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

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

reactos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 318 posts

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

#241

Post by EamonnMR »

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.…

I definitely count myself as one of those gamers who hasn't moved off 7 yet for my gaming and music production. On a machine like that, windows is just a layer between the game and the hardware and the less other stuff, the better. 8 and 10 have little value add for someone who just wants program compatibility-7 was plenty stable.

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

#243

Post by andreiw »

chris_wot wrote: post #158
andreiw wrote: post #139

So I'm a ReactOS fanboi, but... but... - You need to fix your flaccid dev community. Your forums have a terrible S/N ratio. IRC may be great and all, but I don't see any hard documentation behind any design discussions or development. I do see crazy shite like "can I run ReactOS on Playstation 2". The forums make your project seem dead, which it clearly isn't. - You need to fix your flaccid dev community. It needs a…

Wow, aggressive much?

I dunno dude. I just pointed out the obvious, and all I get is a passive-aggressive minusing. Most people won’t care enough to even give you “a rant”, they’ll just move on.

If you don’t want feedback, don’t ask for feedback by posting publicly. My “rant” is a collection of issues I’ve seen for at least the last 7 years of actively paying attention to the project.

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

#244

Post by anthk »

_o_ wrote: post #230
bad_user wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your preference for FreeBSD has nothing to do with the early development of Net/2 BSD, its license and the rise of Linux. Development of BSD was effectively not accessible to the outside world, being a closed playground for the developers at Berkeley. And to get an official version on disk, it also had a pretty steep price. Even now the various BSD distributions are very rigidly controlled. Yes, they adhere to certai…

I dont care about the "model". I only care about code quality and stability on critical tasks. And currently the distributions are becoming more and more chaotic, I think this will bite back, you can try and use some whatever the name paradigms but at the end development is hard and not made only from fun problems to solve, there are lots of annoying and pesky tasks that need to be done. And here the system where eve…

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257

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

#245

Post by andreiw »

voltagex_ wrote: post #188
andreiw wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. This website saved my ass trying to make HID devices work on top of the completely non-conforming Linaro DwUsbHostDxe driver (look at https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg/commits/master/Dri... for a laugh). I did end up having to hit the USB spec in the end, but it's a legit resource to get a birds-eye view of the whole USB1 and USB2 thing. It doesn't make USB simpler, but sure makes it more approachable.

Offtopic: What's the end goal of all this UEFI work you're doing for the Pi?

No concrete goal beyond having a reasonably useful UEFI development environment (more so than the 96boards one).

It’s been useful to be able to run the same Ubuntu and SUSE images as VMs and servers do, but that’s only really possible because the built kernels have RPi3 support (but at least you now don’t need a custom image with U-Boot).

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

#246

Post by shdon »

userbinator wrote: post #38
code_duck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t count on Microsoft supporting XP era software 10 or 20 years from now, and I wouldn’t ask them to.

I recall seeing videos on YouTube of Windows 1.0 applications running on Windows 10, so I suppose it really depends on what type of software exactly; more system-level things like disk defragmenters are unlikely to work, but basic productivity software likely will continue working. I personally have a few from Win95 era which I still use regularly, and of course I'd expect the basic Hello World messagebox binary to r…

I doubt it will be too long before 32-bit versions of Windows are no longer produced or supported. The 64-bit versions do not run 16-bit software. When that time inevitably comes, the Windows 1.0 software will also stop working in native Windows (rather than a 32-bit or even 16-bit Windows version running through emulation).

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

#247

Post by bovermyer »

x0x wrote: post #201
TeMPOraL wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Vista and 8 had their problems, but 10 has been fine for me. I disagree with the statement "The last usable windows was Win7." But then, I've seen the same argument before, in different flavors. People complained about Windows 7, wondering why anyone would switch from XP. They complained about XP, wondering why anyone would switch from 98SE.

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

#248

Post by dragontamer »

mkesper wrote: post #181
dragontamer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine and ReactOS are practically sister-projects at this point that share a ton of code. ReactOS does replicate the NT Kernel, so in theory (if it ever gets there), ReactOS would be able to run Windows Drivers. IE: the "real" NVidia and AMD Drivers or any other kernel-level drivers that exist in Windows land. These days, AMD (and even NVidia) have decent Linux drivers. And WiFi drivers have Windows->Linux translators…

You know you can use ACLs on Linux kernels and filesystems? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Access_Control_Lists

Yeah. But Windows NT's ACL is kernel level and applies to any object that the NT kernel can make. (aka: anything with a "Handle" can be controlled with Window's security core). MMaps (called "Sections" in Windows), Threads, Processes, Mutexes, and more are covered by Window's ACL security model.

Even then, ACLs are just part of the picture. Windows NT's "SID" system for identifying user permissions is far more flexible than users / groups.

WinVista and later also adds mandatory access control on top of that, in particular event logging / auditing guaranteed by the kernel and "integrity levels". Anything that is "drive by downloaded" by Chrome for example has an integrity level of "untrusted" and thus is locked out of all kernel objects. (IE: "untrusted" integrity in Windows prevents access to files, processes, threads, mmaps, all services, etc. etc.).

----------

Linux's security model is too weak to be used in a modern operating system. That's why Google extended it with all of the Android App stuff. Android's security model is closer to what modern Windows can do.

And if you know anything about Android (despite being built on top of Linux), its security model is quite different. Windows basically offers Android-level security at the kernel level. (maybe a bit more: major services on Windows, such as LSASS aka Login / Password service, can run in an isolated VM for example)

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

#249

Post by snvzz »

kalleboo wrote: post #186
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?

You could even configure Windows 95/98 to boot directly to DOS by setting BootGUI=0 in MSDOS.SYS, and then you'd have to run "WIN" to boot Windows

Isn't MSDOS.SYS a binary? Are you sure you don't mean CONFIG.SYS?

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

#250

Post by anthk »

megaman22 wrote: post #68
bitL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the next gen 901; you can use any of the 32-bit emulation platforms on Windows and the 1.6GHz Atom (that could be overclocked to 1.8) is significantly faster than any Raspberry Pi, so you have a larger pool of games you can play at a proper speed. I upgraded it to 2GB RAM/60GB SSD, and it really flies. It's only slightly larger than a handheld console, so I thought converting it to a retro machine would be per…

The last time I was using my eeePC 901, I managed to put Windows 8 on it, and I remember it being faster than either the XP or Ubuntu/Mint varieties I tried on it.

Slitaz would blew both 8 and Mint. Try it.
Post reply on HN