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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

#261

Post by efreak »

orionblastar wrote: post #210
megaman22 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dosbox runs windows 3.1 perfectly, with resolutions up to at least 1280x1024 (what I use for tetris) _or_ true color mode (unfortunately not both). You can supposedly install 95/98 in it, but I've had trouble actually using them in it.

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

#262

Post by nandhp »

snvzz wrote: post #249
kalleboo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

According to Wikipedia, it became a configuration file in Windows 95 (MS-DOS 7.0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSDOS.SYS

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

#263

Post by gnode »

revanx_ wrote: post #218
make3 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when it starts getting really good, Microsoft will probably sue it to the ground.

How's that? It's open source and they wrote the whole thing from scratch. Even if they abandon the project it's open source and work can continue even after MS has their way with them.

They've had problems in the past, based on the legitimacy of reverse engineering Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit

> Even if they abandon the project it's open source and work can continue even after MS has their way with them.

Such infringement claims are damaging to the legitimacy of the codebase itself. Anyone taking up the project could face the same problems.

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

#265

Post by make3 »

breakingcups wrote: post #240
rbanffy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has more budget for making coffee for the legal department than ReactOS has budget. Even if the lawsuit has no chance of prevailing, it still can force the ReactOS team to shut down. Oracle made a convincing enough case against Google about copying APIs, IIRC.

You forget about the bigger FOSS community goodwill that they've carefully been trying to cultivate in the past few years that they will throw away by doing that.

this is the reason why I wrote "probably" and not "will"

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

#266

Post by Koshkin »

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…

> WinXP was one of the best windows

On a somewhat more objective note, there was a lot of criticism back when it came out. (Specifically, about "the bloat". Everything is relative, I guess; one can say that things continued to get worse and worse from Windows 2000 on, although some would swear that it was NT4 that was the best Windows ever - e.g. it ran in 16MB of RAM vs. Windows 2000 that raised the requirement to 32MB; for comparison, Windows 95 only needed 8MB.)

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

#267

Post by wvenable »

DEFCON28 wrote: post #129
da_chicken wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95 still borrowed a lot of code from MS-DOS, though. That's why you could still exit to the command prompt. I think you could do that through WinME.

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?

The original "It's now safe to turn off your computer" screen in Windows 95/98 actually sent you to a DOS prompt. Because the computer was in graphics mode you couldn't see the prompt but you could blindly type the commands to switch modes and continue to use the computer from DOS.

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

#268

Post by freeone3000 »

alxlaz wrote: post #225
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+

I'm one of them and have as much extensive experience with Windows 7+ as someone who write *nix and embedded software for a living can have. Windows 2000 is the last Windows version I used exclusively. The "mostly successful efforts" you speak of seem to have been focused on delivering ads, TOS-backed spyware and those weird Metro apps. The result is certainly simpler from a strictly visual standpoint, but more usabl…

That's a compromise. Settings is deep-searchable and unified between platforms. Control Panel is still there for backwards compatability (including with MS's own stuff)

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

#269

Post by amaccuish »

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

Yes but it certainly isn't as flexible and for networking computers requires ensuring uids and gids don't clash with local users. There's talk of replacing posix acls with nfs4 acls, which were modelled on Windows ACLs.

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

#270

Post by lightedman »

Koshkin wrote: post #266
x0x wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> WinXP was one of the best windows On a somewhat more objective note, there was a lot of criticism back when it came out. (Specifically, about "the bloat". Everything is relative, I guess; one can say that things continued to get worse and worse from Windows 2000 on, although some would swear that it was NT4 that was the best Windows ever - e.g. it ran in 16MB of RAM vs. Windows 2000 that raised the requirement to 3…

NT4 sucked because no video DMA.
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