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ReactOS

reactos.org

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Re: ReactOS

#31

Post by barbs »

I've always had some admiration for ReactOS, but I also find it a bit baffling. It's been in development for so long, and it doesn't appear to be particularly stable. Granted, it's a difficult project, but I also struggle to see a valid use case for it. Why would I want to use this when I can use WINE or a virtual machine? And if it's aiming to emulate windows xp, surely this use-case gets less and less relevant over time?

Then again, the fact that it exists just makes me feel good in ways I don't completely understand.

Re: ReactOS

#32

Post by lhoff »

Jaruzel wrote: post #19

I'm saddened a little bit to see stuff like theming has been built. I was hoping that ReactOS would stick with the Windows 2000 look and feel. I also think that with the limited resources they have, the project team would be better focusing on improving compatibility, over shiny desktop effects. That said... I firmly believe there is a place for ReactOS. Eventually, XP will fail to run on new hardware, and when that…

Maybe the people who did the theming stuff aren't the ones that would working on compatibility issues.

Thats usually the case in company driven projects but not necessarily in community driven open source projects.

If you would be the project lead and a person comes to you and tells you that he would like to create a newer modern theme. If you tell him/her no and that he/she should work on something completely different i wouldn't be surprised if you would never see him/her again.

Re: ReactOS

#33

Post by IncRnd »

pizza234 wrote: post #21
jamesu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I’ve tried it, it falls apart within minutes of using it. You’d think after 20 years of development it might be somewhat stable but I guess not.

IMO, the is a monumental underestimation of the man-hours put into make Windows as compatible as it is, even ignoring the fact that Microsoft's engineers are/were highly skilled. I like the ReactOS idea, but I think it will take decades to be compatible enough - and I'm even talking about enough. If the objective was to run obsolete software, I personally had to distribute resources, I'd just do assign them to Wine.…

> I like the ReactOS idea, but I think it will take decades to be compatible enough - and I'm even talking about enough.

It has been under development for decades. That is more than twice the time it took to develop Windows 95. I've tried ReactOS a few times over the years, and it has never worked for me.

I know of two specific examples of ReactOS code that as of a couple years ago were identical with Windows code. There are likely other instances pointing to a non-clean-room implementation.

Re: ReactOS

#34

Post by ocdtrekkie »

zerocrates wrote: post #26
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability, plus the fact that it doesn't really damage the value of the original Windows platform, means it's probably a very easy case of fair use. Android isn't fair use, is a massive commercial endeavour, and has obliterated the value of mobile Java, while breaking interoperability with Java. Oracle winning the case will not be ki…

Do you really think there'd still be a place for mobile Java now in the absence of Android? Seems pretty unlikely to me.

The state of the market today isn't the point: It obliterated mobile Java when Google infringed. Your question actually reinforces Oracle's claim that they were irreparably harmed by Google's infringement; there's no way to undo what has been done, and substantial damage compensation is necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors is a really good read for the basic understanding of how fair use should be applied. Factor four is what we're discussing here, which the Supreme Court labeled the "most important" factor.

Re: ReactOS

#35

Post by blendergeek »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20
2bitencryption wrote: post #9

I just realized - what does the Google vs Oracle ruling mean for ReactOS, and also Wine?

The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability, plus the fact that it doesn't really damage the value of the original Windows platform, means it's probably a very easy case of fair use. Android isn't fair use, is a massive commercial endeavour, and has obliterated the value of mobile Java, while breaking interoperability with Java. Oracle winning the case will not be ki…

> The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability

So, if ReactOS ever becomes useful, it will be illegal to use it for commercial purposes?

Re: ReactOS

#36

Post by signaru »

I've read/heard others express their concern about how the XP code leak might be a problem for ReactOS. I hope they are taking appropriate measures.

Re: ReactOS

#37

Post by smrq »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #14
iainctduncan wrote: post #11

If they ever get to the point of enabling audio folks to run windows audio apps with a low-latency pre-emptible kernel, they'll get big adoption in that world. Right not it's ridiculous how crappy the options are for low latency given how fast our machines are.

Does anyone try to shift audio mixing to the GPU and use the audio output of HDMI? I don't know if modern GPUs can take buffers and move them to the audio buffer without going out and back in through PCIe but it seems plausible.

Even if that was possible (no idea), I don't know that it would help. Graphics processing works on GPUs because it's a massively parallel task. With audio, increasing buffer sizes for more parallel processing will inherently increase latency. And if you're not dealing with massive buffers, then you're just shipping data over to the GPU for no good reason.

Re: ReactOS

#38

Post by ocdtrekkie »

blendergeek wrote: post #35
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability, plus the fact that it doesn't really damage the value of the original Windows platform, means it's probably a very easy case of fair use. Android isn't fair use, is a massive commercial endeavour, and has obliterated the value of mobile Java, while breaking interoperability with Java. Oracle winning the case will not be ki…

> The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability So, if ReactOS ever becomes useful, it will be illegal to use it for commercial purposes?

Not necessarily. It might be problematic for ReactOS to try to market their software commercially, but not for someone downloading it to use it commercially. (The latter of which is governed solely by ReactOS' own license, which takes no issue with that.)

The first thing to understand about fair use is that it applies to copyright infringement, so first, someone has to complain about the infringement and then you utilize fair use as a defense. And second, that fair use has some guidelines/rules to test whether or not fair use should apply, but they are open to some interpretation.

So it wouldn't be "illegal" to commercialize ReactOS... but it'd probably make it a lot harder for ReactOS to use fair use as a shield going forward, because it would weaken their case on one of the pillars of the fair use test.

Re: ReactOS

#39

Post by jupp0r »

Jaruzel wrote: post #19

I'm saddened a little bit to see stuff like theming has been built. I was hoping that ReactOS would stick with the Windows 2000 look and feel. I also think that with the limited resources they have, the project team would be better focusing on improving compatibility, over shiny desktop effects. That said... I firmly believe there is a place for ReactOS. Eventually, XP will fail to run on new hardware, and when that…

> else we'll endlessly repeat ourselves rewriting the same programs over and over again

Doing this is ok. We are also rewriting the same books all over again. Knowledge is forgotten and reinvented and rediscovered. You see this in computer science and programming all the time, but also in other fields. Rather than the programs themselves, preserving the concepts and learnings is much more important. Don’t get me wrong, I think vintage computing is great, but we shouldn’t necessarily solve todays problems with it.

Re: ReactOS

#40

Post by curtis3389 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #19

I'm saddened a little bit to see stuff like theming has been built. I was hoping that ReactOS would stick with the Windows 2000 look and feel. I also think that with the limited resources they have, the project team would be better focusing on improving compatibility, over shiny desktop effects. That said... I firmly believe there is a place for ReactOS. Eventually, XP will fail to run on new hardware, and when that…

It's really saddening if you've been following the project for years. They had some good progress back when the Russian government got interested in ReactOS, but lately they seem to just be doing webdev stuff not directly related to improving ReactOS.

To the ReactOS devs: what's the deal with the last couple years of GSOC projects? Why is there little to no work going on to improve compatibilty?

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