ReactOS Revealed 280
reactosfanboy writes "DRM Hacker Alex Ionescu explained the internals of ReactOS in a recent talk. Ionescu indicates that ReactOS is nearly 100% binary and API compatible with the Windows 2003 kernel, and that they are aiming for full Vista compatibility. Ionescu attempted to demonstrate ReactOS but only succeeded in installing it after two BSoDs. This alone should make it clear that ReactOS is still not ready for prime time." In what may be a red flag for Microsoft's lawyers, ReactOS is described as "an environment identical to Windows, both visually and internally." Here are slides from Ionescu's talk (PDF), which might prove more useful than the video offered in various forms at over 450 MB.
Doubt microsoft would care (Score:2, Insightful)
Non-Vista-compatible version? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having begun the struggle with adapting application installers to Vista, I think I'd be more interested in a version of ReactOS that ISN'T Vista compatible.
Re:BSOD-OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the limited resources of the ReactOS team it's not even that bad. Even Microsoft had (serious) issues with pretty much every new Windows version presentation.
Re:WTF??? (Score:3, Insightful)
put aside the fact that the softwares you mentionned are emulators, not OS,
it would steal users from windows.
imagine, having an OS the same as windows, friendly for computer illiterate
need i explain more ?
memory footprint (Score:4, Insightful)
I want to know how much memory ReactOS takes up versus WindowsXP. Has someone run it who can trivially answer? Did these guys make a smaller, lighter windows?
Re:WTF??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doubt microsoft would care (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On the contrary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows is not nearly as unstable as the FUDDERS would like to make it seem.
Re:FUD - ReactOs is legal (Score:4, Insightful)
Except via patent claims, for which independent development is not an adequate defense.
Re:ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Application Compatibility - Wine can never offer as much compatibility as ReactOS. Since ReactOS actually shares Wine's code base, it is highly unlikely that ReactOS will have significantly better compatibility than Wine.
Speed - Wine, since it is an emulator, can never be as fast as ReactOS, a dedicated OS. This is usually advanced without any sort of benchmarks or other proof to back it up. First, Wine Is Not an Emulator, it is just an implementation of the win32 api. There is no technical reason why Wine couldn't be as fast as other "native" Linux APIs, such as QT or Gtk+. Furthermore, there have long been reports of Windows programs running faster on Wine than native Windows.
Driver Compatibility - ReactOS can use native Windows drivers. Projects like NdisWrapper [sourceforge.net] have shown that it is possible to use Windows drivers on Linux too, if enough people are interested. Of course, Linux already has drivers available for a great deal of hardware. There is also the huge issue of using binary drivers in an open source kernel. It still hasn't been settled whether or not this is ultimately a good or bad thing. However, it is generally accepted that open source drivers are much better than binary, and ReactOS would provide absolutely no motivation for hardware vendors to ever open their drivers, or even to target ReactOS as a platform.
User Interface Familiarity - Windows users would feel right at home, with virtually no learning curve. This ignores the fact that anyone who has been through Win 3.1 -> Win 9x -> Win XP -> Vista will know that Window's interface is anything but consistent, things move around and change quite a bit between major releases. Also, if one desired you could rework something like KDE to be VERY similar to Windows, I believe that there are already distro's who try to do this (such as Linspire). There are still differences, but not really significantly more than between Win 98 & XP.
Don't get me wrong, I think ReactOS is a pretty cool project, and it would be kind of neat to have an open source Windows clone, however as I said I can't really find much practical reason for it beyond the coolness factor. It seems like one would be better off just integrating Wine into Linux better. Please feel free to enlighten me. ;)
Re:BARF (Score:3, Insightful)
So instead of an emulation layer which is almost adequate for most tasks, but needs careful testing with anything you're planning on using in production because any action you try performing may or may not work as designed, we'll have a full blown OS which is almost adequate for most tasks, but needs careful testing with anything you're planning on using in production because any action you try performing may or may not work as designed.
Great. Thanks.
Re:On the contrary... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would almost agree with you, if only looking at a snapshot from about 2002 until 2006 during which I was no longer dealing with 9x and NT4 installations. Installation headaches were pretty commonplace prior to these years. Once hardware vendors had all gotten used to the ways of NT5, installing Win2K and XP became a total breeze. Rarely have I had trouble installing either operating system. They will choke occasionally on cheap and/or new hardware, but with typical stuff installation is usually a no-brainer.
And now Vista is upon us, and it's not detecting a lot of real obscure hardware, like say, MY CDROM DRIVE. WTF. Once again it's become hit and miss...or would be, if I chose to install Vista in production at this time.
Difficulty installing an OS isn't really a good measure of quality anyhow. I recently had a bad experience installing Ubuntu 6.05LTS to an array on an adaptec I2O controller. Rock solid once I got it fixed. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
Re:WTF??? (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't necessarily follow. Duplicating a broken API will retain some of the security problems designed into the original OS.
Old Hacker Rule (Score:3, Insightful)
With alpha or beta software, before giving a demo, test what you are going to do in private.
If it doesn't work, don't do it.
Too bad. The world would be a better place with ReactOS. What we need is a fat ass investor with loads of cash and a grudge against Microsoft to donate to this thing.
Linux has proven you can have a viable freeware OS. Now, while Vista makes everyones life miserable, there is an opening.
Re:On the contrary... (Score:2, Insightful)
software patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, in Europe we still don't have (enforcable) softwarepatents. Though it being an Open Source project, I'm not sure under what jurisdiction it falls.
But you make a good point: more proof that softwarepatents suck.
Re:On the contrary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BARF (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With no disrespect to the ReactOS developers... (Score:2, Insightful)
I know plenty of people who use the "Windows Classic" skin on XP, because that's what they're used to.
When MS updates its software, there are two types of changes, with different audiences: minor to moderate performance/security upgrades (which require most people to upgrade in order to still communicate with each other, i.e. MSO), and major interface upgrades, to cater to the magpies that will only buy the new version if it is shinier than the previous one.
Unfortunately, these interface "upgrades" require a certain degree of re-learning the same software. I would suspect that ReactOS, like OpenOffice.org, aims to cater to those people who want to be compatible with the rest of the world (who run the "updated" version), but who don't want to learn a new interface every time Microsoft chooses to impose a new one.
- RG>
Re:Still too much in the kernel (Score:3, Insightful)
So when they move to mimic Vista's kernel, this will all be moot then...
But at least they didn't put in a 16-bit subsystem.
Um, you act like an independent OS subsystem is a bad thing. The client/server kernel of NT is WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING, and also is part of why the NT kernel gets the respect it does in spite of the Win32 shorcomings of Windows. PS You do realize that even Win32 is just 'a' subsystem and could be replaced at anytime?
Windows clone? Why not go for OS X? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why clone a bad interface when you can clone a good one that many people would like to use?
Re:On the contrary... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Microsoft and Apple have held the marketplace hostage for so long, that they can get away with ignoring the demands of their users, which is the symptom of a market out of whack. I want to run OSX on a box I build, but I can't. I want to run Vista without DRM, but I can't. I can keep going like this for a long time. It's the lack of serious competition that has kept the entire desktop market moribund for decades now.
We need another player, simple as that. We need a well-financed company to get into the desktop operating system game and stay there for a solid decade. Then we'll start seeing products and features that we REALLY want, at reasonable prices. Until then, it's going to be this silly charade of Bill and Steve, who we're supposed to believe are competitors, when they're really just enabling each other to abuse their customers, playing to their business partners in the entertainment-industrial complex. They may have done something at one time to move the status quo forward, but in the last decade they've just been a couple of jackoffs, doing zip for you and me.
Re:Doubt microsoft would care (Score:3, Insightful)
mitigating lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On the contrary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Old Hacker Rule (Score:3, Insightful)
> and a grudge against Microsoft to donate to this thing.
Nobody with that sort of cash is likely to be stupid enough to piss it away without a little thought. Just what problem is ReactOS trying to solve?
Is it running Windows executables on a Free platform? Then just toss the money upstream to the Wine developers, they are making most of the progress anyway. Wine is already running major 3D games and the closed forks adding in closed/patented bits are even farther along.
A Free platform able to run Windows device drivers? Huh? That just doesn't make sense. A platform that depends on closed drivers intended for a different (even if related) platform has no future. Especially as closed platforms are going to DRM Hell. ReactOS isn't ever going to be able to run DRM device drivers so wave goodbye to video, sound and probably mass storage.
A Windows clone that doesn't cost anything? Ask a hundred Dell owners how much Windows costs, bet 99 of em say it was "free".
And remember, Linux went from a tool to learn about interrupt driven programming to a viable OS kernel in a year or so. Drop the GNU tools and X on and bang, an operating system was born. ReactOS has been struggling for years and doesn't have a working kernel yet and Wine isn't nearly as feature complete as GNU and X were to plunk atop it.
Remember also the chasing taillights problem. DosEMU did eventually have a 1.0 release. It even made it into a RedHat distro.... but was dropped because nobody gave a damn anymore. FreeDOS had it's 1.0 release even more recently.... and except for a few people nursing old industrial automation and some embedded folk, nobody cared anymore. 8086 hardware and DOS are far simpler designs than Win32 and aren't in constant motion. ReactOS never caught up to NT before XP shipped and are again trying to leapfrog to Vista without ever getting XP emulation stable. Anyone care to wager whether they will reimplement Vista's massive API before the next version lumbers forth from the bowels of Microsoft and moves the goalposts yet again?
Re:On the contrary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Protocol requires that I leap to the wrong conclusion immediately and rant on about that whilst also having a go at Microsoft.
Do you know nothing?
Re:On the contrary... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's highly misleading - going by release dates, Windows 2000 was released in 2000, and Vista in 2007, giving us 7 years (presumably the OP was talking about when he had to deal with them, which includes beta releases and people still using an old version).
That's the same timeframe which Mac OS has only offered a stable OS (things like memory protection), in the form of OS X.
Of course, talking of "entire history of" is irrelvant anyway, since versions previous to NT were different operating systems, just as classic Mac OS has no connection to Mac OS X other than the name and company producing it.