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

I see where ReactOS could be REALLY useful

[nickol]

It's embedded systems. Today, Microsoft has Embedded NT 4.0 which is too expensive, WinXP that is too heavy for most embedded computers, and WinCE embedded which is a kind of a joke.

What we really need for those PC104 and other small boards is an OS with the following features:

open-source and configurable

reliable and stable

small resources requirements

working from ROM

Win32 compatible, supporting DCOM and MS-style networking.

There is no need for DirectX, scanner support and such. It looks much like that despite Microsoft declares embedded systems support as one of their primary goals, they just do not know what to do.
WinCE is for PDAs, not for industrial systems.

Re:Why?

[KJKHyperion]

You look at Windows and you think "past" and "legacy". We (ReactOS) look at Windows and think "future" and "innovation"

This you say is (my personal opinion, not the project's official position), a lot like people deluding themselves in thinking that a Linux kernel for the next Windows would mean instant improvement. If you knew a bit more about Windows you'd knew it doesn't even make sense - the Windows kernel has proved to be a sound design and I'd be happy if we could at least duplicate it. It's the system services that need a serious redesign, dragging the legacy microkernel corpse as they are, and I'm already doing some research in that direction (currently reimplementing the console model to be driver-based instead of server-based, and allowing custom UI implementations. This will give you, the user, custom terminal emulators, a more efficient SSH server and a job-controlling shell - even a port of your beloved GNU screen. Next stop: overhauling the service manager and rationalizing the user-mode startup sequence)

And please realize that a supposed intrinsic and purely technical superiority of Linux exists almost entirely in your mind - old kernels (2.4 and earlier) weren't that hot, and when you say "Linux" you generally mean "GNU" (those who say "Linux" meaning "Beowulf" or "OpenMOSIX" are the minority) - and realize that "commodity" also means "largely irrelevant" and "expendable" - when ReactOS gets good enough, it could replace even Linux for some people