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ReactOS Updates

reactos.org

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61–70 of 142 posts

Re: ReactOS Updates

#61

Post by cies »

ducktective wrote: post #44
johnchristopher wrote: post #5

ReacOS is a testament to how solid were Windows 2000/XP's UI for everyday tasks. I wouldn't mind being back in a Windows env/shop with ReactOS.

I think you might enjoy Xfce from the GNU/Linux world.

A KDE desktop has about the same resource consumption as XFCE but with lots more features/maintainers. And there exists a KDE win95ish theme:

https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1253201

With the Redmond or Chicago95 theme for GTK, those apps also look in place in case you need them.

For truly a low resource usage desktop I look at LXQt. Same base lib as KDE, namely Qt, which is apparently a lot lighter on the resources than GTK. Not sure if it is ready yet these days.

Re: ReactOS Updates

#62

Post by anthk »

johnchristopher wrote: post #5

ReacOS is a testament to how solid were Windows 2000/XP's UI for everyday tasks. I wouldn't mind being back in a Windows env/shop with ReactOS.

Ditto with the 2.4x/2.6x kernels on Linux/ FreeBSD 4.x and KDE3 on top, with the first release of X.org. I am more like a Fluxbox + ROX guy, but if I had to choose a DE, KDE3 was rock solid and featureful, and you could disable Artsd just fine, dmix and OSS4 on earch respective systems worked well otherwise.

Re: ReactOS Updates

#63

Post by MikusR »

pizza234 wrote: post #57
jmkni wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the code for XP leaked a while ago? Could the ReactOS developers learn how things work from it?

If you're asking if they are formally allowed to do it, the answer is definitely no. If though, you're asking if they "can" in very generic terms, yes, certainly - as a matter of fact, this has been a large controversy of ReactOS. There are no certainties, as everybody has their own side of the story. An MS developer, Axel Rietschin, publicly expressed his opinion that there are wholesale ripped off (low-level) funct…

This talk was posted in that thread https://youtu.be/2D9ExVc0G10

Re: ReactOS Updates

#64

Post by userbinator »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #32
chungy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real shame that Microsoft has seen fit to try to hide the ability to use the classic theme in Windows 8/10. There are ways to enable it again, but they tend to break on every update... The classic Windows 2000 theme has just the perfect balance of looking good, being totally usable, and not being overtly flashy.

The classic theme doesn't use DWM sadly (at least it didn't in Windows 7, I assume it still true in 10). So it doesn't just change appearance but also how it performs: DWM offloads compositing from the CPU to the GPU.

The classic theme is simple enough that it doesn't need GPU assistance (besides the usual 2D acceleration); and you get a noticeable decrease in latency from it:

http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/dwm_latency.html

Re: ReactOS Updates

#65

Post by rakoo »

hnlmorg wrote: post #39
philjackson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lofty goals.

Indeed but it does provide direct value to the open source community even when it fails in the more ambitious end goal. For example the ReactOS and WINE devs do collaborate a fair amount. I've also read that a fair number of ReactOS developers have been recruited by Microsoft over the years. So even if the project itself never reaches feature parity, it's still a strong advert to put on ones CV.

If ReactOS is stable enough, it can also be an alternative for all the places where a very specific software runs on a very specific Windows edition, without having to redevelop the application (think ATMs or specialized displays)

Re: ReactOS Updates

#66

Post by mhd »

cies wrote: post #60
mhd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with many things, I think from a pure UI perspective every Windows/Office release made things worse. Win95 was pretty solid, even improved on a few things that they took from the state of art at that time (Nextstep, Classic Mac, OS/2). The Taskbar being a good example. I'm still not sure that the move from actual buttons on a button bar to just a flat series of icons was right, and many such changes happened after…

> Win95 was pretty solid Win98SE was the peak IMHO. Nowadays I like KDE/Qt on Linux.

Note that I was only talking about the uniformity of the UI here. Stability-wise, every DOS Windows was pretty bad.

Win98SE's toolbar were those big mozilla-ish ones, right, with both text and icon and no button border? Other than that, I can't remember anything distinguishing about the 98 UI. Were gradient in the window bars introduced with 98 or SE?

Re: ReactOS Updates

#67

Post by afavour »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #52
ducktective wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might enjoy Xfce from the GNU/Linux world.

I agree 100%, but you can go further. Like, all the way: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

Just looking at it I'm struck by how difficult it is to get the small details right. I don't even know exactly what's wrong but the spacing at the top and bottom of the title bar text is visibly wrong, and the menu bar is too high?

I don't say it to be needlessly negative, it just amazes me how difficult this stuff can be. And I don't think I could actually use this, it would drive me insane for reasons I can't really justify.

Re: ReactOS Updates

#69

Post by londons_explore »

What is ReactOS's endgame?

It seems they will never have enough resources to become more popular than windows.

And they will never manage to become the desktop OS of choice over Linux or Mac either.

It seems to sit in an odd place with only a tiny userbase and no real goal, permanently playing catchup.

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