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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

#131

Post by mastazi »

DEFCON28 wrote: post #126
robertAngst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things >It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive >Adoption is slow but exponential. Today is the first day I learned about ReactOS and I'm excited. I can program and I have money. If people can find value in it, adoption will grow.

Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.

> Windows 10 is good

Did Linux succeed because other UNIXes were bad?

In my opinion, the reason why we need ReactOS is independent from whether Windows 10 is good or not.

And yeah, I agree besides the privacy issues, Win 10 is pretty good

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

#132

Post by bbernoulli »

bitL wrote: post #66
Lammy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you were trying to activate the OEM key on your netbook using retail media.

Yes, that's the case. Unfortunately, ASUS didn't provide installation media, just recovery media, which only works for their 4GB/12GB SSD combo and was failing operation when I tried it on a new SSD. So I tried regular XP Home ISO, but was out of luck.

It is possible to create an OEM install disc.

I've done it once in the past and it wasn't super complicated. It looks like it might be harder to find the oembios files now, but I bet you can still accomplish this if you're determined.

https://superuser.com/questions/539714/windows-all-oem-activ... has some details that could get your pointed in the right direction

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

#133

Post by swiley »

wincy wrote: post #130
DEFCON28 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.

It’d be good if it didn’t have all the damned spam baked in with non obvious ways to remove it. I got so mad the FIFTH time windows 10 pro installed Bubble Witch Saga and Candy Crush on my system. After seeing that I really want to save up and buy only Macs from now on.

Why not just run a FOSS OS?

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

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> Users won't want to work with a Windows from a decade ago. Not only that but it'll have bugs and no support.

Depending on the age group, I guess. 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.

If I know that ReactOS had a good chance of running most regular Windows applications, I'd install it on my mother's laptop in a heartbeat, and she would love to see the familiar, lightweight OS.

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

#135

Post by andreiw »

Koshkin wrote: post #57
snvzz wrote: post #54

The USB support isn't quite there yet (major rework didn't make it this release) but otherwise this is a pretty good release with massive progress in actual usefulness.

For why USB is hard, see http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/ .

Ugh. This website saved my ass trying to make HID devices work on top of the completely non-conforming Linaro DwUsbHostDxe driver (look at https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg/commits/master/Dri... for a laugh). I did end up having to hit the USB spec in the end, but it's a legit resource to get a birds-eye view of the whole USB1 and USB2 thing. It doesn't make USB simpler, but sure makes it more approachable.

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

#136

Post by kbenson »

DEFCON28 wrote: post #126
robertAngst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things >It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive >Adoption is slow but exponential. Today is the first day I learned about ReactOS and I'm excited. I can program and I have money. If people can find value in it, adoption will grow.

Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.

It is good. The privacy concerns are real though.

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

#137

Post by zitterbewegung »

swiley wrote: post #133
wincy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d be good if it didn’t have all the damned spam baked in with non obvious ways to remove it. I got so mad the FIFTH time windows 10 pro installed Bubble Witch Saga and Candy Crush on my system. After seeing that I really want to save up and buy only Macs from now on.

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.

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

#138

Post by Panino »

> Several bugs have been squashed in the ReactOS CC and Freeloader, allowing it to boot in 96MB hardware (smaller RAM need than our 0.4.7 release).

This is an impressive update when most projects, and not necessarily wrongly, always move in the opposite direction. Good to see.

As a free Unix user I'm primarily interested in ReactOS in order to test certain Windows things such as cwrsync over ssh. I tried installing ReactOS about a month ago but didn't have the right hardware to make it through the installer. I will definitely try again.

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

#139

Post by andreiw »

So I'm a ReactOS fanboi, but... but...

- You need to fix your flaccid dev community. Your forums have a terrible S/N ratio. IRC may be great and all, but I don't see any hard documentation behind any design discussions or development. I do see crazy shite like "can I run ReactOS on Playstation 2". The forums make your project seem dead, which it clearly isn't.

- You need to fix your flaccid dev community. It needs a larger presence. It needs to be tangible (who is doing what? who are the people? do you have conferences?)

- You need to fix your flaccid dev community. There is a bunch of really useless, out-of-date, confusing and out-right self-inconsistent information on building ROS, and the Git move didn't help (but kudos on the move, it is long overdue). I've tried 4-5 times to do something, but the directions I followed on Win, Ros or Linux all ended up breaking somewhere.

- You need to fix your attitude problems (or your forums). There are people asking reasonable questions, who get actively or passively aggressive answers. Not good.

- You need to fix your toolchain problems. This whole SEH thing is getting out of hand. Does Clang support SEH yet? It might - https://clang.llvm.org/docs/MSVCCompatibility.html. So maybe you need to bail on GCC, or maintain your own fork of it (yes, it's ridiculous that GCC still doesn't have SEH support, and the patents have long expired).

- You need to get a grip on x64 support. Your toolchain problems cannot be a gate (and you can clearly use MSVC for building... so...). IA32 support is great and all, but needs a back seat to x64.

- You need to get a grip on UEFI booting (note UEFI booting does not /necessarily/ mean you need improved ACPI support, in practice)

- SMP?

- Forget Xbox, NewWorld PowerMacs (those were BE anyway) and 32-bit Arm chips (which outside of the Pi are too varied and too few). Targeting 64-bit Arm chips does make sense, though, now that Microsoft has released a client build of Win 10 on laptops and an Arm server vendor demoed Windows Server at OCP'18 (http://www.opencompute.org/assets/Uploads/18150J-Ampere-PPT-...). You will need UEFI and reasonable ACPI support to support ARM64. You can target SBSA and SBBR compliant systems and this will give support for the entire server ecosystem (and qemu VMs, har har).

- You might wish to minkernel-ize ROS as well, so you can boot without a GUI.

- You might wish to update Wiki (and build a list of links to relevant pages) for active subprojects.

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

#140

Post by gregmac »

DEFCON28 wrote: post #126
robertAngst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things >It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive >Adoption is slow but exponential. Today is the first day I learned about ReactOS and I'm excited. I can program and I have money. If people can find value in it, adoption will grow.

Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.

..once you fix a few things [1]:

> This Windows 10 Setup Script turns off a bunch of unnecessary Windows 10 telemetery, bloatware, & privacy things. Not guaranteed to catch everything. Review and tweak before running. Reboot after running. Scripts for reversing are included and commented.

[1] https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1

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