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

reactos.org

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

#161

Post by jhall1468 »

andreiw wrote: post #73
bartread wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've been confused too. The website itself doesn't help: no "About" or "What is ReactOS?" in the main nav. I ended up looking it up on Wikipedia to find out what it is: an open source OS that is intended to be binary compatible with Windows. This does actually ring a bell for me - I seem to remember mention of it very early in the century. That perhaps cuts to the heart of the issue: it's been going as a projec…

I bet in 20 years no one will know what ReactJS even is, but ReactOS very much will preserve NT regardless of Microsoft’s successes. ReactOS is a usable Windows NT 6+ clone, with kernel ABI ( driver ) compat, that runs real software. What are you comparing it to, to be able to qualify the speed of its development?

There are hundreds of millions of lines of ReactJS in production today and hundreds of millions more coming. If you think 20 years from now all that is going to be re-written I've got a bridge to sell you.

JQuery is 11 years old now. ReactOS is a goal and nothing more. Nobody is using it right now because it's barely usable outside of a VM, and even then it's software compatibility is smaller than WINE, let alone Windows.

ReactOS is a cool project, but your comments are bordering on delusional.

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

#162

Post by bad_user »

pavs wrote: post #153
bad_user wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Linux did succeed by being better than other Unixes in ways that count on the server side. And on the desktop it took a backseat to MacOS for similar reasons.

Have you tried installing MacOS on non-apple hardware? Not sure I understand the comparison. MacOS shines as long as you are within Apple walled garden, while I personally like MacOS, I know plenty of users who like Apple hardware but not the OS. Windows or Most Linux distro doesn't have any such limitation and will work out of the box 90%+ of the time.

I am not going to dispute your claims, MacOS does not run on non-Apple hardware.

What I am saying is that many people that would have been Linux users are now MacOS users. And one of those people is me.

I was a hardcore Ubuntu / Debian fan, but then got a MacBook Pro from the company I worked for in 2014. After moaning about it for a while, I'm now a convert. Initially it was because of the hardware, as I love Retina displays for example.

My younger self wouldn't believe what I'm about to say, but things break a lot on the Linux desktop and I don't have the patience for that kind of crap anymore. Not sure how it is nowadays, but back when I was using it, the presence of an Nvidia graphics card meant any upgrade could break your setup. Which isn't acceptable given Nvidia's popularity.

Many times it isn't Linux's fault of course. Surely you can't blame Linux for Skype not working, but the general availability and quality of apps is a big problem. Also I agree that you can't expect Linux to work flawlessly on all laptops and some research is needed for a good experience. Thinkpads are in general good and some Dell models too. But this information is scattered all over the place and translates in even more time lost.

Go to any conference and you'll see a majority of people with MacBooks. Those people could have been Linux users instead. They were Linux users only a few years back.

I'm not saying that I'll never use Linux anymore. I keep using it on the server-side and I might be back to a Linux laptop someday, due to Apple's newfound hostility to power users.

But just an FYI, the freedom argument doesn't really win me over. If all other things are equal, I prefer the open source solution of course, but I've got work to do, bills to pay, projects to finish and a family to take care of, so until Linux improves to the point where I can do those things without wasting time, I'll stay on MacOS.

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

#163

Post by jhall1468 »

jwilk wrote: post #21
wensley wrote: post #18

Seen ReactOS pop up a few times and always thought it was something to do with the Facebook Javascript library. This is really amazing, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Blame Facebook for poor name choice. ReactOS is much older than React, the JS library.

Lots of products have similar names, that doesn't make ReactJS a poor choice. One is a frontend framework and one is an operating system. The naming isn't the reason he wasn't aware of ReactOS... the fact that it's a very small community is why he wasn't aware of it.

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

#164

Post by petecox »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #96
mgummelt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would one use ReactOS over Wine? I read this page: https://www.reactos.org/wiki/WINE , but it didn't really provide an answer. I understand that ReactOS doesn't require Linux as a dependency, but is that a significant win?

ReactOS is meant to be a drop-in solution. Just install it over your existing Windows installation and keep using your machine like nothing has changed. That's the goal anyway.

Yes, if it installs correctly* on bare metal then one can boot to an explorer-like shell in a matter of seconds without going through a Linux desktop.

But I can see an obvious use case - testing. Customer reports an error but you can't reproduce it on your company's Windows development machines. I was able to reproduce a couple of bugs that way with wine and I imagine it could be handy running under ReactOS.

* I've only ever tried it in a VM.

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

#165

Post by smt88 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #134
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> * 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.*

Given Microsoft's mostly successful effort to make Windows more friendly to the user, I find it hard to believe any of these people have extensive experience with Windows 7+

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

#166

Post by 1k2ka »

eccp wrote: post #127
robertAngst wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like what Linux is trying to do, but I havent been satisfied with desktop usage. Ubuntu server with LAMP is the greatest thing of all time, but desktop Linux has disappointed me over the nuances like mouse acceleration settings, netflix not working natively, etc...

Not sure what you mean with "Netflix not working natively" but on Linux you just need either Chromium or a recent version of Firefox (maybe not the ERS version) and enable it to play DRM content. It just works.

That hasn't always been the case, perhaphs he tried it a few years ago when you had to have silverlight.

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

#167

Post by jordache »

ams6110 wrote: post #141
dogma1138 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The POS is very much in the PCI zone, the PED and card readers will be certified separately.

If the POS doesn't touch card data how would it fall under PCI?

If the pos is system is regarded similarly as a cc accepting website that proxies cc data to an endpoint, then the os shouldn't be a variable of pci compliance

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

#168

Post by Jaruzel »

gambiting wrote: post #80
richard_todd wrote: post #74

One day when Windows drifts too far away from its golden age functionality, it will be great if ReactOS can fill the gap. However, I feel like MS could one-up them overnight by providing a sandboxed 32-bit XP VM as part of current windows. We’d get back DOS support and compatibility with old programs would be better. Call it Windows Subsystem for Windows or whatever. That would also pave the way to removing a lot of…

It was already a thing in Windows Vista - at least in Enterprise, you could download a "windows xp " compatibility package, right click on any application and start it in windows XP - it would silently start XP in the background and render the app the same way as a native Vista app, while running on the XP kernel in the background. I have no idea if it exists in newer versions of Windows however.

No it doesn't, unfortunately.

The best option they suggest is moving it to a VM under Windows 10's Hyper-V:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/1f...

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

#169

Post by tinus_hn »

fluxsauce wrote: post #9
iforgotpassword wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed a great read to catch up with the project. > Talking about the notification tray, due to Ged’s work, icons of killed and finished process are now automatically removed, even when apps crash. This is something that Windows doesn't even provide with Win10, and many Windows users may have noticed. Made me chuckle. This has bothered me since forever. It seemed like such a low hanging fruit to fix, I wonder why Mic…

> I wonder why Microsoft never did. I'm assuming it's because of the size of the codebase, available engineering resources, return-on-investment calculation, and a business prioritization of new features over refinement. Most engineers can look at their own work or codebase and think, "well, that's a bit shit but it works well enough." I can't imagine their backlog. I'm sure it's lurking in an issue queue somewhere.

The notification area API sucks because of considerations made 20 years ago. The icons aren’t windows, the application just sends bitmaps to show and is manually notified if you hover over or click on an icon.

Explorer can’t tell if the app connected to an icon crashed without polling or other tricks which Microsoft probably wants to avoid. But it can tell if you move the mouse over them and it can’t send the messages to the application.

Also the notification area with a million icons is bad UI that I can imagine Microsoft not wanting to invest in. They tried to discourage its use by hiding most of the icons all the time.

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

#170

Post by eitland »

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.

My HP laptops have also had zero problems running Linux for years.
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