121–130 of 142 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not that my hopes are very high in that regard, as Linux and the BSDs didn't manage to do that either, despite having most of the technology and even doing some half-hearted attempts (CORBA was a part of early GNOME)… D-BUS has taken up that role, but it doesn't get as much as COM/UWP, which many still don't realize that since XP the large majority of new Windows APIs are only available via COM, with a possible add…
DBUS would probably be closer to DCOM or even the Amiga's ARexx ports. Granted, with that plus XEmbed, you could get a lot of the benefits without an explicit object model/component system, but I haven't seen that done a lot in action. Linux users mostly go for 70s shell/pipes to cobble together parts. Better than nothing, but man, such wasted opportunities (and even something that doesn't require Lisp/Smalltalk/Ober…
Linux/BSD have the tooling, yet it is ChromeOS and Android that reap the benefits of such component based APIs.
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.
Also: If Windows starts getting real ugly with forced telemetry, cloud service integration, and deprecation of Win32 apps, ReactOS can provide a way to continue using "Windows" in a productive manner without the negative side effects of ad-surveillance and forcing you to upgrade your PC every X interval like a phone.
Hopefully Microsoft doesn't make any other app become basically unremoveable like Internet Explorer and Cortana.
Bryan Lunduke on Youtube and LBRY, has as a wishful hope for the future of ReactOS. He imagines if Microsoft with their whole "We One of his arguments is that either method would take minimal effort from Microsoft, and would show their love of Open Source. The code could be made available as is, and allow the ReactOS project to continue burden of development/support. His second major argument is that Microsoft would…
Windows 98 could still be in used in some places for some obscure reason? Especially when you consider Windows ME and 2000 include many of the Windows 98 component. Open Sourcing those would create some security and legal problems.
Although I do wish they could start with open sourcing the Kernel.
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.
- Windows has gone very stagnant IMO. Sure they might have a bunch of new apis for 8/10, but... are there killer apps for them?
- Windows is no longer in growth phase. COVID computer demand surge is a temporary measure, and will probably be followed with a long shallow valley
- ARM is coming on the desktop, and it's going to destroy Windows backwards compatibility. That creates a tentpole point for ReactOS to target for compatibility, and likely something that, like Dosbox, microsoft would de facto embrace to alleviate itself of pressures of backwards compatibility
So I think ReactOS could settle into the "backwards compatibility VM" that windows could (should) actively support so they can move onto a new processor architecture.
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.
I think with Windows 10 being the last version of Windows, ReactOS will eventually catch up. Also: If Windows starts getting real ugly with forced telemetry, cloud service integration, and deprecation of Win32 apps, ReactOS can provide a way to continue using "Windows" in a productive manner without the negative side effects of ad-surveillance and forcing you to upgrade your PC every X interval like a phone. Hopefull…
Windows 10 certainly isn't the "last version" of Windows in the sense you are thinking.
Even if there is no new version number, they could likely just drop that and call it "Windows" from now on. I haven't heard of any plans to discontinue desktop development.
It will just be constantly updated, as we are seeing it now.
Like the major UI revamp in the works codenamed 'Sun Valley', due later in 2021.
https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-sun-valley-ui-octo...
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.
I can think of some niche use-cases. For example, my mother owns a perfectly functional printer and spent quite a lot of money on ink cartridges, only to have the manufacturer refuse to provide drivers beyond Windows 7 (and never bothered supporting anything but Windows). React OS could allow her to continue using this otherwise functioning printer until she runs out of ink and cannot buy any more cartridges.
There are probably tons of other weird devices out there that are beyond their official EOL and require some previous version of Windows to continue to be used. There is also a lot of software that people depend on but which is either EOL or the original software vendor is defunct, and React OS can provide a compatible environment to run that software on regardless of what Microsoft chooses to do with more recent versions of Windows. It may seem crazy and there are probably a variety of security issues with running unsupported software, but for some people the risk will be worth it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The pretty and usable are usually conflicting goals. That's a pretty bold statement.
> That's a pretty bold statement. I use computers for 10-20 hours each day. I've come up with some pretty bold opinions based on actually wanting to improve efficiency of using computers. Someone else's ideas of aesthetics almost always conflicts with efficiently using the computer.
FWIW, as a general rule, I disagree: say you get to use two pieces of software with the same functionality, shortcuts et. al. for similar amounts of time, the first having 0 regard towards UI/UX, and the second having spent some time thinking about how it presents information and overall legibility. I'd be more than extremely surprised if most users couldn't possibly end up being more efficient using the second.
However, sure, making things pretty for the sake of it tends to impede on usability.
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…
> 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 that (culminating in the horror of the ribbon bar). To be fair, they've left the classic mode in. Right click the taskbar, then click 'taskbar settings', scroll to the bottom and there's a dropdown for 'combine taskbar buttons'. Change it to 'Never' for the classic mode…
Within a few Office and OS versions, that changed to first dropping the beveled edge, as we might realize that icons under the menu are buttons, and there would be less visual noise, then large buttons with icons + text, and finally getting into an incestous relationship with the menu and becoming ribbons.
(Although, I do the old-fashioned taskbar settings, too.)