Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a ton of shared code between Wine and ReactOS. They are rather complementary.
Only 5%
One is an operating system and the other is a Win32 compatibility layer for *nix. I'd say 5% is a lot.
ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
71–80 of 178 posts
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree, but with a disclaimer: I have a feeling the biggest part of Windows' marketshare 20 years from now will be Windows Server Core instances (running on Azure and elsewhere), with "Windows as PC software" no longer contributing much-at-all to the bottom line, and possibly made entirely free. Business workstations (everything currently running Windows Enterprise) will run something-or-other-that-doesn't-matter that…
Apple is a hardware company, too.
They kind of have to be. They forbid using their OSes on non-Apple hardware.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO the nixes have a far superior CLI, but Windows' GUI is (at least pre-Metro, i.e. Win32 desktop) superior to the many disjoint alternatives that the Linux/BSD/OS X/Solaris/etc. world has. Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 and all apps have basically identical look-and-feel (except for those that go out of their way to reinvent the standard GUI elements, but in my experience this is mu…
> Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 No, Windows has Qt, Gtk and all the others, too. Virtually any regular user Windows install has 2-5 Qt apps on it. And Windows has been infamous for apps reinventing standard UI elements with skinned monstrosities.
It's been about 5 years since I was a regular Windows user, but I can't think of a single Qt app I used on a regular basis. Care to name some examples?
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#74A serious question: When will we see a truly new OS built from the ground up? If there is a space where there seems to be little innovation it is in the space of new OS paradigms. Flavors of Windows or Linux - are there really any commercially ready alternatives today or in the very near future?
How about an operating system that doesn't execute native code directly anymore. No Segfaults. All programs live in the same VM space.
It's pretty much dead now, but Microsoft Research had a project called Singularity (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/). It's an entire OS implemented in Spec#, which is a subset of C# + Code Contracts. It was built so that contracts between programs could be statically verified when compiled, allowing applications to all run in the kernel's address space.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#75A serious question: When will we see a truly new OS built from the ground up? If there is a space where there seems to be little innovation it is in the space of new OS paradigms. Flavors of Windows or Linux - are there really any commercially ready alternatives today or in the very near future?
How about an operating system that doesn't execute native code directly anymore. No Segfaults. All programs live in the same VM space.
Isn't that kind of what Android does?
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people (like me) have invested a lot of effort learning how to use Windows. Some of those aren't particularly interested in technical superiority. The just want to use a computer in the sufficiently good way that they already know. Personally, I find Linux difficult to approach, because of the overhead involved in just getting back to my current level of proficiency. If I needed to learn it for a job, I would. I…
Could you give your opinion on Win8/8.1/Metro/Modern ? How would you rate its effect on your proficiency?
My situation is almost identical to recursive. I upgraded to Windows 8, right when it came out. Hated the jarring dual interface. But the only thing I had to do was install Classic Shell[0]. And I was back to the familiar Windows. Practically nothing else changed from the UI perspective. The same with Windows 10 as well. I'm addicted to the Win32 based Start menu and the ability to right click files and folders from search results. So I installed Classic Shell over the new Metro based Start Menu and everything is back to normal again. Plus, I don't miss out on the speed and security improvements.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft already kinda went open source, unintentionally :) http://www.opennt.net/ interesting thread documenting start of OpenNT project http://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=33250 from broken code base that would not compile to booting ~Windows 2003 compiled from source.
What's the license of that?
The license seems to be "very illegal", as this is a fork of the NT4 source code leak.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 No, Windows has Qt, Gtk and all the others, too. Virtually any regular user Windows install has 2-5 Qt apps on it. And Windows has been infamous for apps reinventing standard UI elements with skinned monstrosities.
It's been about 5 years since I was a regular Windows user, but I can't think of a single Qt app I used on a regular basis. Care to name some examples?
I am a regular Windows user (split between OSX and Windows, actually, but Windows gets used on a daily basis) and I can't think of a single Qt app I use on a regular basis now. Actually, with my current workflow, I can't think of a Qt or GTK app that I use on a regular basis on either platform.
I guess Wireshark's Qt and it gets used occasionally. But most of the cross-platform Qt and GTK stuff I used to install (Pidgin and GIMP immediately come to mind) I haven't even installed on a machine in ages. I've moved to native alternatives for a lot of the stuff I run, and what cross-platform applications I do run (Chrome, Sublime, etc.) tend to implement UIs with the native toolkit, since that's a much better experience on non-Linux platforms.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead of Qt, Gtk, and all the others, Windows just has Win32 No, Windows has Qt, Gtk and all the others, too. Virtually any regular user Windows install has 2-5 Qt apps on it. And Windows has been infamous for apps reinventing standard UI elements with skinned monstrosities.
It's been about 5 years since I was a regular Windows user, but I can't think of a single Qt app I used on a regular basis. Care to name some examples?
Skype might be the most popular.
Re: ReactOS, a 17-year quest for an open-source Windows, has a new release candidate
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I understand when people say the PC is dying is not that people will not touch a desktop or laptop at all in the foreseeable future but rather that the growth in sales will be much sharpernwith phones and tabletsbthan with desktop and laptop devices. They're not making broad, futuristic predictions. They're just trying to make sense of the market. The fact that Apple released a whole line of iPads kindnof shows…
Moore's Law is slowing down, and PCs and laptops are having longer effective lifetimes. I've got an eight year old laptop that's still serviceable - actually runs better with Windows 10 than it did with the Vista that came on it. It's not obsolescence every eighteen months any more. That's where phones are now. In a few years, they'll mature, and it'll be how VR goggles or the next gewgaw are killing the PC. Meanwhil…
Which is exactly the point I (the parent comment of this thread) was trying to make: The desktop/laptop (which I described using the term computer in my original post) market is declining. Not because they aren't used anymore, but because I don't need to replace them anymore.