ReactOS 0.2.3 Released

cuppm writes "ReactOS has just released version 0.2.3 of their free WinNT/2k clone! 'New LiveCD image, improved and more stable kernel and win32k kernel graphics subsystem, lots of networking foundation work, improved setup and better bundled explorer, command shell and drivers. Also included is newly ported user DLL code from WINE.' Download it here. It works pretty well in VMware and is progressing quickly."

Comments

Great

[anonymous cowherd (m]

If this gets to the point where it can run a lot of popular Windows applications flawlessly, Microsoft will have to introduce some more undocumented system calls and other incompatibilities to make life difficult. My memory is a little fuzzy on this, but I seem to recall them doing this when updating DOS versions. Mysteriously, certain competitor's apps stopped working...

Either that, or MS will switch from being an OS vendor to a support vendor.

Yeah right, and monkeys will fly out my butt.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful?

Of course Microsoft will continue to replace huge chunks of their APIs with each release.

They have two motives. First, and most obviously is to keep the competition on their toes. Second, their APIs S.U.C.K. Badly. You'd want to replace them too.

But one thing they will NEVER do is break the old APIs. Old applications must continue to run always. Which means that once ReactOS progresses to a point to run FooWare 4.0, nothing (technical) Microsoft can do will stop that.

Also, React has some lead time to play with. Even Microsoft won't use the new APIs immediately in their applications, especially core ones like Office. Third parties are even more conservative.

If these guys ever reach critical mass, they will be a constant thorn in Microsoft's side. Most users are still using win98! Those users could buy a new PC at walmart with ReactOS 2.0 and never know or care about the difference.

Uh

[ZioCantante]

Do I really need the clone of something I don't like?

Re:Uh

[Durin_Deathless]

Yes, because try as we might, many of us can't not have a Windows machine around. If this works out, we could have a Windows machine without needing to pay the MS tax. Hopefully, we could have a machine fully capable of running XP apps with a *NIX compatible system underneath.

In theory, ReactOS can be ported to other platforms, so the Win32 API could become a sort of write-once run-anywhere system. ReactOS also can be extended quite easily, so I could have an ObjC layer if I wanted to write it.

Re:Uh

[anonymous cowherd (m]

In theory, ReactOS can be ported to other platforms, so the Win32 API could becom ea sort of write-once run-anywhere system. ReactOS also can be extended quite easily, so i could have an ObjC layer if I wanted to write it.

Sure, but unless you would like to emulate the Pentium 4 as part of the OS as well, you will need to recompile the apps. That means you need source code. Good luck running MS Office on ReactOS running on any of the non-Intel, non-PPC platforms here

This does most of those who maintain both a Windows box and an OSS box absolutely no good. The only reason they have the Windows box is for that one game, app, etc, that runs only on Windows/x86.

I realize I glossed over the first part of your post by omission, but really, Wine is what you want if you want to run Windows/x86 apps on top of a *nix compatible OS.

Re:Uh

[usrusr]

hmmm

from what i've heard i got the impression that reactOS is all about making an nt style _kernel_, and most of the higher level win32 api stuff is mainly ported from wine, so it is more a non-unix system with a "unix-style win32-api" running on top of it.

but the end result being useful or not, the efforts of the reactOS project have already resulted in some advances in the mingw flavour of gcc, so i could easily see the wine api development profiting from this as well. (and don't come at me with "then they'd better invest their time directly in wine, spare time projects - reactOS certainly falls into that category - just don't work that way)

ps: and hey, who knows, maybe this thing will get really really good and one day they can make a better foss unix by adding a unix subsystem on top of their kernel ;-) (and while i am really just jesting, remember that nt was designed to support multiple "subsystem" OS frontents, every good joke has some truth in it)

Re:Uh

[mibus]

Except of course Wine still doesn't handle running x86 on non-x86 platforms.

Until someone links it with Bochs anyway, which I hear is going to happen...

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

VMware dropped their price on workstation.

If you need to use windows occasionally, $189 is not unreasonable. About the same price as another machine dedicated to windows, but about 10x more convenient.

Unfortunately, their upgrade prices are still insane.

Re:Uh

[j-pimp]

Until someone links it with Bochs anyway, which I hear is going to happen...
I believe that was one of the ideas the DarWine project was working on. However, everyone is starting to realize bochs is ass slow. Also, remember windows NT 3.5 ran on PPC and 4.0 ran on alpha. Sure the apps had to be recompiled, but thats an option for all the good open source windows software.

Hung at Scanning PCI..

[BrookHarty]

Looks cool, but hung on the live cd on my nforce2 board, amd 2600 off the board's internal IDE drives. Stopped at the PCI scanning stage.

Screenshots look cool, but guess my hardware isn't supported.

Re:Hung at Scanning PCI..

[nocomment]

ya i tried booting the livecd but it bluescreened immediatlly while trying to apparently divide something by zero.

At least it's an accurate clone ;-) I do wish it well (I also wish it worked on my machine).

run the Windows clone on Windows

[dan_bethe]

I should run ReactOS in Bochs, so I can still have things like memory protection and resource management even when I'm forced to use Windows 98. Coz it's one OS that doesn't wanna operate *this* system.

Interesting

[winchester]

It would be interesting to use the ReactOS kernel sources, hook some decent file systems to the kernel and create a good, fully implemented posix subsystem.

This way we would have a system capable of running Windows applications _and_ Linux applications.... which would be very nice.

Re:Interesting

[turgid]

This way we would have a system capable of running Windows applications _and_ Linux applications.... which would be very nice.

Isn't that what WINE is for?

Re:Interesting

[usrusr]

only if you assume that driver support in linux will be on par with windows (personally i do not think that is too far off), since reactos is meant to be able to be compatible with windows driver binaries.

the drawback of that certainly is that you get the source of most os instabilitiy in current windows incarnations when loading those drivers... just think brooktree-based tv *shudders*

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Once ReactOS supports a driver class, it will be relatively easy to leverage that into a Linux driver loader.

Most Linux video players work by using borrowed WINE code to load windows codecs.

Re:Interesting

[nicolas.e]

only if you assume that driver support in linux will be on par with windows (personally i do not think that is too far off), since reactos is meant to be able to be compatible with windows driver binaries.

Actually, for me, linux has better hardware support than windows. I just bought a Dimension 8300 and installed both w2k server and red hat on it. Everything except the soft modem worked on redhat. On 2k, the nic, the sound card, and the firewire card didn't work.

Re:Interesting

[usrusr]

try that with a linux build put into a sealed box in early 2k ;)

(really no flame intended, it is a very very good thing that linux is coming closer and closer to supporting everything from the first day on)

CoLinux

[isolation]

I have been working on getting CoLinux working under ReactOS for quite a while. It would allow you to have almost 100% linux compatiblity as you are just running the Linux kernel as a process under Windows.

infidel thoughts!

[darkjericho]

now come on. trying to run a box which can run both unix and windows programs may seem some utopian idea but in the end windows will scream like a baby for "patent violations bla bla bla". Because they DON'T want to lose their well paying mass which is induced into total hypnosis by giving more eyecandy than usability. Linux is, on the other hand and I am sure it was said xth time in slashdot, full edge: fast, sleek, and you have a right to learn, choose, apply and teach. In windows based communities all of them requires some kinda transfer of financial ownership: "You wanta learn how to install x, riiight you havta pay x$ for that" "oh you want to use x, and throw y?, riiight then you havta buy its licence... wallets ple-ease" "Oh you want to use x technology here, oh boy then, it is a server tech now please, choose your user limit 5?,50?,5000? because each of the licences' pricetag is different." "Now you want to teach,huh? Take those tests, which are 100$ each, and if you pass you are an official trainer... " "You want to get tech support... ooh cool now please fax your bill to here" "But I have the serial it's right here written on the box?" "No you gotta pay something to get support,kid" (Actual experience) In three words... go to hell.