New Open Source Windows-Compatible Operating System Released (github.com) 45
Red Hat product manager Pau Garcia Quiles (also long-time Slashdot reader paugq) spotted an interesting project on GitHub:
Free95, a new lean, Windows-compatible operating system is available from GitHub. In its current form, it can run very basic Win32 GUI and console applications, but its developer promises to keep working on it to reach DirectX and even game compatibility.
"Free95 is your friendly Windows Environment with an added trust of the open source community," according to its README file. (It's licensed under the GPL-3.0 license.) And in answer to the question "Why?" it responds "To remove Windows's bloat, and security problems. Being controlled by a large corporation is unsettling."
"It's still in-development of course," the developer post recently on Reddit, "and I'll appreciate anyone who'd like to contribute." In one comment they claim Free95 is "much more lightweight, simpler and faster than ReactOS." And looking to the future, they add "I might do DirectX stuff and make some games run. Or, what about DOOM?"
"Free95 is your friendly Windows Environment with an added trust of the open source community," according to its README file. (It's licensed under the GPL-3.0 license.) And in answer to the question "Why?" it responds "To remove Windows's bloat, and security problems. Being controlled by a large corporation is unsettling."
"It's still in-development of course," the developer post recently on Reddit, "and I'll appreciate anyone who'd like to contribute." In one comment they claim Free95 is "much more lightweight, simpler and faster than ReactOS." And looking to the future, they add "I might do DirectX stuff and make some games run. Or, what about DOOM?"
Free95 (Score:2, Funny)
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In the end, it's always a catch-up game. Wine is doing well IMHO with regards to that. Anyway, interesting project nevertheless but I wouldn't bet on it to seriously replace the original.
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I recall Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer being malware vectors more than Windows was alone. If this Windows compatible OS is used for games and non-Microsoft applications then I expect that the concerns of malware would be on par with most any other open source OS. I guess part of this depends on how closely the OS emulates the "real deal" Microsoft Windows OS. Perhaps I recall incorrectly but the malware got into Windows and spread because of features that were only peripherally related to making
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I think the problem with Win95 WRT to malware was that there was no user protections. Any program could do anything basically meaning anything you ran could completely compromise the system with no barriers.
Sure, Word would (at one point) run macros without asking putting Word documents at the same level as risk as executables (to a point), and other similar things.
But this was a completely 100% trusting environment with no user separation at its core. That was why malware thrived, no exploits needed to get
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At the core, yes, you are correct. I recall doing all kinds of things with DOS including Terminate and Stay Resident programs. It was pretty cool but yes, you are correct, at the core any program could access everything and do how it seemed pleased on any resources. There were no concept of memory access control, no concept of running as root, no such like things essentially.
With regards to that, IIRC, the 386 was the first Intel chip to come out with a dedicated PIN allowing such things that were taken for
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With regards to that, IIRC, the 386 was the first Intel chip to come out with a dedicated PIN allowing such things that were taken for granted on Unix system>
Intel 80286 had privilege levels, memory and hardware protection before the 386. There features were used by operating systems such as OS/2 1.x and Unix. I remember encountering an Unix System V Release 4 from AT&T for the 80286.
There was definitely an hardware limitation on Intel chip before the 386 to implement Unix on Intel chips
The main limitation of the 80286 was that memory was allocated as 64Kbyte segments and this made porting Unix software to it somewhat tricky. There was no 32-bit flat address space, although it could be emulated to a degree.
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Hey! Thanks for that! I didn't recall the 286 thing but I recalled the 386 fully did what was needed. Thanks again, very informative!
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I did a mistake, though. That Unix version I mentioned was actually for the 386. However there were multiple Unix versions for the 80286, including Xenix System III and System V, the SVR2-based Microport System V/AT (directly based on AT&T code) and others.
I'm not aware of any SVR3 or SVR4 Unix for the 80286, though. These versions seem to require at least a 386. Seems that at some moment AT&T decided to stop supporting the 80286.
Emulating Win32 not Win95 (Score:2)
Win95 was a malware vector and that was was 30 years ago. Please no more.
They are emulating the Win32 API, introduced by WinNT and shared by Win9x. You are reading too much into an unfortunate and misleading naming.
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You are reading too much into an unfortunate and misleading naming.
It made me think of the South Park episode Free Hat [wikipedia.org] where the kids advertised "Free Hat" (accidentally leaving off the trailing "s") to encourage people to come to their meeting to protest edits made to films prior to being re-released (like changing rifles to flashlights in E.T.) but people actually showed up thinking it was about freeing Hat McCullough from prison, who was convicted of murdering twenty-three infants. Of course, I'm not saying Windows 95 killed any infants ... but I'm not not saying tha
"More lightweight than ReactOS" (Score:2)
Yea wait until you get fucking DirectX going you'll be just as bloated.
Re:"More lightweight than ReactOS" (Score:4, Interesting)
This thing is basically Win NT 3.1 which in total used about 70MB or so of disk space (but around 100MB on MIPS
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What I remember from NT 3.1 was that it was slow as hell, despite not being bloated (yet).
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Why doesn't the dev use the leaked XP code to build a slimmed down XP? Or maybe he is?
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By and large NT 3.5x outperformed NT 3.1 on identical hardware. They optimized 3.5x a bunch and many people consider 3.51 to be the first "good" version.
As for using leaked XP code, that'd be an absolute nightmare from a licensing and legal perspective. I would expect Microsoft is constantly going over any project that claims to implement Windows features with fine toothed combs to make sure nobody has used leaked code. They've already plonked a couple projects like the kind of hilariously named OpenNT base
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LOL +1 funny, I rarely laugh that much nowadays reading Slashdot.
This will be great (Score:2)
Said no one ever. I want to install an entire OS just to run Widows apps individually without all the luxury of a full OS? WTF?
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I think Microsoft did this sort of thing with it cross compiled Mac OS apps in the 1990s. There was a library that was basically the MacOS API.
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"In its current form, it can run very basic Win32 GUI and console applications, but its developer promises to keep working on it"
It runs only a dos box and notepad, but the developer pinky promises to keep up the work! Which is typical US: deceptive marketing, lies and promises that will be broken any moment.
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The dos box is actually a very powerful and complex application. It's encouraging if the new OS has it. OTOH, it only uses a relatively small set of Win32 API functions.
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Re: This will be great (Score:2)
src/remarks.txt (Score:5, Funny)
Remarks
Kap Petrov:
I'd say this version's mouse polling system is buggy, it can fuck up from the keyboard, and because
of the polling nature, processes will not run unless mouse is being actively moved. In cavemen terms,
this version is fucking retarded.
Vincent392 (RE TO KAP):
Fuck, someone is gotta fix that.
Kap Petrov (RE TO VINCENT):
Surprise surprise, that's fucking me, because none of yall are fucking contributing shit.
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You should dig out the Linus rants from the early Linux' mailing lists.
DCOM? No thanks! (Score:2)
DCOM is a ready-made vector for intrusion and fragile components. If you're going to build a Windows "clone" that's more secure, skip DCOM support!
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DCOM? Is it the thingy that constantly fills up my event log with weird errors and makes my system act strange when I disable it? One of the MS' buggiest excrements, that's for sure.
Kind of like meatless meat (Score:3)
Once you get those veggie patties to taste just like the real thing, they're just as bad for you as the real thing.
By the time you copy enough of Windows functionality to make it run Windows software, you've also copied all the vulnerabilities to malware and tracking and everything else you didn't want in Windows in the first place.
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Isn't it possible to implement the Windows APIs free of Windows telemetry?
By the time you copy enough of Windows functionality to make it run Windows software, you've also copied all the vulnerabilities to malware and tracking and everything else you didn't want in Windows in the first place.
That's because much of the "Windows software" you mention is itself full of vulns and tracking and everything else, in the first place. Run a curated set of Windows software, and forget about MS Office, to have no problems.
If you intend to run MS Office, you may as well use true Windows. They're made for one another.
P.S. Early versions of Office are actually quite good. An Excel 4.0 running on this new OS would be a great thing.
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So WINE is full of vulnerabilities and tracking?
Your premise seems to be disproven by the fact that it's been done before without those issues. There is ReactOS as well.
Doomed. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sad to say that this project is doomed as an open source project.
The signs are obvious to anyone that know anything about open source projects:
* No offbeat acronym for a name
* No overly elaborate build system
* No absurd dependency list to compile it
* Not written in a niche language
* Doesn't depend on a specific compiler
* Aims to be compatible instead of insisting on incompatibilities to snub the original
The only thing they have going for them is having a terrible UI but I have no faith that they are going to keep it around as long as possible, continually adding more secret keyboard shortcuts that they expect every user to use.
At this point, I think the only way they can salvage this project is by rename it YAWAI (Yet Another Win32 API Implementation) which is both and acronym and potentially offensive and thus would ensure the survival of the project.
It's so tragic when you see open source projects that have such promise make such obvious mistakes.
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April first isn't for another 3 weeks. (Score:2)
I mean it is astonishing that this prodigy has been able to re-implement in basically a weekend what it has taken the Wine project three decades to accomplish.
Thank you AI coding assistant (Score:2)
I mean it is astonishing that this prodigy has been able to re-implement in basically a weekend what it has taken the Wine project three decades to accomplish.
Thank you AI coding assistant. :-)
Games (Score:2)
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>"Unless it can play Windows games like a champ, it's dead in the water."
Actually, there are many use cases for a free/FOSS MS-Windows clone that don't involve running games. But the point is still there. Few people actually *want* to run MS-Windows, they just want to run some application that runs under MS-Windows. They might also want to have some familiarity with what they have used in the past.
It is unlikely something like will ever run most MS-Windows programs without issues. And even if it coul
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My recollection with the early days of ReactOS was it was intended as much to enable using Windows drivers and underlying frameworks back when Linux and other options had much more limited hardware support, especially on the leading edge, as it was just for running Windows applications. Especially for stuff like graphics and wifi and DirectX where there was relatively limited support and being able to use vendor drivers and such would have been a big deal.
These days that's much less of a problem and stuff l
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Solitaire, Minesweeper and Freecell are particularly mandatory. Maybe Hearts too.
This is some kind of joke (Score:2)
Right issues (Score:2)
These projects needs too much human work, but MAYBE that could be softened through AI in next future, both in terms of reverse engineering and programming an alternative.
But I think the biggest issue here is right issues.
The only reason Microsoft is not actively prosecuting these efforts is because the low level of adoption of these projects. They are too lacking to be useful in most scenarios so they are not a problem for MS.
But in case they advanced to a point they become a real alternative to Windows, I
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They have lots of patents
Pretty much any patent that was in use when Windows Vista was first released has expired, so there's no risk in implementing anything from XP or ealier.
and it's expected lots of code coincidences, even if there isn't stolen code or too deep reverse engineering ends generating a decompiled code that's near a plagiary.
That's not how copyright works. In order to be copyright infringement, you have to copy the original work. That's why it uses the term "copy".
Anachronistic. (Score:2)
I remember getting excited about Wine and other "let's run Windows stuff on FOSS" attempts. Like, for instance, the official Corel Draw 9 for Linux, which was quite impressive and even came with the Corel Font Manager, a thing which Linux was desperately lacking at the time. (I still have the CDs, licence and all btw.). Anyway that was more than 20 years ago(!) and the need for this sort of thing has loooong since past.
These days there are more than enough games for Linux and some special case software asid
ReactOS (Score:2)
ReactOS attempts to accomplish the same thing as well, except it tries to go for full kernel compatibility so you can use drivers as well, because a big issue is device support.
Otherwise your best bet is doing Linux + Proton/WINE as thanks to Valve's involvement it's compatibility is rather remarkable.