ReactOS Now Runs Abiword

martijn-s writes "Reactos will now run, amongst other programs, AbiWord, IrfanView and its own Explorer clone. Screenshot here. I keep getting amazed by the quality of the code that is coming out of this project..."

Comments

Re:ReactOS

[ComputerSlicer23]

Remember the goals here. First, it's they are trying to be binary compatiable with Windows, so applications and drivers will work exactly the same.

In particular the version of Windows they are working on is old, and has been EOL'ed. So you can no longer get support for it. It'd be novel to have a version that was fully compatible, and you could have the source to keep up to date with bug fixes.

Second, they aren't trying to be like Wine. The Wine project is orders of magnitude harder then ReactOS (in some ways). Wine is attempting to make a translation layer from Win32 calls into a Posix/UNIX/Linux environment. That's a whole heck of a lot harder in a number of ways. Things are set absolutely in stone, and can't be changed. On top of all that, at points they get stuck because they are attempting to emulate kernel space functionality in a userspace application a lot of the time.

ReactOS, can make map kernel space things to kernel space things. They can map user space things to user space things. They already have the entire design, and a known model to follow. That's a lot easier then Wine in terms of implementation. Wine is attempting to live withing a much harder set of constraints then ReactOS. However, ReactOS does have to actually implement an entire OS (so it might be a wash). I know I'd rather try and make ReactOS go, then attempt to make Wine work the way it does.

Finally, part of the reason Wine has so many problems, is it started out as a Win3.1 or 3.11 tool, doing 16-bit applications. Now it's moved on to covering a half dozen versions of Windows (at least that many). They also support multiple platforms, and are attempting to be reasonable portable.

The other thing I'll be interested to see is if the ReactOS guys can manage to make it run on MIPS, Sparc, x86, x86-64, Alpha, and any other random platform you can think of. It'd be interesting to see what all they can come up with.

Kirby

Repost of a previous comment:

[truefluke]

Some others have asked the same question as others have here: Essentially: "Why Bother?"

Here's the URL of my answer (a comment), (the comment)... from an article preceeding slashdot's posting by several days... I'll even paste it (my reply) for you if you're adverse or too lazy bother to visiting signalnine.com...

I still think the POTENTIAL for having a 'free' platform to EASILY port your code to is a good thing. We have no idea what might become of Windows (as we know it) once Longenhurden manifests. This project, I think, offers a small amount of comfort to businesses (think enterprise and small biz, too) who have invested exorbitant amounts of programmer-time and dollars on in-house, 'vertical applications'. They may not need the lastest whiz-bang Microsoft 'features' (that MS says we can't do without). Even if they can't implement all of say, DirectX for gamers; or .Nyet, (I say this because of the potential of land-mine-infested patents...c'mon you KNOW MS isn't benign, ADMIT IT!), running a 'cheap' Delphi application that does your check processing/imaging on NT 4 or Win2k is a VALID REASON for this effort ('what we have right NOW works just FINE, thank you'). There might yet be good cause to dread at what's coming up on the horizon. Just my 2 cents. Was that rambling? I tried to write something lucid and coherent. Sorry if I failed. I'm very tired as I write this.