Steven Edwards On The Future Of ReactOS And Wine

Alex_Ionescu writes "WineHQ brings us the scoop on the latest developments in ReactOS, as well as on Steven Edward's excellent job on porting Wine to MingGW and linking the two platforms together. This is an interesting insight into the WINE and ReactOS project, and a must-read for anyone interested into the future of Windows-replacement projects like these."

Comments

Why clone Unix?

[jschottm]

Unix was cloned for a number of reasons. First, it's (or very similar clones) been used extensively in the teaching of college level OS courses (Lyons, Tanenbaum, et al), so when students decided to write their own, it was natural to model their OSes after what they'd learned. As has been beaten to death in the past few weeks, Minix was specifically designed to be small and compact so that students could understand it in a semester. How many versions of Windows is that true for? *BSD obviously came out of the education system, and Linux was written in response to Minix.

Second, Unix systems have been established a track record of power and reliability (yes, there have been very bad Unixes, and they tend to have been removed from the marketplace). Windows ... hasn't. It's gotten remarkably better, and a good deal of its problems are due to 3rd party drivers, but my well maintained W2K desktop and XP laptop still need to be rebooted every two or three weeks. And there's the never ending string of serious vulnerabilities. At an OS level, Windows has a lot of nice ideas. The problem is, most discussions about them seem to run, "They had a nice idea, but..."

Windows is changing rapidly, in ways that are likely to make programs incompatable with older versions (the better to force upgrades with, I'm sure). I'm sorry, but if after 7 years of work the project is almost within grasp of being able to use a DHCP client, I don't see any way they can keep up with Microsoft. If they want to work on it as a hobby and have fun doing so, more power to them. I just don't see it as being something overly useful. Screenshots of minesweeper (with poor graphics) aren't what I want to see. I want to see a version of Group Policies, Active Directory capability, and so on.

*BSD and Linux suceeded, not simply because of price, but because they were *better* in various ways than the competition. Microsoft has a tremendous software and driver collection, and has begun to do some really cool stuff. OS X has a simple UI that many people adore. What does ReactOS bring to the table, if it's three generations behind Microsoft? DR-DOS was cheaper and better (IMO) than MS-DOS, but Microsoft still ground it underneath their boots.

Re:Why clone Unix?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well from reading the article (please don't kick me off, I won't let happen again honest:) )
I would say two things
1) an open source code.
2) as part of thier developement process thier creating usefull tools and info to help developers of windows software port to linux, or even write code that easily ports from one to the other.
The reason Dr. Dos and other failed was in part do to the fact that it depended on income to succed and thus could go belly up financially. Much harder for an open source project do that.
Also Microsoft wrote code in thier apps that generated false error messages in some dos replacements, giving the false illusion that the dos replacement was buggy or incompatable. FUD wasn't used because microsoft was feeling sadistic, it was used because it worked.
Of course one of my favorite reasons for writing any open source/freeware code is 'why not?'

Mycroft

Re:Why clone Unix?

[burns210]

after 7 years, the infrastructure is almost there to use a dhcp client... but dhcp, is a layer 7 protocol, and that implies a LOT of stuff working below(in ip, tcp, etc...) and a lot of the OS working, for something as high-level as dhcp to work. if it was ping, then big deal, but dhcp implies a lot. Besides, the firt 60% is the hardest, just plain work that isn't fun... and it goes the slowest, but once that 60%, or whatever the magic tipping weight is, a lot of stuff just falls into place... it might take 10 years to achieve X, but once X works, that means Y and Z both work, and Z and X combine to make A, B and C all work...

it snowballs my friend. It is a slow rolling snowball, but it grows and grows and grows.

Re:Why clone Unix?

[Quattro Vezina]

What does ReactOS bring to the table, if it's three generations behind Microsoft?

Well, once ReactOS development gets to an advanced enough level, I'd be able to play some of my favourite games without having to boot into Windows.

I'm not as concerned with commercial viability as I am with the ability to run Windows programs without having to use a proprietary OS. Whether or not it's a commercial success is really irrelevant. Look at Linux--it's nowhere near as commercially viable as Windows (and I'm not bashing Linux here--I love Linux, and it's my primary OS), but it's still a great OS.

Of course, ReactOS will only become advanced enough if there's a community supporting it...people in the OSS community saying that the idea of a Windows clone is useless can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough people believe the concept is useless, and it gets abandoned, it will be useless. But it's a viable project, and shouldn't be discouraged.

Re:Why clone Unix?

[jschottm]

1. True. I find it more academically interesting that other groups are using/considering using the kernel with a different user environment than the concept of cloning Win NT. But I can't help but wonder if the effort would be better spent working on Wine or allowing Linux or FreeBSD to use Windows drivers. But as you said, why not? It's their time and their choice.

2. Open source may not need money to survive, but it does require "the itch" that causes the programmers to scratch. Remember, writing the software is the easy part. Testing the code and making it bulletproof is the hard part. I've seen many open source projects get 90% done and fall apart because they find that there just isn't that much consumer interest in it, and there wasn't the motivation to get over the hump of sitting there are 2 in the morning trying to track down that memory leak that seems to only happen every 27th time a function is called.

As far as DR-DOS, what makes you think that if ReactOS were to actually threaten MS, what makes you think they wouldn't squash them through use of FUD, patents, or other such measures? Given that MS Office is still 'the killer app' for offices, I doubt it would take much code to make it develop mysterious errors when running under ReactOS.

Other than the fun-for-the-programmers aspect, I'm still just not seeing the target market for this. With home users, either they need the absolute basic stuff (word processor, e-mail, spreadsheet, browser). I suspect that by the time that ReactOS is finished and stable, there'll be cheap Walmart or AOL branded Linux boxes that fill that role nicely. Home users looking to play games won't be interested, because modern games will be so far above what NT can handle. (I suspect that MS has more people working on DirectX alone than the entire ReactOS team.) And most business users will shy away from anything that's not heavily tested. My employer provides me with a copy of VMWare and WinXP, because it's far cheaper to purchase those than to have me burn hours futzing around with a first generation cloned OS.

So we're back to "why not," which I think is a better answer than, "why clone Unix?"

As cool as the concept of ReactOS is...

[Quattro Vezina]

...I can't help but worry that Microsoft is going to screw them over. I think that the more ReactOS develops, the more likely we'll see an immoral patent-infringement lawsuit from Microsoft against ReactOS.

He plans to start using it within a year.

[Politas]

That's the most remarkable thing I see. That this project is close enough to functional to become a developer's main OS.

That's a pretty big step.

Wonder how long before it's ready for gaming?

Re:put Wine out of its misery...

[Chaxid]

WINE works, there just aren't enough developers. It's pretty amazing that WINE works as well as it does, and has the debugging and porting tools required to make development very easy for even the least experienced C programmer.

Re:Why would you want to clone UNIX?

[bersl2]

I think you missed the point of asking that question.

He's answering the question 'Why would you want to clone Windows?' by saying that it's analogous to asking Linus and/or RMS 'Why would you want to "clone" UNIX?'.

Re:Why?

[tux_deamon]

I would love for either project to succeed, I just want to know their merits

You don't see the merit in an open source version of Windows?

Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[jmorris42]

Ambitious, but not likely to be relevant.

Wine is almost 10 years old and yet to ship a 1.0. And already bitrotting away because parts are still win16 (from reading the article) because they were coded pre windows95.

DOSEMU did eventually ship their 1.0 version... and was promptly deleted from the RH disks in the next rev as obsolete. It 'succeeded' because they were cloning a dead OS that didn't keep changing. If you count success as finishing long after it would have been widely useful.

Now we have ReactOS cloning Windows NT4. And will perhaps get it 90% feature complete in another few years. And then spend the next half decade completing the remaining 10% by which time NT4 will be so obsolete nobody will care. Of course they are already trying to shift their target to NT5.1 (XP) but like Wine, they just can't code as fast as the infinite monkeys at Microsoft.

As for their retort of "Why clone UNIX?" I have an easy answer. Because it is USEFUL. Microsoft's stuff isn't worth cloning and by the time a clone is finished they will have either won, forcing everyone into a DRMed hell where only their signed OSes even boot or we will have made them moot.

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[jmorris42]

> According to the article ReactOS will be truly usable for the rest of
> us within the coming year

No, according to the article, within a year ONE of the developers hopes to adopt it as his primary OS. Think about that a minute. Within a year it might reach dogfood status. Up to now it appears none of them actually run it much outside of emulation. That is a hell of a long way from being ready for the 'rest of us'.

But hey, like I originally said, it is an ambitious project and good luck to em. Don't really expect them to succeed but there will likely be some good spinoffs like a better Wine and perhaps some other useful code.

And how can you compare it to Hurd now having PPP? At least it has working ethernet and ReactOS is still working on a TCP stack. PPP really isn't all that useful anymore in case you haven't been paying attention.

But after defending the Hurd, might as well slag it a bit too and say that it is another product that is looking to be obsolete before initial delivery. By the time it ever gets finished I suspect Microkernels will be an outdated concept, replaced by some other impractical but fashionable trend in research OSes.

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[Lussarn]

You make it sound like wine doesn't work today. It runs office if you want to, but why bother when it also runs star wars kotor (winex). It's not vaporware anymore.

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[Mycroft_VIII]

PPP really isn't all that useful anymore in case you haven't been paying attention.

Huh? how do you figure the method most people use to connect to the internet isn't all that usefull.
Don't tell me you think most people have slip or adsl or home oc3's.

Mycroft

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be faecetious, but who cares? I mean, who cares who writes the drivers, or whether they even get written? Oh, did you think Free Software was about convenience?

If you did, you are seriously missing the point here.

Free software is about freedom. Windows gives us none. Personally, I'm not much fond of Windows. But lots of people like it a lot... I mean, they like its UI and its way of doing things. These people, if they believe in Free Software, have perhaps been forced by their idealogy to adopt an OS they don't much like (Linux or BSD) to stay in line with their beliefs, or perhaps they've been less idealistic and opted instead to run as much Free Software as possible on a non-free system, just as Stallman did back in the Bad Old Days of GNU/Solaris. ReactOS is great for these people.

Not to start a stupid flame war here, but this is the implicit problem with the Open Source movement. To OSIers, it's all about how useful it is and whether or not it's more efficient or economical to do something the Open Source way. But in the Free Software movement, it's about freedom, you know. Windows is not free, it's restricted and hacker-unfriendly. These, not its instability or poor UI or whatever you want to critisize about it, are its MAJOR problems. Using Windows is a proprietary nightmare, right now, and more so than before, because Free Software idealists don't develop for the Windows platform, precisely because it isn't free. ReactOS solves all of these problems.

I don't like Windows, but, for example, I like VMS. I don't use OpenVMS though, because while it is more hacker-friendly than Windows, it isn't free. If someone came and wrote FreeVMS or something similar, I'd be on board in a minute. Driver support be damned.

Maybe you're a new Linux user, or maybe you aren't one, but back in the day, we used to design our computers around Linux. It was a pain in the ass, but we did it, because running a Free OS was important. Nowadays, people (OSIers, usually) say we should run Linux because its stable and better than the competition. But in the beginning, there were people running it when it crashed constantly, ran on very little hardware, and was a pain in the ass (you have no idea) to install. And those people, myself included, were not doing it because the OSS-way is more efficient. We were doing it because we wanted freedom. Early ReactOS adopters will be the same, and then later, if it ever becomes a great OS, Open Source movement types will use it as another example of how "the OSS way is better", even though, if it weren't for Free Software idealists, the state of the OS would have never gotten to a point where it would have been a good example to point to.

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[jmorris42]

> You make it sound like wine doesn't work today.

It runs more and more apps every day, but the developers haven't declared it 1.0 yet. I'll trust their assessment of the project's status over yours if you don't mind.

> It runs office if you want to,

With a lot of fussing it will, or a check to CodeWeavers.

> but why bother when it also runs star wars kotor (winex)

Or a check to Transgaming. But how much does WINE run? Not Crossover Office, not WineX, Wine itself. I haven't checked in on them in a couple of years, I really don't know. Probably because I don't have any Windows apps I have a burning need to run anymore.

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[Mycroft_VIII]

Just out of curiousity. What hardware have you bought that didn't come with a driver disk?
I ger a driver disk with almost anything I buy, including basic mice and keyboards.
The only things I haven't gotten drivers for are cables and standard floppy disk drives and a few oem cd-roms.
I even got a disk with an 80meg ata hard-drive.
Also why couldn't they port the linux drivers if they really wanted? Last few times I installed a linux distro it installed all drivers I needed painlessly and I didn't go around playing buy the right hardware first game and then download the drivers that used to be the norm. And when I say painless I mean I booted the install cd, selected my options, rebooted into a fully working system. compared to windows where you re-boot 2-6 times durring install, then 1-2times for EACH driver.
And at the time my hardware wasn't 5 years old eigther.
I really don't thing that drivers are going to be a significant problem.

Mycroft

Re:Probably will hit 1.0 a year after Duke Nukem

[jmorris42]

> I mean, who cares who writes the drivers, or whether they even
> get written?

Kinda hard to boot without the basic device drivers. So yes, it is important unless the plan is to leach off of the Windows driver set and that really isn't the GNU way.

> Free software is about freedom.

Agreed. But just how much Freedom does one expect to find chasing Microsoft's tail lights?

> to OSIers, it's all about how useful it is...

Well it does need to boot and run programs ya know. That sort of fundamental functionality is what I'm questioning the ability to create in a useful timeframe. If DOSEMU and Wine are a guide, ReactOS will be more of a MAME/MESS sort of nostalgia trip. Don't see how that advances the cause of OS/FS other than increasing the skills of the developers.

> Maybe you're a new Linux user, or maybe you aren't one,

Examine the URL at the top of my posts. WIth a shrinking list of exceptions, my current working set of software would pass the RMSLint test.

> It was a pain in the ass, but we did it,

Hey, the first time I saw a blurb in Byte about Linux I had a boner for it. A year or so later I actually found a boot/root disk of .02 or something like that on a BBS and tried it. It wouldn't see my HDD and I was too poor at the time to go buy new hardware so I put it aside. Finally in 1993 I found the Yggdrasil Linux/GNU/X CD and after hacking around and doing much research managed to get it to see my funky Tandy Outlet store scrounged 1X CD drive. (Borrowed a different drive to initially install from, had to compile a patched kernel on a 386sx-16 so don't even try talking to me about pains in the ass because I have the t-shirt.) It was another year and more hardware upgrades before I reached a point where I could start planning to move most of my day to day operations over.

The point is that even ten years ago, a two column inch mention of serious work on a Free OS was more than enough to get me interested, but I just don't feel any such burning need for ReactOS. And I tend to doubt many others will either.

Linux was possible because of the decades of UNIX tradition, a published POSIX standard to write to, almost a decade of GNU's work before Linus ever wrote version 0.01, the X Consortium's codebase, etc. Where is the great body of enabling work that ReactOS is to draw from? How many Free Software types care about Win32 enough to write code for it? Hard enough to even get most to support Win32 as a port because Win32 is fugly and makes for messy code.

Huh? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a joke, right?

With Slashdot comments being offline, I actually read the article. The interview went on and on, but for the life of me I can't figure out the point of this. Wine lets you run Windows software on UNIX platforms. MinGW lets you run recompiled UNIX software on Windows. What could POSSIBLY be the reason for porting Wine to MinGW? That would let you run Windows software ON WINDOWS. You can already DO that! It sounds like they are trying to reduce dependencies on UNIX in the Wine code. Balderdash. They are just trading them for a different set of dependencies. Sure, it's a smaller set, but it's not like Linux doesn't already run on EVERYTHING. What's the big deal if Wine depends on things in every standard Linux distro? Why reduce the set of dependencies further, other than to waste time?

These guys are caught up in the idea of making the code more beautiful for the sake of beauty. "Fewer dependencies makes it more elegant." They are ignoring the practical realities--don't reinvent the wheel and don't fix what ain't broke. Sure, it's their time to waste, but Good Lord.

Truly, this is the most pointless project, ever. I feel inspired to write a Commodore 64 emulator for my Commodore 64. Object-oriented, with a pre-emptive multithreading message-passing lightweight kernel. That'll be better.

Re:Usefulness of PPP

[Mycroft_VIII]

Most of the world is on dialup. This includes alot of hackers. and some opensource contributors are kinda poor and don't have home networks, Mine is Two computers right now. and I'm stuck on dialup. and other that briefly using slip (early 95 iirc, only 1 isp in town at the time and thats all they used first 3 months) I've been on nothing but ppp.
Oh and you don't have to be 'leet' to code, even on the big opensource projects. You just have to be able to code. That's the strength of open source anyone can spot somthing, anyone can write an answer. True 'leetness' (skill talent and experience) increase your versitility and odds of comming up with somthing really cool, but even the HURD and GCC and Linux need that four line patch to swap some bytes around on some obscure file format or device driver.
Don't buy into myth of 'leet' or 'real' hackers as all fitting some stereotype or other, that's hollywood talking. They fall into the same general mix of poor and rich and so on as anyone else.

Mycroft

Re:I see where ReactOS could be REALLY useful

[anshil]

Sorry but embedded NT 4.0 is only the result of rather uneducated developers if you ask me. 'cause all they know has been windows in all their life.

I personally don't see any real reason to use embedded NT in favor of embedded linux. Second can do it all cheaper, with less hardware requirments, and beeing more flexible, and over all it's Open Source thus giving you complete control over your product.

Re:I see where ReactOS could be REALLY useful

[nickol]

>I personally don't see any real reason to use embedded NT in favor of embedded linux

I do. Most of the top-level software works under Windows (I mean in SCADA systems, not in stand-alone embedded systems). Control software, accounting software... It is much more effective to have two teams - one for embedded part, second for SCADA - that are speaking the same (Windows) language.

Things like OPC or NetDDE were developed for Windows.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You don't see the merit in an open source version of Windows?

LOL! Agreed...yeah, maybe it would be trust worthy? On that, oh, let me count the ways;

Auditable

Securable

Maintainable

Customizable

Every default desktop on Windows seems to have about 3 dozen advertizements and promotional icons and menus for crap.

An open source version of Windows could be lean an mean.

Getting rid of the crud and crap that seems to be layered on Windows is nearly impossible. Once it's on a system...how do you know that it's gone? How can you trust MS hasn't done something behind the scenes, or that you've nuked what they have done, when you know they have been caught screwing around before -- and sometimes they even promote this 'for your own good' actions as a bonus!

Trust...I just don't trust MS or the OEM.

If I can't read the ingredents on a label, I'm not eating it. Same should go with software.

It's all about the servers

[Joe U]

As Microsoft gets more restrictive and cost prohibitive with their licensing, ReactOS is going to become a great stepping stone from Windows Server to other platforms.

Essentially, it will let a small company focus on their core business without having to spend time and resources to transition to a new platform.

To fork out $800 per server plus CALs can hurt a small business. With a free windows server, they don't have to change their legacy code, yet can still expand their business.

Several companies I work with are frozen at Windows 2000. They couldn't afford to get 'software assurance' and Microsoft has eliminated server upgrade pricing. Combine that with software activation and a more restictive licensing plan in Windows 2003 and ReactOS becomes much more interesting.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a modern Linux (Debian, Slack, Gentoo) can still run happily on a 32M Pentium box.

A modern Windows can't.

Is that some technical superiority that "only exists in [my] mind"?

Otherwise, good post.