any of these people have extensive experience with Windows 7+

Oh, but they did. There was a series of problems with Vista that pissed people off, then there was the quite-ok Windows 7, and then Microsoft screwed everything up with Windows 8. The irony is, they've managed to fix a lot of Windows 8 UX problems in Windows 10, but then the telemetry stories and in-your-face pushing of the upgrade from 8 to 10 left some people I know stranded at 8 and afraid to try out 10. I guess t…

I've been windows power user for many years before I switched to Linux. I can say that WinXP was one of the best windows and Win7 was okay and usable. Win8 and Win10 complete shit. Everyone I know had issues with it and had hard times using it. Asking if it was possible to use at least Win7 again. Windows completely screwed up there UI thinking it would be easier for people to use and in process completely killing windows. Not to mantion Win8/10 security/privacy horror storries. The last usable windows was Win7. This is why I see many people switching to Mac OS X or Linux.

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

#202

Post by ZenoArrow »

martinlofgren wrote: post #160
aphextron wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eee PC Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...

I was using an EEE 1001px as my main computer until a few months ago when I finally got myself a new laptop. I did replace the battery two years ago, but besides that it all parts were the original from 2010. I really like this little computer.

I'm currently using an Asus VivoBook E200H ( https://www.asus.com/uk/Laptops/ASUS-Vivobook-E200HA/ ) as my main computer, which is somewhere between a netbook and a notebook. If it didn't have such limited internal storage (32GB SSD, not upgradable without desoldering) I'd be happy to recommend it. There are plenty of pluses (super portable, long battery life, decent keyboard, etc...).

Microsoft held back the netbook market by setting strict requirements on the tech specs required for Windows licencing, without that restriction I'd suggest we'd still have a healthy market for netbooks today.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2526983/microsoft-wind...

> ""Our license tells you what a netbook is," said Ballmer at the Microsoft-hosted day with Wall Street analysts. "Our license says it's got to have a super-small screen, which means it probably has a super-small keyboard, and it has to have a certain processor and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.""

> "Last May, the Malaysian Web site TechARP.com, which regularly leaks information provided to computer makers by Microsoft, reported that the company would restrict Starter to specific netbook configurations. According to TechARP, Microsoft will only sell Starter to OEMs for use on netbooks that have a 10.2-in. or smaller screen, no more than 1GB of memory, a hard disk drive of 250GB or less (or a solid-state drive no larger than 64GB) and a single-core processor no faster than 2GHz."

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

#203

Post by sspiff »

I wonder if the planned Vista/7/10 support will extend to kernel mode drivers, especially for WDDM2 and up graphics drivers.

Currently, the supported graphics drivers is pretty sad for modern-ish hardware on ReactOS, because they are limited to drivers for Windows Server 2003 / Windows XP, which aren't available for a lot of modern cards (or integrated chips, for that matter). Additionally, a lot of the older XP drivers don't work well on ReactOS today.

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

#204

Post by orionblastar »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #137
swiley wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just run a FOSS OS?

Hardware support of laptops for FOSS is not that good unless you restrict yourself to Dell or IBM.

IBM no longer makes desktop PC s or laptops. Sold the designs to Lenovo years ago.

I had HP and Compaq laptops that ran Linux as well.

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

#205

Post by orionblastar »

chungy wrote: post #144
DEFCON28 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Why would you even say this? There's no MS-DOS code in Windows 95, and you couldn't exit Windows 95 to a command prompt. Are you just trying to throw some FUD into this conversation?

No, he's right. Windows 95/98/Me use MS-DOS as a bootloader, and Windows 95+98 still allowed you to exit Windows from the shutdown prompt, leaving you only at the DOS prompt. Windows Me took away the ability to exit, least without a binary hack to IO.SYS that can re-enable it.

You mean DOS Mode where Win9X GUI shuts down and reboots into DOS mode to run DOS software. I was a Win95 beta tester.

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

#206

Post by majewsky »

sspiff wrote: post #199
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soon (well, years, but still) people will be using it everywhere as a replacement for Windows. No they won't. It's a fringe OS that requires technical expertise to install. Not only that but it looks like "old Windows". Users won't want to work with a Windows from a decade ago. Not only that but it'll have bugs and no support. You'll see tiny pockets of people using it but as Microsoft gets closer and closer to sim…

I know a bunch of people (mostly gamers) who refuse to upgrade from Windows 7 to 8 or 10, mostly because of usability and privacy concerns. Eventually, they'll have to (DirectX 12, but I'm sure there's a ton of APIs for non-games as well and drivers will stop being updated for Win7). But if ReactOS can reach a level of maturity and compatibility to please such people, there's a sizeable niche there of people who: 1.…

Please don't use code blocks for normal text. This is frustratingly difficult to read on a phone where the code block becomes a scrolling container.

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

#207

Post by xab9 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #134
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soon (well, years, but still) people will be using it everywhere as a replacement for Windows. No they won't. It's a fringe OS that requires technical expertise to install. Not only that but it looks like "old Windows". Users won't want to work with a Windows from a decade ago. Not only that but it'll have bugs and no support. You'll see tiny pockets of people using it but as Microsoft gets closer and closer to sim…

> Users won't want to work with a Windows from a decade ago. Not only that but it'll have bugs and no support. Depending on the age group, I guess. I know plenty of people who would say that Windows had its peak usability around Windows 2000/2003 and only got heavier and more confusing later on. If I know that ReactOS had a good chance of running most regular Windows applications, I'd install it on my mother's laptop…

Exactly. In windows 2000 the UI was pretty much unified, a button looked like a button, window borders were consistent, the start menu had a simple tree structure, icons were ugly but they were iconic (they at least tried to represent something, noone thought that one day a grey letter will be an icon, or a user will look lie a circle and a line). No touch nonsense, everything worked with a mouse or a keyboard (mnemonics were visible by default).

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

#208

Post by mrighele »

smt88 wrote: post #165
TeMPOraL wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Users won't want to work with a Windows from a decade ago. Not only that but it'll have bugs and no support. Depending on the age group, I guess. I know plenty of people who would say that Windows had its peak usability around Windows 2000/2003 and only got heavier and more confusing later on. If I know that ReactOS had a good chance of running most regular Windows applications, I'd install it on my mother's laptop…

> * I know plenty of people who would say that Windows had its peak usability around Windows 2000/2003 and only got heavier and more confusing later on.* Given Microsoft's mostly successful effort to make Windows more friendly to the user, I find it hard to believe any of these people have extensive experience with Windows 7+

I am an heavy keyboard user, and prefer it to the mouse.

I find that Windows 2000 has the best support for keyboard users among GUIs. Better that MacOS, better than all the incarnations of Gnome/KDE, better that the following releases of Windows, that "forgot" about the keyboard and focused on other input systems.

You can see that in many small things, like sane keybindings and reasonable sequence for selection through tabs (for example, going from the path bar on the top to the folder content requires two tabs in Windows 2000 but four in Windows 7, unless one does some find tuninng of the UI).

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

#209

Post by majewsky »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #137
swiley wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just run a FOSS OS?

Hardware support of laptops for FOSS is not that good unless you restrict yourself to Dell or IBM.

That was true 5-10 years ago, these days it's much better (except for some old offenders like Nvidia GPUs or Broadcom WiFi modules). My Asus notebook never lacked any support even though I bought it just three days after that particular model was first released.

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

#210

Post by orionblastar »

megaman22 wrote: post #47
jug wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, DOSBox is nice for retro gaming or even the oddball application, but it pales in comparison to the potential of this project.

The place where DOSBox isn't sufficient is for games in that Win 95/98/2000 era. Most of those don't run very well, if at all on modern Windows, unless somebody still has the source and bothers to rerelease a modern "HD edition" or somesuch. I still have to keep a Win 98 VM so I can play Sierra's Civil War Generals 2 from time to time.

I heard that DOSBox can run Windows 3.1 to run 16 but Windows games. I also heard someone hacked Win95 and Win98 to run under DOSbox. You could just use QEMU emulate a Pentium box and install 95 or 98 under that as an alternative.
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