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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

#291

Post by carussell »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #79

With the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling that API's are copyrightable I wonder what type of impact it could have on open source projects, such as ReactOS, if the copyright holder ever decided to take action.

1. The ReactOS project's implementation of Windows APIs is purely for compatibility reasons; on the other hand, Android's implementation was not meant as a compatibility layer for existing apps. (In fact, that Android didn't implement a compatibility layer was a huge sticking point for the Sun contingent within Oracle—although if we're honest, we know the motivations for Oracle proper are the dollar signs.) It wouldn't be a good idea to try and draw direct parallels between the two.

2. Oracle v Google still isn't over, so even drawing any inferences about Oracle v Google itself would be premature.

3. The copyright holder here is MS. Any action on their part to go after ReactOS now be the undoing of all the goodwill they've built in the Nadella/MS-on-GitHub era. The result would be (a) a bunch of I-told-you-sos from the leery folks still holding on to their grudges today, and (b) a massive, massive, innoculating "fool me once…" reaction among the folks who'd actually been made suckers for not heeding the grudgeholders' warnings. All in all, it would be a spectacularly bad idea for MS at this point, especially given how much weaker their empire has already gotten in the last decade.

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

#292

Post by Kuraj »

wlesieutre wrote: post #251
Kuraj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "quite-ok Windows 7" is underselling it. Response was largely positive and it wasn't even that different from Vista. It simply didn't suffer from the same problems, since hardware manufacturers caught up.

Yeah, Vista had two big issues that had both been mostly resolved by the time 7 was released: 1) Driver support was poor, and 2) A bunch of low end computers with "Vista Capable" stickers that really meant "It should boot but it's going to be awful." IIRC Microsoft was pressured by OEMs into making a lower tier of Vista qualified hardware even though they knew it really required more than that to work acceptably well…

Damn.

512MB wasn't even enough for my WinXP box because the softeware apart from the OS became more demanding with time.

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

#293

Post by e12e »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107
owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

> 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…

> as Microsoft gets closer and closer to simply having a free OS it doesn't seem likely anyone would ever use this OS for anything beyond "hey, that's cool!".

Free OS? Even bog standard windows 10 pro (non-oem) is hardly free. Never mind a datacenter server license (aka you need to run 10s of instances in vms in order to get anything line useful utilisation from this modern server).

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

#294

Post by alxlaz »

freeone3000 wrote: post #268
alxlaz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

That's bloody terrible, whenever I need something I have no idea where I'll find it.

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

#295

Post by ZenoArrow »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #281
ZenoArrow wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the Amiga community there's a certain level of admiration for HaikuOS, as BeOS/HaikuOS is seen by these individuals as a spiritual successor to AmigaOS. As you point out, AROS is the open-source reimplementation of AmigaOS, so it's worth mentioning it, I just wanted to clarify why the Amiga+Haiku link might have been made.

Those of you discussing Amiga might find this comment from skrzyp interesting: https://lobste.rs/s/vkpekg/morphos_3_10_released#c_ktgnn3 It gives a huge, deep history lesson from author's perspective covering important events, hardware/software, and especially the culture. It was fascinating. Also made me hold off on MorphOS for one of my projects.

Thanks for sharing the comment, but it's got a number of inaccuracies. For example...

> "The problem was that OS wasn’t completely prepared for that, but clever people from Phase5 found a way - they made their own microkernel (called PowerUP, later WarpUP)"

PowerUP and WarpUP were competitors, and were the seeds for the later Red vs. Blue civil war.

If you'd like a clearer history of the Amiga, I'd recommend this series of articles on Ars Technica (it doesn't mention AROS, but is otherwise a good introduction):

https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/

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

#296

Post by bwat49 »

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.

While I would say that throwing linux on any random laptop and expecting perfect compatibility is foolhardy, it's really not that difficult to find a linux compatible laptop these days.

In general if you stay away from anything too esoteric, and avoid hardware that needs proprietary drivers (e.g. nvidia graphics, broadcom wifi etc...) most things should work out of the box, but it's a good idea to do a bit of research on anything you're thinking of buying if linux compatibility is desired.

There are also various smaller vendors like system76 that sell laptops with linux pre-installed.

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

#297

Post by michrassena »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107
owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

> 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 think you're entirely right, but I wonder if there's not some life left in it down the road. Whenever I've needed DOS, which isn't that often anymore, I reach for FreeDOS, not MS-DOS. Who knows what deeply legacy systems might be around in 30 years? But then again, it's hard to imagine something as ubiquitous as a Windows installation disk being unobtainable on the used market.

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

#298

Post by michrassena »

bovermyer wrote: post #247
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…

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.

Microsoft has been in a bit of a tick-tock cycle with their operating system releases. NT 4 was good, 2000 was good, XP was good eventually, Vista, not so good, 7, good, 8, not so good, 10 irons out most of the issues with 8. Pick any other product, and it's likely the same story. Mac OSX was all downhill from Tiger for quite awhile, at the latest High Sierra has had its share of serious flaws.

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

#299

Post by michrassena »

wlesieutre wrote: post #251
Kuraj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "quite-ok Windows 7" is underselling it. Response was largely positive and it wasn't even that different from Vista. It simply didn't suffer from the same problems, since hardware manufacturers caught up.

Yeah, Vista had two big issues that had both been mostly resolved by the time 7 was released: 1) Driver support was poor, and 2) A bunch of low end computers with "Vista Capable" stickers that really meant "It should boot but it's going to be awful." IIRC Microsoft was pressured by OEMs into making a lower tier of Vista qualified hardware even though they knew it really required more than that to work acceptably well…

I used two sets of Vista machine, the 32-bit machines were almost all terribly slow, the 64-bit machines were surprisingly capable. So much so, that I could use a Vista 64-bit machine as an alternative to Windows 7 if it were still supported. The machines sold as Vista-capable weren't all that great with XP, but better, so were even under-powered for the previous generation. Vista leaned a lot more heavily on disk I/O that its predecessors, so turning off Windows Search, and a few other things I forget made it tolerable to use. It must have been about that time that all of Microsoft's developers got SSDs on their desk (I'm only half joking).

I remember installing Windows 95, from floppy disks back in 1996 or so. The system requirements on the box said 4MB of RAM. And it was true, Windows would run with 4MB. In the fine print, the box also said if you wanted to do anything besides play solitaire, like word processing, 8 was recommended.

So it's been going on a long time, the lowball estimate of systems requirements to get you to buy the product, then the real cost after you've already installed it. 4MB is a rounding error these days, back then it was at least a couple hundred dollars.

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

#300

Post by trumped »

owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

> And now it's finally getting close to actual Windows

Security probably hasn't been tested very much but it probably will be as secure as most other OSes? (i.e., not very secure)

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