ReactOS Runs On The XBox

KJK::Hyperion writes "ReactOS (the open-source Windows clone) has been ported and successfully runs on the Microsoft XBox (screenshot), thanks to the interest and knowledge base of the XBox Linux project and the work of Gé van Geldorp (HAL and boot loader) and Hervé Poussineau (FATX driver)." (Read on for more.)

KJK::Hyperion continues "This port definitely establishes two facts: the XBox is nothing but a broken PC, and the kernel + HAL design that ReactOS inherited from Windows is sound - all of the changes to the core system necessary for the XBox port (namely, the blacklisting of a buggy PCI device and handling the fixed partition table on the built-in hard disk) were limited to the HAL. This is a first, important step towards better portability, as it has already underlined some shortcomings in our build system.

What the port is lacking is hardware support: especially, ReactOS has no USB support at the moment, so it basically just sits there being pretty, because mouse and keyboard won't work. The network and video cards should be mostly identical to their "real" counterparts, so the Windows drivers for them should work (except the video card, a modified GeForce - it's been established we need some HAL trickery to make the Windows driver load). We wouldn't mind some help :-)

To run ReactOS on the XBox you need our custom version of the Cromwell boot loader (not released yet) and the XBox HAL for for ReactOS."

Comments

Hmm Running a..

[2mcm]

MS windows emulator on a peice of MS hardware .... nice

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an emulator, idiot.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[thryllkill]

-1 Idiot!

ReactOS is not an emulator. It doesn't even resemble one. Not even a little bit. Its not like Wine which is so darn close to being an emulator it might as well be. It is a totally different piece of software.

ReactOS is a F/OSS operating system, and here's the catcher, designed to look and run like Windows NT 4.0.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[shahruz]

Still, pretty cool to run a clone of a Microsoft OS on a Microsoft product.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[AstroDrabb]

-2 Idiot!

Its not like Wine which is so darn close to being an emulator it might as well be.

Hey, dummy, Wine stands for Wine is not an emulator!

Wine does not try to emulate hardware. Wine is trying to _duplicate_ the Win32 API under Linux. What is _so_ hard to understand about that? Exactly what is differnt about Wine trying to _duplicate_ the Win32 API under Linux vs. ReactOS trying to _duplicate_ the Win32 API under ReactOS?

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey, dummy, Wine stands for Wine is not an emulator"

Well, given that logic, "Wine is not an emulator" stands for "Wine is not an emulator is not an emulator" which stands for "Wine is not an emulator is not an emulator is not an emulator" ... till infinity.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[ottothecow]

See the problem with this news article is that I dont know what it it is really for.

I mean I know it appears to me that its about ReactOS running on the xbox...but then I realized that the existance of ReactOS is the real news. Something running on the xbox is amazing but...where is the slashdot article for reactos?

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Ingolfke]

You freaking bleeding brainless worthless waste of an idiot. ReactOS is not an emulator. What are you, some kind of mindless bafoon? ReastOS is a simulator.

Ok.. just poking a little fun at the overreactions to what is obviously a humorous post. Lighten up folks.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way GNU stands for gnu's not unix which is also recursive, duh.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[nels_tomlinson]

Wine does not try to emulate hardware. Wine is trying to _duplicate_ the Win32 API ...

So, Wine is really Wad: Wine is a duplicator?

Maybe they should just give in and let folks call it an emulator.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[tuxter]

I find it amusing that somebody questioning someone elses intelligence in a written manner, does not have the necessary faculties to even spell. It's Buffoon. At least learn to spell your derogatory comments before laying waste to others. Ass-hat.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

... and the whole thing is running their web server, apparently...

Re:Hmm Running a..

[thryllkill]

Well, it works like this.

I obviously know that Wine is not an emulator since the sentance you cited states that Wine is not an emulator (slightly roundabout yes, but not so terse as to be easily mistaken to mean something else).

The difference is Wine intercepts Win32 calls and translates them to something the Linux system can understand. However ReactOS doesn't have to intercept these calls to the Win32 API since it is _duplicating_ them directly.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

-3 idiot who can't understand simple English.

The dude you quoted said that Wine is not an emulator. You in idiot second grade English or something?

Re:Hmm Running a..

[WJMoore]

...where is the slashdot article for reactos?

That would be here:
ReactOS 0.2.3 Released
Steven Edwards On The Future Of ReactOS And Wine

Re:Hmm Running a..

[AstroDrabb]

No. Wine doesn't "intercept" anything. It is not like WINE has some _HUGE_ switch statement where it just "intercepts" Win32 calls and translates those to Linux calls. WINE has _rewritten_ the WIN32 API (well, a lot of it so far). For example, I write a program with an API to control it with functions like:

sendMessage(int, int)
beep(int)
sleep(int)
phoneHome(int)

Now, you come along and rewrite those some functions for your program with the same "function signatures" (which just means the same function names, parameters and return types). Your not emulating/intercepting me, you have _totally_ rewritten what I did on your own. Granted, what I did above was very samll and the Win32 API is HUGE. That is why it has taken the WINE team (the core group is pretty small) a long time to get a large part of the WIN32 API rewritten to the Linux platform. For example there is a Win32 API called CreateWindow. That _same_ function had to be recreated under WINE in Linux. Under Win32, it creates a window with the Win32 API. Under Linux, it takse the same parameters and creates a window using the methods that the Wine team created.

You are correct in the sense that the WINE team has tried to "emulate" the look and feel of the Win32 API. That is why a Win app under WINE often looks the same. They (WINE) have tried to make the windows looks just like a window in Win32. However, at the end of the day, WINE is still not emulating or "intercepting" anyting. They are recreating API's and copying a look-n-feel.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[xeno314]

Aren't we being a slightly anal about what is and is not an emulator? Go look at The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

emulate
To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system. Isn't this what ReactOS does?

Re:Hmm Running a..

[ottothecow]

hmm...

*...where is the frontpage article for ReactOS

(assuming that the second one wasn't)

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Negatyfus]

All this still doesn't really explain to me the differences between emulation and a reimplementation...

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of emulation as a software reimplementation of hardware, usually on a very low level. Emulators often emulate a system and interpret the machine instructions, whereas this is providing facilities for the applications to run on a C/C++ level.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[ZioCantante]

GNU folks are a bit "insane in the membrane, insane in the brain":
Have you ever heard of GNU/Hurd?
Here is the name explanation:

HURD: Hird of UNIX Replacing Daemons
HIRD: Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth

Oh-my-god, mutually recursive acronyms ! Look http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html#TOCname

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Darren Winsper]

By that line of reasoning, the Windows NT line is a Win32 emulator.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Ingolfke]

Ooops, thanks for pointing that out. This was just a typo, I slipped and missed a key. I was trying to type 'Ass-hat'.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[squiggleslash]

Re:Hmm Running a.. (Score:0, Troll)

Ok.. just poking a little fun at the overreactions to what is obviously a humorous post. Lighten up folks.

Let that be a lesson to you friend, never try (or you can't fight City Hall, or something like that.)

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Anonymous Coward]

WINE is a translator, not an emulator sweetie. There is quite a large difference between the two. Careful when you call other people idiots.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[squiggleslash]

ReactOS is not a CPU emulator or a hardware emulator. It's a software emulator. It emulates Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, as you say in your last comment "designed to look and run like Windows NT 4.0".

Once upon a time, the use of the word "emulator" to mean "something that looks like something it isn't" was generally considered correct usage. Somewhere along the line, because the most popular "emulators" were hardware emulators, too-clever-for-their-own-good people of the "/usr stands for Unix System Resources" and "The US is not a democracy, it's a Republic" variety, decided to "correct" anyone using the word in its original wider definition.

Please. You knew exactly what he meant. He wasn't being misleading, it really is a product that tries to look and run as much like Windows as possible.

It's a Windows emulator, not a PC emulator.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[AstroDrabb]

Yup, we are being anal about it : )

I think the reason tech people are anal about it is because software emulation came about. Software that emulates hardware such as VMWare. In this context WINE is _very_ different from VMWare, Virtual PC, etc.

Going by the dictionary definition, WINE is an emulator. Though meanings of words do change over time, and I am sure that the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, is not taking the new "technical" meaining of emulation into account.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[Kehvarl]

Emulate: Computer Science. To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system.

According to that they're basically the same thing.

However, I believe the point that's being made is that reimplementation is binary compatible with applications for the original, while emulation strives to be just enough of the original to run applications for the original.

An emulator, therefor, is not a complete system in and of itself, it just implements or duplicates enough of another system to allow that system's stuff to run on another system.

or maybe I'm babbling again.

Re:Hmm Running a..

[PalmKiller]

Well not really, its more like hal is a hardware emulator (hardware abstraction layer) with a pure (as in dos free) 32 bit windows running on top. However all 32 bit windows but the XP variant has a 16 bit windows emulation layer.

On a side note: What is sad is that part of my current imaging software is still partially 16 bit so I have to stick with running windows 2000 pro even though I have purchased windows XP licenses . . . which is legal since my software still requires something the old version has and the new one doesn't. At some point I will replace my imaging system with something 100% 32 bit and then life can move on.

Yeah...

[bccomm]

but will it run Linux?

Oh wait...

Re:Yeah...

[Anne Thwacks]

My ISP won't talk to me after lodging a support call ...

You want ADSL AND support as well? You are WAY too greedy.

Re:Yeah...

[sonicattack]

Yes, it will.

ReactOS?

[IO ERROR]

ReactOS is intended to be a clean, open source reimplementation of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.

I'd never heard of ReactOS before this posting, and so I checked it out. I'm impressed by what they've done so far, but not the seven years it took them to do it. It's still VERY early pre-alpha software. Maybe now that all the basic pieces are in place it will pick up speed, but I suspect it will have the same trouble WINE runs into: it's chasing a moving target, and it's way behind. WINE, at least, decided to implement newer APIs found in Windows 2000 and XP. ReactOS has not. So even when they hit a 1.0 or stable release, they're going to be so far behind that not that much Windows software will run on it.

Re:ReactOS?

[downbad]

how is NT 4.0 a "moving target?"

Re:ReactOS?

[IO ERROR]

how is NT 4.0 a "moving target?

The passage of time makes it a moving target. It's moving further and further into the software tarpits of the past, as more and more new software simply doesn't work on NT 4.0.

Re:ReactOS?

[runderwo]

Yes, they will face many of the same challenges the WINE project does, which is why WINE and ReactOS liberally share patches. Why does everyone think they are just some peripheral group reinventing the wheel for no particular reason? The ReactOS project enjoys a symbiotic reliationship with WINE in which both projects benefit from each other's advances.

Re:ReactOS?

[KJKHyperion]

ReactOS is Wine - everything Wine has, ReactOS has too, except the Linux-specific parts (that, in ReactOS, will be handled by drivers). And ReactOS does implement recent APIs, we're no way stuck with Windows NT 4 compatibility, in fact our current baseline is more like Windows 2000 (especially true for the kernel). Finally, we won't just get up one day and declare 1.0: it will be 1.0 when compatibility reaches the intended milestone for 1.0 (namely, good enough to replace somewhere between Windows NT 4 Workstation and Windows 2000 Professional)

Re:ReactOS?

[k98sven]

I'm impressed by what they've done so far, but not the seven years it took them to do it.

Well, this is a bit symptomatic of a lot of OSS projects, they start out with a grand vision and end up planning and then re-planning and throwing out code and never really get off the ground. Some die and stay dead, some get picked up by a group of enthusiasts with a more down-to-earth approach of 'Getting something working now, improvements later.' and the project takes off.
(Case study: See Linux vs. GNU Hurd)

I believe this is pretty much what happened with ReactOS (I'm not a ReactOS developer), so I wouldn't hold it against the current crowd too much.

I suspect it will have the same trouble WINE runs into: it's chasing a moving target, and it's way behind.

Ah, the old catch-up argument. It's a valid argument, but it's not as important for API:s as it is for, say, file formats.
With the MS Word file format, Microsoft can tweak and alter that all they want, because it's not publicly documented, and they're not that interested in having compatibility with anything other than MS own products. Backwards compatibility isn't important. Heck, they're happy to break it and create incentive for people to buy the new versions. That's a hard act to follow.

With API:s, things are quite different though. Firstly, the '80-20 rule of features' pretty much applies. Most programs don't use the entire API, but a rather small subset.

Secondly, API:s rarely break backwards compatibility. That would break all existing third-party apps and make it difficult for people to migrate. The exact opposite situation to the previous one. So MS bends over backwards to make stuff backwards compatible. Windows 3.0 apps still run on XP.

The APIs are also (relatively) well documented. Sure, there's a lot of undocumented functionality, but most of that is also unused. The implementer has access to the same information as most application-developers.

Another point of difference is that you don't have to be super-fast in implementing new API:s.
The day a new Word version hits the street, people will be asking 'Why doesn't this work with OpenOffice?'.

Not as true for APIs. While we all like the latest and greatest, professional developers don't rewrite their programs to use the latest APIs 'just for the heck of it'. There has to be good reason. In fact, you want to avoid using the latest APIs as far as practical and economical, because otherwise, you're going to be shutting-out potential customers running the old OS version.
(There are plenty of brand-new apps released today which run on Win98, or Win95 even.)

Re:ReactOS?

[adiposity]

ReactOS can use the Wine implementations of everything but the low level APIs. Anything Wine implements in the win32 API that isn't tied directly to graphics can essentially be put into ReactOS.

-Dan

Re:ReactOS?

[AstroDrabb]

I'm impressed by what they've done so far, but not the seven years it took them to do it

Your kidding right? How many OS's have you developed yourself? None? I thought so. MS spent millions and took _many_ years to develop the NT OS, and _many_ more years to get it stable (NT 4 sucked for stability, 2k and 2003 still crash, though not as much as NT 4)

Here is a group of OSS developers working in their _spare_ time and you say your not impressed? Dude, your an idiot. This small group has done what MS did in _half_ the time. I am _very_ impressed.

I guess your expecting a small group of developers to duplicate what a bunch of developers and tons of cash did over _years_ funded by the _largest_ software company in the world?

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. ReactOS has been in the making for a very long time. (For example, it aims for Windows driver compatibility... With NT 4.0.) It shares some code with WINE. In other words, a very different beast.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you for a fact M$ breaks backwards compatibility, because I've got a bunch of old Win95 era games that don't work on *ANYTHING* newer because of API breaks and changes from migrating to windows from dos.

The most notable example I can think of being Mechwarrior 2 Windows edition.

Re:ReactOS?

[KJKHyperion]

You're confusing ReactOS with WinuxOS (rejected Slashdot story, complaint ignored by SourceForge administrators - note how they even ripped off our mission statement). ReactOS exists since 1997 and has been written from the ground up

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you aren't impressed that it has taken 7 years to get where they are, why don't you help out and do some coding?

Re:ReactOS?

[k98sven]

Oh please. I didn't say "Windows is backwards compatible with every single app".

I said that Microsoft tries hard to keep backwards-compatibility.

But don't take my word for it, I don't work for them. Read Raymond Chen's various blog articles on the subject. He is one of the poor souls at MS who worked his butt off to try and keep backwards-compatibility.

Re:ReactOS?

[evilviper]

it's chasing a moving target, and it's way behind.

I must disagree there. NT4, despite lacking support for a few things, is still a modern OS, and highly usable. With the hundreds and hundreds of programs I use, the only one that I can recall not working on NT4 is MPC, and that's not a big problem.

Namely, NT4 is lacking in USB support (oddly enough, I find NT4's lack of USB support better than Windows 98's USB support), only has DirectX6, and doesn't support FAT32 without a 3rd-party add-on. Those limitations can all be fixed easily, making an NT4 clone every bit as useful as, say, XP.

In addition, they are in a very different place than WINE. If programming for ReactOS is vagely similar to recent Windows, and it has just a few thousand users, it would become a supported platform. There are probably less Windows 95 users out there than that, yet just about all modern Windows programs still run on 95. A small bit of extra effort to reach a few thousand more people is a great trade-off for most.

Personally, I'd love to see it improve, as Windows is a constant headache for me. Having an Open Source version would make it far easier to solve problems (like why those dammed ATI drivers won't work).

Re:ReactOS?

[IO ERROR]

if you aren't impressed that it has taken 7 years to get where they are, why don't you help out and do some coding?

Mainly because I'm too busy contributing to other projects and trying to occasionally get out of the house once in a while and chase down that elusive thing I once heard about called women.

Besides, I want Windows to die a horrible death.

Re:ReactOS?

[KJKHyperion]

I believe this is pretty much what happened with ReactOS (I'm not a ReactOS developer), so I wouldn't hold it against the current crowd too much.

ReactOS was born in dark, barbaric times. In 1997, your most realistic option to build PE executables with GCC on Windows was DJGPP, the port of GCC to a DOS extender, because MinGW didn't exist yet. I have had the dubious privilege of trying that - when I joined the project, DJGPP was no longer required for the main tree, but the boot loader still had to be built with it.

Also, the "don't design, code!" attitude worked in the beginning, to get anything done and avoid the mistake of the ReactOS father, FreeWin95, forever stuck in the design phase, but it backfired when real stuff began to run. It just doesn't work when cloning a system as firmly established as Windows - you can't always attack the problems by implementing function after function, many times you need a good overhead view. The short of it is that we have some embarassingly bad code in the kernel.

Re:ReactOS?

[ltbarcly]

you're the idiot. Who gives half a crap if they have managed to get notepad to run on their POS? They can't even run minesweeper on it, except for the native WINE version.

I don't expect them to ever catch up with Microsoft. That is the problem. No one will ever care about their stupid 'OS' because it will never be as good as the real thing. They will keep making crappy improvements on it until NT4 is totally obsolete and there is no point to it. Then they will start a new project to emulate Windows 20X6 until they realize that they can't do that either before it is obsolete.

This project is crap. It will always be crap. Even if it was exactly the way they wanted it to be it would be crap. Being open source doesn't mean the OSS fairy comes along every now and then to make it important or relavent.

It is pointless, because if I am a business that needs NT4 for some reason there is already a product that can give me 100% NT4 compatability, and I ALREADY HAVE IT INSTALLED AND RUNNING. There aren't any corporations that are saying "I wish we could have the functionality of NT4 for this project, but we [just can't afford to buy it|can't find an OS that is NT4 compatible]. There are no home users saying [I wish I could use OSS that was just like NT4 but not as good and can only run 3 programs and is buggy as hell|I wish I could run NT4, if only there were an OS that was exactly like NT4 but there isn't].

This is at best a hobby OS.

Re:ReactOS?

[AstroDrabb]

you're the idiot

Very mature. If you lose an argument, just call names. I love it! Nothing like an immature baby trying to make a _poor_ point on /. and then calling names!

This is at best a hobby OS.

This is what was said of Linux. And now look at Linux on the server. More then 25% of the server market where MS _does not_ have the monopoly and where MS is struggling to get the server monopoly like they have on the desktop. Linux has _stopped_ MS from having a server monopoly. And at one time, Linux was just called a "hobby" OS, and now it _exceeds_ all the MS server OS's for many server tasks and is preferred for most high-end tasks.

Re:ReactOS?

[gordo3000]

besides a horrible lack of eloquence, there was one good point made in the grandparent, this work is probably too slow. What they need is to be up and running and better than NT 4 at least a couple years before MS cuts support, and I don't know if they can do that seeing what there pace was like up until now. The reason you need to be out before support is cut is simple, you need to make some name for yourself and an Alpha version just doesn't cut it. And after that, you need a chance to find some of those pesky bugs that only can be found after general implementation. There is one advantage Linux had, it wasn't aiming for a fixed goal. Rather, you had someone make an OS and just try to improve it. And Linux came up a hell of a lot faster. But for all that, I say more power to this group, hopefully this will give them a little more presense and maybe a few more contributors. OSS is either and start and die thing or it starts and snowballs into something great. If they can get this implementation running at full soon, that could be a huge dent in MS monopoly. They will probably continue to extend there support for NT4 if it really takes off.

Re:ReactOS?

[AstroDrabb]

I agree with what your saying. However, this is _still_ just a bunch of geeks seeing if the _can_ do it. There is _no_ commercial effort here. If there was, then your points about "being behind" would be valid. As I see it, this is just a cool project that has potential to become something big. In their current state I doubt that will happen though. However, if as you said, development really picks up, then it could steam-roll into something big. But for now, it is just a cool geek project with potential : )

Re:ReactOS?

[gnarlin]

The short of it is that we have some embarassingly bad code in the kernel.

So that means you are really making some headway in duplicating windows properly ;-)

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm... You seem to have confused ReactOS with Freedows.

If you might recall, the Freedows was one of many projects that planned on cloning Windows. Not only was it going to be a Windows clone, but it was going to be better than Windows.

As often happens with these projects, exactly *what* would make it better than Windows was the subject to much debate. Eventually the Alliance OS splintered off from Freedows, and both projects fizzled out, producing not much of anything.

In contrast, the ReactOS people (correctly) picked a NT 4.0 as their target, and set out to clone it. Not make it better, not create a cool GUI, but to create a useful NT 4.0 clone.

Unlike other projects that kept expanding the project scope, they kept their focus and their nost to the grindstone writing the boring (but very necessary) foundation of the OS.

A Windows clone has turns out to be a useful thing. Are you a commercial developer who doesn't want to upgrade your turnkey application to XP? ReactOS offers a way out. Writing embedded applications that and need deeper access to the OS? ReactOS offers a solution.

There's enough practical commercial use for ReactOS to make it profitable for the developers (who could sell their services), and enough 80/20 Windows compatibility to make it useful for people running (primarily) open source Windows applications like OpenOffice and Firefox.

Re:ReactOS?

[simrook]

...There are probably less Windows 95 users out there than that, yet just about all modern Windows programs still run on 95....

This is not true, there are a ton of users still on 95. Schools, home computers, old computers passed down to kids, office computers, etc., they all operate on that and other damned operating systems. I have personally interacted with over 100 of them in the past year.

What makes ReactOS and its like necessary is that it is needed to "fill the gap". If a company knows that an open source solultion can save them money and get more support then an end-of-life-cycle product like 95 or NT 4, then they will choose the free open source product, deploy it at the cost of labor, and support it themselves with their own cost of labor... this makes is significantly cheaper then keeping NT4 around and paying some disphit (like myself) $300 to come in and fix a computer everytime something gets scrwed up.

It's really quite an ingenous project, and has quietly been gaining support and interest. Give it another 7 years, and something like WinNT4 will have been created. BTW: How long did NT4 take to make? Nearly 14 years....

A Two Cents Post.

- Simrook

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

But business's still running NT4.0 can migrate to ReactOS one day. Those servers will still perform the small tasks they are mean't to perform.

Hopefully ReactOS guys won't implement the security issues with the win32 API's.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

NT 4 might not have native USB support, but while I was looking around, I found this guy's project to implement USB for NT4

http://www.geocities.com/mypublic99/

I don't know how well it works since I haven't tried it out, and it looks pretty limited. But if you need USB support and have the supported hardware, it might be worth checking out.

Re:ReactOS?

[joshuaobrien]

Joel Spolsky reckons Microsoft Lost the Backwards Compatibility Religion.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Secondly, API:s rarely break backwards compatibility.

I see you've never dealt with the Web API for the Enta ticketing system

Re:ReactOS?

[laughingcoyote]

Pardon me for rudeness...but are you stupid?

I would say that seven years worth of people duplicating a massive, multimillion dollar development project in their SPARE TIME is VERY impressive. If it works, more power to them, and even if it does not, I will certainly say it was an excellent attempt. Don't you remember when Linux was thought of as a "silly" OS?

I'm also not sure how NT4 is a "moving target", MS stopped development on that years ago. Please don't knock other people's work until you do something more worthwhile yourself. If you have, feel free to submit your own articles...

And finally, even if this particular project doesn't pan out, the project is opensource, and the implementations of the "base" API's and similar could easily be used to jumpstart an opensource reimplementation of a newer Windows version. So all in all...these people are doing something quite worthwhile, and I for one think they're due credit, not bullshit.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

...as more and more new software simply doesn't work on NT 4.0.

Does that mean it won't have that pesky problem with all the spyware?

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

except for those many documented cases (google for it) where Microsoft changed the apis in order to break third party apps.

Re:ReactOS?

[lav-chan]

Very mature. If you lose an argument, just call names. I love it! Nothing like an immature baby trying to make a _poor_ point on /. and then calling names!

OK, um....

(a) If you're newfangled enough to figure out the bold tags, you should be able to figure out the italic ones too. <i> isn't so much harder to do than <b>.

(b) You called him an idiot first, what the Hell.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anne Thwacks]

There are probably less Windows 95 users out there than that

There are millions of Win95 users. For a start, there are large numbers of companies with machines that are single use, and run Win95 - no one is going to upgrade them, and they will run till they die.

Then there are all the laptops that came with Win95 (eg P1) - Have you ever tried to replace the OS in a laptop? It ain't easy (Unless you are replacing it with NetBSD). If its no longer any use to you give the laptop away to someone, People rarely throw them away, so the Laptop goes on running Win95. And since they are probably not on the net, they are probably not infested with spyware, and go faster than P4s that probably are infested with Spyware.

There are other places in the world than Geekland.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Raymond Chen's various blog articles on the subject. He is one of the poor souls at MS who worked his butt off to try and keep backwards-compatibility

Read them. Of course Microsoft worked at to keep some apps working. What Raymond doesn't tell you about are the strategically important apps that they broke on purpose -- just long enough to shift the market in their direction. In fact, he gets really really upset at the mention of any dishonesty on his part... the poor dear.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

the ONLY reason software does not run on NT is because of programmed in failpoints and the lack of upgraded Direct X libraries.

so if I look at the list of apps that do not run on windows NT 4, and is not a game, it is exactly one....

Adobe Premiere Pro, and ONLY because they wrote code to detect XP... I have seen it run under windows 2000 after hacks removed the parts that are checking for OS version.

so stop spreading your lies. NT4 is still a very viable Corperate OS and I can do anything under NT4 in a corperate environment that XP can.

honestly NT4 + office 97 is still as capable and useable as XP+office 2003

and it's TCO is far FAR less. Which does not suprise me when I find smaller companies still running it.

you got an insightful moderation... it should have been clueless.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

which shows your lack of knowlege of NT4.

NT4 is rock solid in stable hardware. I had and have many servers that rely on it and the servers that make my company over $300,000.00 a day all run windows NT4 and have no plans to be upgraded as the vendor still has not certified windows 2000 as stable enough to be certified for 99.999% uptime by them, and XP is not even being considered. You do not upgrade things for the sake up upgrading when you lose money every second they are down. you Upgrade when you need to not want to.

Most of the time NT's instability was due to low quality hardware... I proved time and time again back in 1998 that a NT machine that crashed would turn into a Linux machine that crashed when you installed linux on it.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea how any OS, including Windows NT, is actually developed.

Do you think that Windows 2000 was written from scratch? It wasn't. It was based on Windows NT 4. Windows NT 4 was based on Windows NT 3.51, which was based on Windows NT 3.5, which in turn was based on Windows NT 3.1, which was developed over the course of six years by a very, very large staff at Microsoft.

If you actually look at the architecture of Windows NT between NT 4.0 and NT 5.0 (Windows 2000), you will notice that very little has actually changed. The kernel design is identical, it functions in the same way, it has the same component parts, which do the same thing in exactly the same way.

Most of the additions to Windows 2000 were in user-space libraries, device support, bug fixing, and performance improvements. Device support is not likely an issue. For example, USB support could be implemented in ReactOS, even though Windows NT 4 doesn't have it. Bug fixes and performance improvements can be done in ReactOS anyway (obviously). And finally, user-space libraries (most of which are taken from WINE, or co-developed with WINE) will likely work just as well on an NT 4 based kernel as they do on NT 5. Most of them work on Windows ME as well. Not likely to be an issue.

You're complaining that NT 4 is old, obsolete, out of date, and useless. However, it's really not. Most Win32 apps will still run on WinNT 4. The ones that don't would be able to run if the appropriate functionality was implemented. There is nothing stopping that functionality from being implemented in ReactOS, is there?

Re:ReactOS?

[AstroDrabb]

(a) If you're newfangled enough to figure out the bold tags, you should be able to figure out the italic ones too. <i> isn't so much harder to do than <b>

Um..., maybe because I _like_ an underscore better then a <i>? It stands out more to me.

(b) You called him an idiot first, what the Hell.

And it was valid to the poor post. ltbarcly just started bashing ReactOS and calling names like a child. I wasn't referring to just echoing back the "your and idot" crap.

Who gives half a crap if they have managed to get notepad to run on their POS

I am sure you can go back and read more of the post. ltbarcly more then likely has Zero (how was that? are you happy now) experience running and using ReactOS. So what does he do when he has no valid argument? Instead of just shutting up, he calls name.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Off-topic rant: Could we stop calling everyone stupid in this thread for everything from their opinions on whether ReactOS could be better developed to whether the word "emulator" means "something that pretends to be something it isn't" or "something that immitates a computer but not the software running on that computer"?

I've not heard so many people called stupid since the last US presidential election. And at least the 48-49% of people calling the other 51-52% stupid had some justification. Well, a lot actually, but I digress.

I would say that seven years worth of people duplicating a massive, multimillion dollar development project in their SPARE TIME is VERY impressive.

This is true, but subjective. So calling someone "stupid" for disagreeing with you is clearly inappropriate.

If it works, more power to them, and even if it does not, I will certainly say it was an excellent attempt. Don't you remember when Linux was thought of as a "silly" OS?

Clearly it doesn't "work" yet, in that it doesn't furfill the original goal of running all, or even most, or even a large proportion, of NT4 software, so if someone wants to be critical, it's not reasonable grounds for calling them "stupid". And again, "I will certainly say it was an excellent attempt" pretty much concedes your approval for the project is subjective. Calling someone "stupid" for disagreeing with you is clearly inappropriate. Finally, no, I don't remember Linux being thought of as a "silly" OS, I've been following it since 1994, and never heard anything but impressed praise for it until it started to be taken seriously on an Enterprise level, and even then the enthusiasm for it far outwieghed the critics, and compared favourably to Windows.

So I'd disagree with your final point. Does that make you "stupid"?

I'm also not sure how NT4 is a "moving target", MS stopped development on that years ago.

Me neither. This is the first comment in your rant that's clearly objective. Still, by itself, it doesn't invalidate the rest of the grand parent's response. Calling him "stupid" on this part requires a certain arrogance here, as you have to assume a minor mistake was central to his criticism, and that he was aware, not merely ignorant, of the facts and implications of this minor point. No justification for calling him "stupid".

And finally, even if this particular project doesn't pan out, the project is opensource, and the implementations of the "base" API's and similar could easily be used to jumpstart an opensource reimplementation of a newer Windows version. So all in all...these people are doing something quite worthwhile, and I for one think they're due credit, not bullshit.

Again, subjective, both in level of praiseworthiness, and possibly in accuracy. The fact the source is "out there" doesn't make it useful, it merely is a small part of the criteria for making it useful. If ReactOS is a failure, it could be that the code itself is responsible for that. Likewise, if Microsoft makes NT-type operating systems obsolete, which arguably will happen with .NET (yes, NT type operating systems will continue to be sold, but they're becoming frameworks for running .NET, you'll see fewer and fewer native applications), then the code could easily become useless no matter how good it is.

And there's the rub, because the GP is arguing that the major fault of ReactOS is that it's taking too long to develop. It's been in existance for, what, half a decade or more? And yet it's nowhere near a 1.0 release. The operating system it emulates is essentially obsolete already.

Without wishing to state I completely agree with him, I think he's justified in believing what he believes and you haven't really come up with a legitimate challenge to his central point. So you have no logical or moral right here to call him stupid.

Leave the flaming at the door and address the issues.

Re:ReactOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you make quotation marks with your hands while you're talking in real life? Yeah, I thought so. If you're aiming for DOUCHEBAG, I think you hit the bullseye.

Re:ReactOS?

[Mant]

Off topic I know, but the following has to be one of the most stupid ways to try and defend something.

Please don't knock other people's work until you do something more worthwhile yourself. If you have, feel free to submit your own articles...

I've never made a movie or TV show, written a book, or written a (serious) computer game. So, I'm not allowed to criticise any of those things? By your logic, almost nobody could criticise anything.

As for how impressive ReatOS is, the amount they have done for the resources maybe impressive, but that doesn't mean the results, on their own merits are. I hope the developers are enjoying their work, but it doesn't seem very worth while to me, they may want an open source windows clone, but what they have is an open source OS that runs some limited subset of things an old version of windows does, sometimes.

What they want seems useful, but what they have, or are ever likely to have, doesn't. Of course, if they enjoy it, it is perfectly worthwhile to do.

Re:ReactOS?

[networkBoy]

*priceless*

Re:ReactOS?

[nicolas.e]

And why would they want to port some legacy software to a new plaftorm ? (move stuff, test...) If NT4 works well enough, no need to change. And if it does not, moving to something more recent would ease maintainability.

Re:ReactOS?

[TLSPRWR]

"In 1997, your most realistic option to build PE executables with GCC on Windows was DJGPP, the port of GCC to a DOS extender, because MinGW didn't exist yet. I have had the dubious privilege of trying that - when I joined the project, DJGPP was no longer required for the main tree, but the boot loader still had to be built with it."

If you understood any of that, you have my deepest sympathies.

Soooo.....

[dnaboy]

They got an embedded windows box to run a windows clone...

This is all getting a little silly.

Re:Soooo.....

[Frogbert]

Isn't that what running KDE on an xbox is doing?

*Ducks and runs*

Re:Soooo.....

[nofx_3]

How is KDE a windows clone, other than the obvious interface similarities the underlying system (kpart, dcop, applications) are completely different than a windows implementation. And I might add, KDE is OSS, windows is not. There are many, many differences.

-kaplanfx

Re:Soooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You're taking this far too seriously, my friend.

Re:Soooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking of giving ReactOS a shot but realized what OS I was already running...

Cool, but...

[sH4RD]

I see this more as a proof of the power of ReactOS than the XBox. If it is a crippled PC it should be easy to port to (note: I have not tried, so I don't really know, but it should not be *that* hard), however porting an OS (specifically a similar-to-Windows one) so easily is a great sign for ReactOS. Makes me even more interested in what this could become (stable, embedded, Windows x86 EXE compatable, OSes anyone?).

Re:Cool, but...

[0racle]

Anything that runs on a P3 should run on the XBOX with little modification, remember the XBOX is a PC in a different case. Obviously this is a high level appraisal, since the article itself pointed out some driver incompatibilities, but you could run in to driver problems putting NT on the latest P4 as well. This more affirms two things people already knew, the people at ReactOS are still working, the XBOX is a PC.

Re:Cool, but...

[dosius]

XBOX is a Celeron/733 with 64 MB RAM, isn't it?

Not too different from this piece of shit DELL I'm already using...

Moll.

But..

[blankinthefill]

will it run on the next generation of Xbox? It's going to be coming out sometime in the near future, and when it does, what will it matter if you can run this OS on the original xbox? This has plenty of potential, but will it be able to keep up?

Re:But..

[Rude Turnip]

Probably not, since Xbox 2 will be using a G5 proc...the next big craze will be getting OS X to run on Xbox 2.

Re:But..

[rice_web]

It'll be interesting to see if Mac OS X will run on Xbox 2.

Re:But..

[Anonymous Coward]

what will it matter if you can run this OS on the original xbox?

sigh,

*shakes head and looks down in shame*

have you ever heard of fun and curiosity?

I dont think there going to be marketing it or any thing. unless...

nah..

Re:But..

[Phroggy]

will it run on the next generation of Xbox? It's going to be coming out sometime in the near future, and when it does, what will it matter if you can run this OS on the original xbox? This has plenty of potential, but will it be able to keep up?

According to rumor, the next-generation XBox will be PowerPC-based, not x86, and development systems are PowerMac G5s running a PowerPC port of WinXP.

Re:But..

[networkBoy]

"development systems are PowerMac G5s running a PowerPC port of WinXP."

For some reason that gives me the willies.
-nB

Re:But..

[Phroggy]

For some reason that gives me the willies.

Yeah, I think it gives just about everyone the willies.

Next question:

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they get ReactOS working on a PC?

Re:Next question:

[rzebram]

Slightly OT, but does the "My Computer" icon in that screenshot look anything like a Mac to anybody else? Does this mean that I'd be committing heresy if I were to install it over Windows?

Re:Next question:

[ggy]

How about clicking on the livecd link here http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/62 and run it? Worked like a charm on mine. I was just stumped for something to do with it...

Re:Next question:

[diesel_jackass]

lollers!

sad but true.

Cheap

[tyman]

Now the cheapest personal computer running windows you can buy! Under $200 USD!

Re:Cheap

[koreaman]

sorry, wrong.

I actually saw an ad in my local newspaper for a $100 PC. No joke.

Re:Cheap

[dnaboy]

Actually, with a $100 AOL rebate* and a $100 MSN rebate**, this thing's free...

* Requires 8 year subscription to AOL at $23.95 per month

** Requires 12 year subscription to MSN at 21.95 per month

Re:Cheap

[damiam]

A used PC at that price is no big deal. If it was new, whoever was selling it was losing money.

Re:Cheap

[antifoidulus]

You forgot:
***Also requires one sould, does not necessarily have to belong to purchaser.

Reaction?

[methangel]

Yeah, I think ReactOS will make Microsoft "react" since it's a Windows clone. You are the weakest link, goodbye.

I love it how the geeks will uproar about MS taking measures to prevent their console from doing things that it shouldn't ... Of course if Apple circumvents (Real) ... it's their RIGHT!

Re:Reaction?

[deepcameo]

Man that weakest link show lasted for about nine minutes.... I wonder what that grumpy old hag does now... Seriously. What kind of job opportunities are there for someone like that?

Re:Reaction?

[fbartho]

What measures do you or anybody expect MS to take? Other than voiding your warranty, why would they care?

I'm curious about this, since if other people provide software for the Xbox, and Microsoft doesn't have an analog for sale... ie they don't offer the Xbox OS for individual resale, why would they care if someone provided a free OS?... Especially since its in Microsoft's best image to look like they actually do care about opensource projects, and want to support them...

Re:Reaction?

[jerw134]

Microsoft sells the Xbox at a loss, and expects to make up for that by selling games. If people aren't using their Xbox for games, or are pirating games instead of buying them, then Microsoft doesn't make back their money. That's why they care.

Re:Reaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hardly a basis for a legal action though.

"Your honor, we sold our product at a loss and now they're not using it in a way which allows us to recoup our investment?"
-So?
"Well.. that's wrong!"
-Do you have any *legal* arguments? This *is* a court of law?
"Um.. well.. this violates our EULA!"
-Could I see it, please?
"Ok"
-Um, this thing goes completely beyond the scope of a copyright license. This-and-that clause are found unenforcable. We find for the defendant.

Result: X-box modders now have a legal precedent. MS has nothing.

Re:Reaction?

[fbartho]

My question had to do with an OS, an altogether different thing than pirated games... I guess that does invalidate my thought of them wanting people to buy the xbox for the sake of it though...

Re:Reaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

mailman?

Re:Reaction?

[jerw134]

That's not the argument they're using. As a matter of fact, they aren't using any argument at all, because they're not suing anybody for modifying the Xbox.

Re:Reaction?

[daniel_mcl]

Everyone says that "everyone supported Apple against Real," but as I recall it, nobody did. Other than the actual writeup on the Slashdot frontpage, every single comment that I saw was in support of Real and open standards.

Re:Reaction?

[evilviper]

Microsoft sells the Xbox at a loss

People like to say that a hell of a lot, and NEVER provide a source for their information.

I could build a computer with the specs of an Xbox for less-than $150.

If they are losing money on xboxs today, then they are idiots, and I doubt that.

Re:Reaction?

[powerlinekid]

I could build a computer with the specs of an Xbox for less-than $150.

No you can't unless you get some serious bulk discounts and can dictate to some manufactorer exactly how to build the motherboard.

Think about it. 700mhz Celeron/PIII hybrid. You can get a MoBo with onboard network, audio, usb, etc no problem. You can probably do the above for maybe 50-60 bucks. Don't forget to throw in 64 meg of ram or so.

However the video is whats going to get you. You need a very strong video card with TV out. Maybe an Nvidia 5200 with Tv out? That'll run you another 50 or so. Now lets talk a case, power supply, harddrive, dvd-drive, etc.

You can probably do it for $200, but not $150. And even then the system you build for that price is not going to even compare to the Xbox in terms of playability and graphics quality.

Personally I hate the Xbox, but I'll give MS their due on this. Its very very unlikely they can drop the price of it much further and is possible that they are selling at a loss. Hell, even if they are making $5 an xbox what about research and development cost? What about marketing, etc?

If you care to prove me wrong, go ahead.

Re:Reaction?

[Mant]

The XBox was sold at a loss. These days though it cost them less to make. Plus they make less loss of a sold XBox with no games than an unsold one.

You aren't hurting MS by buying and XBox and not getting games.

Re:Reaction?

[Nyder]

a lame stupid, AC said:

[quote]"Your honor, we sold our product at a loss and now they're not using it in a way which allows us to recoup our investment?"
-So?
"Well.. that's wrong!"
-Do you have any *legal* arguments? This *is* a court of law?
"Um.. well.. this violates our EULA!"
-Could I see it, please?
"Ok"
-Um, this thing goes completely beyond the scope of a copyright license. This-and-that clause are found unenforcable. We find for the defendant.[/quote]

That is why MS would never let it get to court. they use there money to keep delaying it, and what not, till the other party couldn't afford it anymore.

Re:Reaction?

[evilviper]

Quick look at Pricewatch:
Case+PS $24
15GB HD $25
16X DVD $15

Your other estimates are a bit high, so even with a high-end videocard and more RAM than the XBox, it still works out to $150. This is with a quick look at pricewatch. If I spent an hour, no doubt I could find everything even cheaper.

Besides that, it would be cheaper yet, if hardware closer to XBox's specs was even still around.

even if they are making $5 an xbox what about research and development cost?

If they are making $0.000001 in profit, then it proves buying an XBox sure as hell does NOT hurt Microsoft, as so many insist.

Minesweeper

[believekevin]

Does Minesweeper support Xbox Live?

Re:Minesweeper

[deepcameo]

Oh man! Immagine the cooperative mine sweeping capabilities!

Re:Minesweeper

[Ingolfke]

We could rid the world of mines in meer minutes. Ee-gads Batman!

NOTICE

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the resilient filling materials contained in this article meet California bureau of home furnishings flammability requirements. Care should be exercised near open flame or with burning cigarettes.

Cool! damn shame FreeDOS hasn't been ported

[RLiegh]

...yet?

Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP won't talk to me after lodging a support call for helping gettting ADSL hooked up to a WinXP install running under VMWare under Linux on my XBox.

big difference

[CoolMoDee]

There is a big difference though. MS is taking measures in the hardware portion, while Apple is taking measures in the software portion. Oh, and the iPod isn't a generic PC ala XBox.

Re:big difference

[jerw134]

Hardware vs. software makes no difference. Microsoft has to take action via hardware because the hacks for the Xbox involve hardware. The iPod only needs software to stop Real, because Real used software.

As for the Xbox being a generic PC, get real. It may use some of the same parts that a PC does, but it's far from a generic PC. If it were, it would be a whole hell of a lot easier to put PC software on it. Your sig fits you perfectly.

How about porting Windows?

[enosys]

So could you theoretically build a new HAL for XP and get it to work on an XBox? Or for that matter any weird x86 architecture? I suppose it may be hard to do this without using the source, but it's not impossible. It'd be an interesting project.

Re:How about porting Windows?

[derrith]

That might have worked back in NT days, however, I think that xp and 2000 have too many ties into the x86 architecture to allow a straight recompile to work. It was Microsoft's plan to get NT to run on _everything_ but when there was no interest in higher-grade workstation market for what was considered a consumer OS. SGI, Sun, and Alpha would have nothing to do with it, that was the realm of the Unixes.

Re:How about porting Windows?

[enosys]

Note that I'm not talking about recompiling. The XBox has an x86 CPU. Only the hardware-dependant parts would need to be changed. Hopefully that would just mean the HAL and drivers. You should then be able to run standard x86 Win32 software on it, just like on a PC.

Regarding recompiling the source, well, Microsoft certainly wouldn't do it. The source is out there but you can imagine how Microsoft would react if someone actually used it.

Re:How about porting Windows?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Try, 'any other architecture.' This was a design goal of the NT branch, and this is why NT 3 and 4 ran on X86, MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha, and so on.

Runs on Bochs, Too (?on Linux on XBox?)

[billstewart]

In case it's not slow enough, it does run on Bochs, so you could probably running on Linux running on your X-Box, and that might get you USB support :-)

Re:Runs on Bochs, Too (?on Linux on XBox?)

[Anonymous Coward]

XBochs?

The Screenshot /.ed

[United States of Can]

The Cache of the Image

Re:The Screenshot /.ed

[SpaceCadetTrav]

All that time spent working on an XBox and they can't get a better TV?

Security issues?

[Huxley_Dunsany]

I'm all for cool hacks like this (software or hardware), and I'm always in awe of the skill that goes into projects along these lines (getting OS X to run on an X-Box, etc.), but it does make me wonder - how long before the virus-writing bastards start targeting online consoles? I know that his is somewhat off topic, but I can't help but immediately think of viruses and spyware whenever Windows is mentioned. Then again, I'm an Apple employee, so that may have something to do with it... :-)

Re:Security issues?

[Grommet - Space Cade]

thats more an issue for the application than the device....embedded browsers are not a real thing...its always the OS that gets the virus the browsers just the gateway to the system. secure either one and there is no proble....thus browser is coded with intent to dissallow acces to anything but a set piece of ram etc....no hard disk no carryover problem...reset the powercircuit to the ram...problem gone

You're missing the point

[Gilesx]

The point with ReactOS isn't to keep up with the latest and greatest. ReactOS with full NT4 compatibility will have a function in many offfices, that still have a huge NT4 presence, but are find that they are coming to the end of their support life cycle with Microsoft. ReactOS would squeeze a little more life out of their systems, and would also provide an easier upgrade path to a straight Linux system than simply going Windows --> Linux.

Home users are a different breed to corporate users, and tend to want the latest version of an OS. Of course, ReactOS is in no position to compete with XP, but wouldn't we be hoping that rather than chosing Windows XP, home users will eventually be installing one of the multitude of distros available?

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have moderated you up if your sig hadn't been so rude...

RTF...-- hey wait, you just quoted the F'nA!!!

[xtermin8]

NT 4.0 is not a "moving target." The project has no plans to implement the features of 2k and XP. I've seen a lot of "RTFA" cases, but this post is the first I've seen where the writer has neglected to read the quote he's included in his own post.

Re:ReactOS? - WINE

[Agret]

From the ReactOS site:

Relationship with the WINE project
ReactOS has always planned to work with the WINE project to share as much programming effort as possible.

Running????

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The USB isn't working yet, so it does not do much useful. At best this can be described as crawling....

Still, to get this far is a great effort.

Oh so it "runs" now?

[The MESMERIC]

Well that is some progress :)

Google doesn't cache images!

[Shimmer]

The cached HTML doc refers to the image on the original server. You're not helping.

Re:Hey L1nux n00bs

[holymoo]

Alot of the reason why reactOS works is because of the developement in wine, which is linux based. Keep in mind ReactOs still really isn't windows because the source code is different and it doesn't bare the microsoft name. The reason why people program software for open source is to benefit mankind and allow people to use it the way that they would like it. I wonder how you could find a more "realistic" or "useful" endevor as you say. Anarchy |\|3\/\/B.

React OS is...

[dioscaido]

... a great project for the developers, since they gain a hell of a lot of marketable experience building the OS; I'm sure it's quite fun too. But outside of that, it's a total waste of time. These people are very talented... drop this and join the Linux movement! They are re-inventing a wheel that Linux has already long since created. Take that drive and knowledge, and apply it towards building a windows emulation layer in Linux. Hell, join WINE and make their app commercially usable. Another alternative, if you are that confident that your solution will be better than the NT core, is to simply join MS and make the NT kernel stronger (and make a nice mint in the process).

ReactOS will keep these people busy and entertained, but in the end will never result in any singificant piece of operating system.

Re:React OS is...

[KJKHyperion]

Personally, I think most of the talent in Linux is wasted and should go into the underappreciated FreeBSD, but that could be just me. Then, Wine on Linux has limits. The Wine people know this, we know this, and we're trying to meet in the middle

Ironically, what the project lacks isn't generical operating system development skills that could be converted for another system (and does such a thing exist, anyway?), it's precisely the Windows-specific skills of a certain level, the familiarity with all the quirks and hacks that turn every driver test on ReactOS into a deadlock-memory-corruption-bugcheck fest. Sadly, all Windows experts seem to be either somehow involved with Microsoft (like one of our former developers) or total cocks with a contempt for everything open source.

That, and some of us really, really hate Linux.

Re:React OS is...

[Markos]

The same could be said for Linux when it was in its infancy.

I commend the group working on ReactOS for the job they've done so far. Unlike others, they seem to be progessing nicely and arent stuck in the limbo between design and coding which so many projects seem to suffer from these days.

Theres a growing amount of users who have older hardware that struggles on 2k, XP and will struggle even more so with Longhorn. If ReactOS can provide a relatively stable Windows compatable environment, IMO they will make serious inroads.

Re:React OS is...

[isolation]

Read the sig....

Re:React OS is...

[SubTexel]

Funny, many people said the same thing about Linux when it was starting out...

Re:React OS is...

[dioscaido]

Funny, many people said the same thing about Linux when it was starting out...

How many full fledged commercial open source operating systems were available when Linus started his project? More power to them for being so ambitious, but the fact is we have Linux, Darwin, *BSD, and soon Solaris, all filling the void of robust open source operating systems.

Their intended goal is to provide an alternative to Windows... well given all the other open OS's out there, spending endless hours trying to get the bootlader just right and writing driver subsystems and all that other jazz, while a ton of fun, is retracing steps many others have taken before, and neither implicitly furthers the goal of ReactOS being Windows compatible, nor necessarily instills confidence that the code is solid (v1 code rarely is). Unless these people are complete geniuses, they will be bogged down w/ all the bugs that have already been dealt with and ironed out throught the years in the other OS's.

Getting 100% compatibility with windows is hard, if not impossible. They definitely won't achieve it if they also have to deal with the minutae of building a full fledged operating system from scratch.

Re:React OS is...

[dioscaido]

Thanks for your response!

it's precisely the Windows-specific skills of a certain level, the familiarity with all the quirks and hacks that turn every driver test on ReactOS into a deadlock-memory-corruption-bugcheck fest.

It's precisely these situations why I feel that your talents would be better spent working on top of an existing system. You guys need to strip away dealing directly the hardware layer and concentrate on getting the APIs implemented. The generic details underpinning OS development will keep you bogged down long enough for the release of the successor to Longhorn before you even get NT 4 compatibility. And even with API compatibliity, you risk building an OS that isn't really any more secure than Windows. If linux is dreadful, take a crack at the BSDs, or the handful of other open source OSs out there.

Re:React OS is...

[Mr.Ned]

"it's a total waste of time. These people are very talented... drop this and join the Linux movement!"

The same could have been said to the early Linux developers about Minix and BSD.

Re:React OS is...

[Planesdragon]

You're kidding, right?

A usable, workable microkernal that snuggly runds Win32 by design, and you're suggesting they give up and poke and Linux some more?

And let's not forget that they have essentially "joined WINE" -- both projects apparantly share rather liberally between each other.

Re:React OS is...

[tepples]

You guys need to strip away dealing directly the hardware layer and concentrate on getting the APIs implemented.

The Wine team and the ReactOS team already do trade patches back and forth.

Re:React OS is...

[dosius]

They HAVE joined WINE.

Moll.

Re:React OS is...

[Turmio]

If you would've been around in Usenet in early 90's, would you've told the same thing to this lunatic Linus Torvalds who wants to build an Unix-like operating system for PC from the scratch? If he's so talented, why is he wasting resources instead of joining the GNU project and help them to get the free Unix running or BSD camp who actually had free, working Unix at the time? Well he decided to do his own thing because he was a stupid, stubborn young and naive college student. What a jerk, nothing useful ever came out of it.

Waiting for the XBOX to run Longhorn

[Ingolfke]

When XBOX runs Longhorn, then I'll think about switching.

Re:Waiting for the XBOX to run Longhorn

[rzebram]

I reckon you'll need a beowulf cluster of Xbo.... ahh, nevermind.

Re:Waiting for the XBOX to run Longhorn

[atlasheavy]

isn't it a little more interesting to think about Longhorn running Xbox? (note: I have zero inside knowledge about XNA, and I'm basing all of my understanding on it on publicly available info).

pointless waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they get this thing running and out of beta, it's a pointless waste of time to port it to some other platform.

I know it's free software, etc., etc., but honestly I get annoyed at people who spend all their time developing silly stuff and not focusing on the basics. That kind of focus on pointless frills is the reason Mozilla supports all these "wonderful" themes and other eyecandy but still has some of the same stupid bugs it had years ago, and why Firefox has inherited some of them. And it's also why Linux supports a whole slew of funky weird TV cards and every bass-ackwards broken-as-designed 10BaseT Ethernet card, yet they haven't finished udev yet and you're forced to either work with devfs (which is basically deprecated and unmaintained) or udev (which is not out of beta yet) or MAKEDEV (which is out of the stone ages and unmanageable).

Re:pointless waste of time

[Grommet - Space Cade]

i would honestly say that porting to xbox was more about dealing with how the PCI bus works....or in this case how the xbox PCI bus doesnt work.

Re:pointless waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly when it comes to free software, I don't give a damn if somebody spends their time working on silly stuff or if they are creating the next monopoly-breaking application. Yes, it is an annoyance, but unless you are trying to be part of the solution, you are only part of the problem. Who am I to dictate that somebody's free time be spent on being "productive"? Free software is many people's hobby that I get to reap the benefits from.

I saw it myself

[bluGill]

Last January at Wine Conf I sat next to a reactOs developer, and he had reactOs running on his laptop. Sometimes he even kept it up for as much as 2 minutes! A record Windows 98 was unable to touch that day. (the joys of a broken power supply, everytime someone breathed he had to reboot)

Uh huh.

[StarKruzr]

So what you're saying is it emulates an API. Right?

Sounds like an emulator to me.

Re:Uh huh.

[Erwos]

That's like saying an AthlonXP emulates a Pentium4. It's reimplementing something, not emulating it.

-Erwos

Re:Uh huh.

[Piquan]

So what you're saying is it emulates an API. Right?

No more than my car emulates a mode of transportation employing paved streets, or Mentat's MPS emulates SVR4 STREAMS (or even BSD sockets).

Wine implements the API.

Re:Uh huh.

[AstroDrabb]

Nope, its not an emulator. Does an AthlonXP emulate a Pentium4? Nope. It's reimplementing x86. A _very_ differnt thing. That is why an Athlon is _much_ faster for some operatins then a P4 while a P4 can still pull ahead for some ops like multimedia. If it was _emulation_, they would be equal. Reimplementing is _not_ emulation. Reimplementing can introduce its own pros and cons. Pros can be better algorithms and cons can be worse algorithms. Emulation would create a 1-to-1 copy of something, including bugs. That would mean that everywhere NT sucks ReactOS and WINE would suck and everywhere NT was good ReactOS and WINE would be good, which is not the case.

Re:Uh huh.

[Trejkaz]

Doesn't a CPU emulator also implement the specification of the CPU?

Re:Uh huh.

[Doomstalk]

So what you're saying is it emulates an API. Right?
If it doesn't simulate hardware then it isn't an emulator, it's a wrapper.

Re:Uh huh.

[AndyL]

I have here an implementation of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System's specification.

It's pretty cool. The best part is that instead of implementing the spec with hardware, it implements it with software.

I am, as we speak, using this implementation to run software written for the SNES spec. Namely, CHRONO_TRIGGER.smc which I obtained through entirely legitimate channels.

Re:Uh huh.

[AndyL]

For the people who can't understand sarcasm, that last line should probably end with "WINK! WINK! WINK!".

I keep forgetting that some people seem to filter out sarcasm at the router or something.

Re:Uh huh.

[Piquan]

Doesn't a CPU emulator also implement the specification of the CPU?

Yes, and so does the native CPU. I wouldn't say that implementing a foo is sufficient to say that it's emulating a foo.

I suppose it comes down to a definition question, but here's the basic rule-of-thumb I might tend to work from (and it's just off the top of my head):

An emulator:

1. Implements a particular interface (whether it's a well-documented interface or not). So an x86 emulator would need to implement the MOV, JMP, etc instructions.
2. Is implemented on another platform. An x86 emulator has to run on a real computer with an OS etc.
3. Takes responsibility for maintaining the complete state of the device it's emulating, insofar as it affects the result. An x86 emulator would need to maintain the registers itself, although not the "virtual" temperature.

Wine meets the first criterion: it implements the Win32 API. It also meets the second. However, it does not meet the third, because it doesn't track much state. It doesn't need to track file descriptors, or TCP/IP connections, etc, because it can leave that to the underlying OS.

Generally, I call something meeting 1, 2, and 3 an emulator. If it meets 1 and 2, I tend to refer to it as a "compatibility layer". Wine is an example. So is the Linux compatibility layer of FreeBSD (which is sometimes informally referred to as the "linuxulator", but this is taken as a fun name rather than a formal description). I'm writing a compatibility layer for a project at work now, to translate $myproj v1 API calls to $myproj v2 for-- you guessed it-- backwards compatibility. But the v2 portion tracks all the state.

I don't generally refer to things as an emulator unless they meet all three. Bochs is an emulator. So are SPIM and WABI. VMware is an interesting case: it emulates most of the hardware, but only a little bit of the CPU; the bulk of the CPU work is done natively.

If you don't consider Nitfol or a JVM as emulators, you may want to add the criterion that the interface they implement must primarily exist in a non-emulating implementation. I probably would include that criterion, but that would mean I'd have to go back and edit this post.

Re:Uh huh.

[araemo]

"VMware is an interesting case: it emulates most of the hardware, but only a little bit of the CPU; the bulk of the CPU work is done natively."

But how does this work out when running, say, Mac OS X on an Athlon/P4? (Unless I am mistaken about VMWare's capabilities)

Re:Uh huh.

[SyncNine]

IIRC, VMWare will not emulate a PowerPC processor. It's been a while since I tinkered with it though, it may be a feature available in a newer version.

Re:Uh huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, the ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) is the same, but they have different interfaces, aka sockets, meaning different pin-outs and communication protocols within the system. Hence why you need different chipsets to run them, they don't speak the same language. They also have different cache/memory architectures and pipeline depths.

An emulator would have the same appearance as the object it's emulating to the outside world. Pentium and Athlon do not appear the same to the nearest components, i.e. chipsets.

So I would have to agree with my GP, it's emulating an API; it looks the same and acts the (when it's works properly) same as far as any programs using it are concerned.

running?

[focitrixilous P]

What the port is lacking is hardware support: especially, ReactOS has no USB support at the moment, so it basically just sits there being pretty, because mouse and keyboard won't work.

This must be some new meaning of 'running' an OS I was unaware of.

Anyone want a 'running' Mac SE 30 with ethernet card? Drop me an email.

USB Driver?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious what's holding up the USB driver development? Is it issues figuring out the proprietary hardware or is it just one of those "haven't-gotten-to-that-yet"s?

Anyone know what chip houses the USB controller on the XBox?

Re:USB Driver?

[Ingolfke]

Anyone know what chip houses the USB controller on the XBox?

I think it's the one on the right.

Re:USB Driver?

[Grommet - Space Cade]

was via based originally but now the chip is unmarked....id expect that the debian driver will tell you in xebian or even the xbox-linux forums

Re:USB Driver?

[hattig]

USB controller is in the nVidia southbridge, then there is a 4 port USB hub chip connecting to the USB ports that are gameports.

Re:USB Driver?

[marco0009]

In version 1.0 and version 1.1 xboxes, the USB controller are the two removable cards which are vertically plugged into the board, just on the inside of the case parallel to the actual ports. They have a set of yellow wires running from the motherboard to the chip. BECAREFUL WHEN UNPLUGGING THESE.

As for later version, I believe they are on the board, have a look see at http://www.xbox-scene.com/ poke around the forums, I'm sure someone there knows. The only reason I know about 1.0/1.1 is because I managed to snap an inductor off my chip when unlugging those yellow wires I mentioned (did I mention be careful?) and broke my 3rd player port. Luckily I had a friend who had broken down an old XBox for parts so I just stole a replacement from him :p

Yeah that dell was a POS

[isolation]

You could help me out by donating me a new laptop =P.

Re:Yeah that dell was a POS

[rasz]

I can donate you some duct tape for the broken power supply

Mirrordot.org cached image

[gwydion04]

this will help their steaming, smoking server... I believe mirrordot has a local copy of the image.

Screenshot (pops)

I think its definitely possible with Bart PE

[emkman]

Anyone who does computer repair (knows/should know) that Bart PE is a great windows based system that is built from the Windows XP Preinstall Environment and boots of CD. It runs most x86 programs, can use drivers with small modification, has a full registry hive and editor, has usb support, etc. However, to keep MS off his ass, Bart (the author) has limited the PE system to running 6 concurrent processes, so that it can't be used as a bootleg operating system. Not that I am suggesting or condoning it, but if someone was to make a HAL for Bart PE and remove the process limit, the XP on XBox project would be as close to done as your gonna get.

Re:I think its definitely possible with Bart PE

[vrmlknight]

Actually the 6 process limit is imposed my Microsoft on their WinPE product it just happens to carry over to what Bart is doing. and Microsoft is off his back because he worked with them to figure out a way not to violate their licensing. technically BartPE is an improperly licensed version of XP but still legal.

Do I understand ReactOS correctly?

[GuyFawkes]

Are you aiming for an open source equivalent to the original 98lite, which ripped just about everything out of win98 and left you with a bare OS, driver support and GUI?

Re:Do I understand ReactOS correctly?

[losinggeneration]

Ummmmmm..... didn't 98lite modify windows 98, meaning it wasn't a reimplementation of it? Or am I just remembering wrong.

Re:Do I understand ReactOS correctly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent was asking if they're aiming to provide the same facilities as 98lite did, not if they're aiming to create ReactOS in the exact same way that 98lite was created, or even create the same thing (since the way it is created dictates what it is).

Re:Do I understand ReactOS correctly?

[His name cannot be s]

No.

You missed it.

ReactOS is an open source re-implementation of Windows. 98lite used the original Windows 98 files, and built a stripped down OS.

ReactOS does not contain any MS code.

Re:Do I understand ReactOS correctly?

[squiggleslash]

More to the point, ReactOS is an implementation of Windows NT, whereas 98Lite was a modification of DOS/Windows, version Windows 98. Despite Microsoft's liberal use of the word "Windows", and the fact both implemented compatable APIs, these were two entirely different operating systems, with different underlying technology models, designs, and everything.

What a horrible idea

[theantix]

Why would people spend their free time on a project to re-implement Windows? Their answer from their FAQ:

"Reliability, subsystems, filesystem drivers, services and the registry
are all good concepts which are implemented well in the NT kernel.
Not everything is perfect, but without access to the source code, we can't fix it, so we're choose to clone it."

WTF? I can understand WINE, if you have a legacy binary application that is windows-only. But poorly re-implementing windows? They will probably *never* get full compatibility with windows, so it will always be an inferior solution -- some "fix". I'm tempted to think these ReactOS people are clinically insane.

If a ReactOS dev is listening here, explain this to me: why don't you just create drop-in replacement .dlls for mswindows in cases where you think it's broken? This is something you'd have to write in the first place if you're going to reimplement the whole goddamn system, and seems a lot more productive. Alternatively, why not work productively to improve Linux or a BSD variant so it has the supposed "advantages" that you find in mswindows?

Re:What a horrible idea

[isolation]

"This is something you'd have to write in the first place if you're going to reimplement the whole goddamn system, and seems a lot more productive"

I have spent the past three years porting Wine dlls back to Windows via Mingw-GCC as drop in replacments for use in ReactOS.

Re:What a horrible idea

[absurdist]

If you can't see the value of a free, open source OS that will run the abundance of Windows executables, then I guess there's nothing more that needs to be said.

Re:What a horrible idea

[xeno314]

If they worked on improving Wine instead of building an entire OS, they'd still have a free, open source OS that will run the abundance of Windows executables--any free, open source OS that will run Wine...

Re:What a horrible idea

[Snipes420]

man if you are going to complain about people wasting time on their hobbys then why don't you go bitch at people that watch useless sports like nascar or sumo wrestling or any sport for that matter.

You want to know what I do that wastes time?

guess

you're doing it right now

But I happen to like it. stop flaming.

If a ReactOS dev is listening here, do you have any idea how long it will be until the xbox gpu has 3d acceleration in linux? And keep up the goood work.

Re:What a horrible idea

[isolation]

You don't know what you are talking about.

Re:What a horrible idea

[mmusson]

So by that logic you are also against Linux since there were free Unix implementations already available?

Re:What a horrible idea

[KJKHyperion]

Windows applications are not legacy. Linux is not a Windows replacement. BSD neither. We are totally, absolutely, positively sure: it's a Windows clone we want. We don't all secretly dream running Linux, and in fact several of us must fight the puke back when forced to deal with it (except KDE. I like KDE. I'd like it even more if it ran under Windows). Some have had their weird ideas phase, but you get over it soon.

We're tired of hearing about this every damn time, and I'm not speaking personally here. Even the Linux users among the developers are fed up with that argument. It doesn't make sense, ReactOS is real, is here, today: deal with it already, because at the point it is now, it's not just going to go away.

Your technical argument doesn't make sense, either. One of such DLLs you talk of is called "the Windows kernel", and it's a pretty big piece of software (a 2+ MB binary, for the record). And it has a private API to talk to the HAL. And one to the authentication service. And another to the event logging service. And yet another to the PNP service. Each of these services can be queried by applications with an undocumented RPC protocol. It's a recurring theme in Windows: most APIs have two sides with unknown grounds in the middle, and many DLLs expose multiple client sides. Picture the graph in your mind. No, more arcs. No, way more than that. Yes, you're getting closer, and yes, that arc does go twice the same way. Etc.

One has to wonder why couldn't Wine just provide a loader for Windows executables and let the (air quotes) D-L-L-s (air quotes) do the rest, if your statement had even the slightest trace of truth in it.

Please don't trivialize our work, which is something you apparently don't fathom in the slightest

Re:What a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"real, here, today: deal with it already"
"except KDE. I like KDE. I'd like it even more if it ran under Windows"

By the latter statement, you enjoy the "user experience" (TM) that Windows gives you, not particularily the development model, stability, etc. However, ReactOS, though perhaps meeting those other two goals, is definitely not "here, today", when it comes to user experience. In fact, when comparing it to any actual version of Windows past NT 4.0 or 95, I have to "fight the puke back".

However, that's just me; don't take it as an insult against your work, take it just as you should: a troll on your non-overly-painstakingly-thought-out post.

Re:What a horrible idea

[Rie Beam]

So, wait - currently the ReactOS project, in what has apparently been many years of work, has the interface and power of an early beta of Win95. Longhorn comes out in a few years. Explain to me how you plan to forge such an OS, when you have to constantly rely on remaking the system whenever Microsoft has a slight whim towards another direction? Or is the ultimate goal of ReactOS to run pre-95 applications once they are complete broken? I don't fully understand the sanity here.

PS: I'm a Windows user who personally finds the Linux/OSS philosophy appealing, but I'm just more comfortable in a Windows environment for the time being. It'd be a great project if I could actually hold it to something more than a dry implementation of the Windows OS. Besides, the current version still crashes almost everytime I use the LiveCD. Amazing.

Re:What a horrible idea

[theantix]

Sadly, I find your work is in fact, quite trivial. You are seeking to re-implement an operating system that is already out of date and will continue to age as Microsoft powers through the upgrade treadmill. I'm sure your work is indeed very difficult, and that the developers are very talented -- but that doesn't change the fact that your work is perhaps the very essence of trivial. **You are building something that has already been built.** To me it seems like you are doing the equivilent of building a new version of the leaning tower of Pisa that isn't leaning -- probably a lot of effort, but not really that important compared to building something new and purposeful.

However, you get the gist of my message wrong when you tell me to deal with it because it's here. I really don't care about ReactOS, so I really don't have to "deal with it". It boggles the mind that you talented people are spending your free time on this instead of something productive and useful, but I can say that about an incredibly wide variety of people. And hell, you're way above the people in the alley shooting up -- nowhere near the bottom of the crazy pile. You are free to do whatever you want, and I am free to be baffled as to why you'd want to.

As to the technical argument, I don't think you quite understand me. Wine allows people to run Windows applications on Linux, which I can see the value of. But ReactOS allows people to run a broken and inferior clone of an old version of Windows. Since I don't know what you find broken about it (your FAQ doesn't specificy) I don't know what components are the biggest concern to you. My suggestion is that if you have the skills required to re-implement the entire complex api/kernel system, you probably also have the ability to drop in replacements for windows components you find broken.

One of the BeOS clones is doing exactly this, and their target is to re-implement them one by one until they get the whole system reinvented. This would allow your team to fix the problems you have with Windows NT/2K while not having a completely broken and useless OS. I'm not saying this would be easy, just that it would actually make sense compared with the path this project seems to be taking. But hey, I can't and won't even try telling you what to do with your free time.

Re:What a horrible idea

[ebooher]

theantix wrote:

but that doesn't change the fact that your work is perhaps the very essence of trivial. **You are building something that has already been built.** To me it seems like you are doing the equivilent of building a new version of the leaning tower of Pisa that isn't leaning

Well, I have to step in here and fire up my rant machine. Everyone else is having a row, I want one too. So here goes: It's time for my Bullshit Theory of the Day!

You say that the team is building something that has already been built. You claim that they are attempting to reinvent a wheel that is no longer useful. I must call bullshit on this whole diatribe. This isn't the wheel. I know how to build a wheel. More importantly I'm pretty sure you know how to build a wheel. My little brother knows how to build a wheel. With so many people building wheels we have to stop using this analogy for open source implementation.

I say this is building a Pyramid. Do you know how to build a Pyramid? I know I sure don't, and they are one of the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramid was built within the lifetime of one man. But the secrets that allowed them to build the Pyramid died with the master builder. (Oh, and let's nip this before it starts. The workers were not slaves. They were freemen as evidenced by "signatures" around the pyramid structure.)

The secrets of the source of the Win32 API are held by one man. He (and his team) know exactly how to push this block on that level and move it hundreds of feet into the air to start the next level of the Pyramid being built. I don't know how to move that block, and the ReactOS guys don't know how to move that block either. But they are trying to learn.

For hundreds of years man has attempted to relearn knowledge that was lost through the sands of time. Hundreds have tried to decode exactly how this block moved to be placed on top of that one after being rough cut by hand from a quarry at the base. Is this worthless? Is the knowledge of how a structure was designed, fabricated, built, and weathered as such that it has lasted hundreds of years useless information?

Rome had aquaducts, plumbing, roads. All structures designed in the minds of men and built on the backs of men. But which required decades, if not centuries, to recreate elsewhere in the world after the fall of the Roman Empire. Those structures too are still standing today.

My house, however, built only a year and a half ago, is not. Creaky boards, swaying walls, truly horrifing things happening. I, Sir, want an aquaduct. I want a Pyramid, a Castle. I want a home I know is going to stand for centuries. Not a measely couple of decades.

This is no different than what is happening here. There is no amount of information which is not knowledge. There is no knowledge that is not power. Power is what mankind strives to achieve. The very fact that the secrets of how to move those blocks into the air to get Word to run belong to so few is why so many are working so hard to recreate the information needed to perform these tasks.

It's the *why*. Why does x+y=z? Why does yellow + blue = green? Why is the sky blue? This isn't about recreating an OS that is dying if not dead just so they can have a perfectly dead OS. This is not about wanting to run an old copy of Word 2.0 they happen to have lying around. This is about the why of the power.

It's also the exact same why that created Linux.

Why is it that whenever someone with so little resources accomplishes so much there are always millions waiting to tear them down and tell them to go to hell? You don't want to install ReactOS to run Word 2.0 because you've already pirated XP SP2? Fine! Don't download it, don't install it, don't run it. But as a member of mankind at least understand that we will always rebuild what has already been built. Always.

Cars, Trains, Buildings, Waterways, Boats, Spaceships, and yes even the leaning t

Re:What a horrible idea

[Civil_Disobedient]

We don't all secretly dream running Linux, and in fact several of us must fight the puke back when forced to deal with it (except KDE. I like KDE. I'd like it even more if it ran under Windows).

Abso-fucking-lutely. We *like* Windows, nay, we *prefer* Windows, but we don't like Microsoft and their software policies.

And surprise! a LOT of people feel this way. Until Linux-raving Lunatics get this through their thick skulls, they will never make inroads in the desktop user environment. The user interface is as important to the operating system as the file system.

Re:What a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't clear that there _were_ free Unix implementations available.

There were a bunch of crazy people at a US university engaged in a lawsuit with the phone company, was that a "free Unix implementation" or a legal minefield?

GNU had a lot of bits and pieces but no actual Unix implementation

Minix was a good free tool for teaching, but was deliberately sabotaged license-wise to prevent making a decent OS out of it (and Tanenbaum still stands by the decision to do this).

By contrast in 1994 it was perfectly obvious that there were several free Unix implementations, but that's too late for Linus Torvalds not to write Linux.

Re:What a horrible idea

[Mant]

Nice rant, with some quality straw men you beat the stuffing out of.

Yes, rebuilding to rediscover lost knowledge or find a better way of doing things is worthwhile. Asking why is very important to human progress. If ReactOS appeared to be doing those things it would appear worthwhile.

The Windows API isn't lost, although it may be guarded by Microsoft. If you want to know why you can join the company, or one in their shared source program. Nobody is reclaiming past glories by figuring it out. NT4 has been done before, not only that is has already been improved on. The ReactOS guys want something more stable, functional and still compatible? Windows 2000, or 2003. They still have a long way to go to get where MS was, and they don't appear to be headed anywhere new after that.

Even if they do find, say, a better way of implementing a registry, hardly anyone benefits because it isn't like this goes back into windows as the vast, vast majority of people use it.

I'm all for pushing the limits and learning about new and better ways, but for all your waxing poetic about pyramids and aqueducts (and here is a hint, your house is worse quality because of cost and quality not lost secret building techniques) none of it seems relevant to the fact that I can't see ReactOS going anywhere new that benefits people.

I can see it as a useful learning experience for the developers, and if they enjoy it, more power to them. The use seems to be entirely in the process, not the result. Nothing wrong with that, but it does leave some people baffled.

The only unique thing ReactOS seems to offer is possibility, one day, of offering the combination of open source, Windows compatibility (without WINE or similar) and that seems a stretch. I can see it ever getting to 100% compatibility, and that means it is going to be less stable when it comes to actually running programs. If they actually got anywhere close to Windows I'm sure MS would lawyer them into oblivion.

Just because some people doing what has been done before leads to progress doesn't mean it all does, or all attempts to do so should be immune from criticism. This is the flaw in your rant's logic. I hope the ReactOS guys have lots of fun, and learn lots, but I completely get why people see the actual results as a bit pointless.

Re:What a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Name calling aside, what do you really think MS is going to do if you actually do create something that can compete with them? Can you afford lawyers and court costs until retirement age?

Re:What a horrible idea

[juanillodgn]

If we don't rebuild, we forget

So I deduce that humankind's memory is a dynamic memory

Interesting... ;-)

Re:What a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

you must not have heard.. microsoft quietly introduced file protection in windows 2003. this means even if you try deleting a system file, it will reappear as if it was never touched. this goes for modifying them as well.

Re:What a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that you are confused.

First of all, ReactOS only has "NT 4 compatability" as a baseline. Allready, the ReactOS team is incorporating features found in windows 2000 and XP. This renders your "Obscolesance" argment inapplicable.

The purpose of ReactOS is to build up the win32API, and potentially move it to other platforms that M$ doesnt touch-- In the effort to create a viable market alternative to current windows offerings. Microsoft starts planning new features? Fine-- Reactos reimplements them. The "Behindness" of reactos can ultimately be anyplace from a year, to a few months behind, especially once ReactOS is more mature.

It sounds to me like you like to blow smoke out both of your ends--- On the one hand, you demonize M$, claiming that they monopolise the industry, use their money in anticompetative ventures, and are the parody of the evil intergalactic empire---- Then on the other hand, when somebody tries to make a *REAL* alternative for a win32 desktop, you get all huffy, and say "Why dont you just go join M$ then?".

As a long time provider of technical support, I can tell you that the infrustructure of Linux is inherantly non-user friendly, and will probably *NEVER* take off as a viable user platform. GASP! I said the abominable! Oh no! Get out the pitchforks and torches, and burn the heretic!

In all reality, an alternative like ReactOS will be taken up more readily by potential users of OSS software, than a user-oriented build of Linux. I would bet money on that. Here is why:

1) Most desktop users currently use an M$ Windows flavor OS--

1-A) ReactOS Looks and feels like windows allready
1-B) ReactOS can run windows applications natively, like they were MADE for each other
1-C) ReactOS can support all the devices Windows can, and can even use the same drivers and disks provided!

2)Unlike X on Linux, ReactOS has a dedicated graphical subsystem, and in time, will support hardware accelleration features on the desktop. X currently achieves its graphical display either through (buggy) X-drivers, or through the use of a Generic Vesa driver, which doesnt offer acceleration.

3)ReactOS will reimplement DirectX, and DirectX driver interfaces, enabling it to potentially play more modern games than Linux + Wine can. Not all of the innovations and implementations provided by ReactOS can be used in Wine, and vice-versa. ReactOS gets the upper hand here, in that it can support devices using their vendor supplied directX drivers, where as Wine must use a simulated device interface, to a linux driver.

4)ReactOS is looking very earnestly at the CoLinux project, and is seriously considering adding CoLinux as an optional subsystem, enabling a TRUE linux distro to run cooperatively with ReactOS- making ReactOS capable of doing everything a Linux box can do, and MORE.

The real reason why ReactOS has taken 8 years to be developed, is because to my knowledge, it has never had more than 50 developers actively programming for it. Compare that to M$ windows (with thousands of employees working), or with Linux (with at least several hundred)-- And tell me they havent done an amazing feat.

My take?

Linux makes a good server environment-- Unix was originally JUST THAT, and that is what Linux cloned. It was NEVER intended to be a desktop OS. Conversely, Windows is a desktop OS. It makes a darn shitty server. Users and administrators alike pick whatever software best suits their needs and requirements-- That is why M$ holds more than 80% market share in the desktop OS biz, and why more than 60% of the internet runs on *Nix.

You want an OSS desktop? FINE! Give the people what they really want-- Give them "Windows", Freely.

That is exactly what ReactOS is doing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Please, you're making my eyeballs bounce

[Anonymous Coward]

_can_ you _please_ limit your use of _underlines_?

Re:Please, you're making my eyeballs bounce

[Anonymous Coward]

Billy, You ever seen a grown man playing xbox naked?

You ever seen rtf on a web forum of hackers?

its not a screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

its a picture

a terrible one at that

And this is different from comercial software?

[oliverthered]

'they start out with a grand vision and end up planning and then re-planning and throwing out code and never really get off the ground. Some die and stay dead, some get picked up by a group of enthusiasts with a more down-to-earth approach of 'Getting something working now, improvements later.' and the project takes off.'

Yep, sounds like most projects at most companies I've worked for, they just have enough money that they can trash a load of R&D but still come up with a product.

Case study, The atom bomb vs world hunger.

The same is true about API's,
"developers don't rewrite their programs to use the latest APIs 'just for the heck of it'.", nope management of R&D decide that were going to use XYZ piece of software, it like to generate code using XYZ API's jobs done.

The thing is that XYZ piece of software usually come from Microsoft, and funny enough they do use the latest APIs 'just for the heck of it' or maybe to test them.

Microsoft releases Direct X 9, all new games must now be Direct X 9 or be old hat.

Microsoft releases XP, lots of software get update to be Window XP logo complient.

You can still run some windows 3 software on XP, but it won't have the same user interface!

Re:And this is different from comercial software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Case study, The atom bomb vs world hunger.

Defense of country vs feeding people to stupid to feed themselves.

Most people have somehow managed to feed and clothe themselves for 15,000 years and now we should take care of those who can't do it for themselves? Sorry, Darwin is trying to make the species stronger by weeding them out, we'rd doing humanity a dis-service by keeping them alive.

easier upgrade path

[oliverthered]

How? isn't ReactOS a NT 'clone', so it would be just as hard to move from ReactOS to linux, unless you count wine.

MOD PARENT DOWN...

[absurdist]

Insightful? hardly. Clueless flamebait? More to the point.

low latency

[Fussen]

Just picture it, 64-128 people all sweeping for mines with latencies near 30ms. And then you have to watch out for people with hacks that can see THROUGH the squares!!

Re:low latency

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we'd need Punkbuster support right now; don't you know about the XYZZY cheat code?

Seems someone at Microsoft played Zork.

Try it: with Windows's Minesweeper opened (and your cursor over it), type 'xyzzy', then follow by pressing the CTRL key on your keyboard. Then, when you move your mouse, the first pixel in the top-left corner will indicate the status of the square under your cursor (white if it's clean and black if there's a mine).

Try it; it impresses the girls!

Re:low latency

[taradfong]

I think you mean Adventure/Colossal Cave, not Zork. That is, unless you can also use 'hello sailor' to unlock the feature.

ReactOS would impress me more ...

[elronxenu]

... if their website ran on Windows, rather than Unix ...

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:18:23 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) PHP/4.3.3

it's a joke, laugh ...

Re:ReactOS would impress me more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't that that qualifies as a joke.

A joke would be "In ReactOS, Windows runs YOU"

Website didn't last long.....

[dickeya]

It must be that cloned version of IIS they've been working on.

Not what you say it is

[blackmonday]

The xbox is not a crippled PC, it's a game console, and a damn good one at that. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy (I'm an OS X fanboy), but the xbox is the best console I've ever had, and I've had every major one for the last 10 years, including the Dreamcast. The hard drive kicks ass, mine is modded for the xbox media center, the games look great and optical out to dolby digital was easy with the advanced pack.

Re:Not what you say it is

[Mr2001]

The hard drive kicks ass, mine is modded for the xbox media center, the games look great and optical out to dolby digital was easy with the advanced pack.

Uh-huh.. because hooking up an optical cable to the PS2's built in optical port is so damn hard. ;)

Re:Not what you say it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the PS2 have a built in Dolby Digital encoder to encode surround sound for games? No, I didn't think so :P

Re:Not what you say it is

[kenelbow]

Uh-huh.. because hooking up an optical cable to the PS2's built in optical port is so damn hard. ;)

Maybe not, but getting Dolby Digital out of a PS2 is. The handful of games that support DTS in game on the PS2 don't really have as good separation as the best sounding games on XBOX. And I'm sorry, but games that use Dolby Pro Logic II just don't cut it on surround sound comapred to the XBOX's Dolby Digital Support. As an owner of a GameCube, PS2, and XBOX I can definitely say the the XBOX provides the best aural experience.

Why does everyone hate this

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, ok, i read their posts about how this is a "waste of time" and the developers should "be spending it on linux." I dont know about you guys but I dont do everything for the advancement of mankind. So to counter the complaint about these developers wasting their time when they could be working on linux, I make the argument that this project looks just plain fun. I am finishing up my os programming class in college and got really excited for this project. It looks fun and challenging and who wouldnt want to run their own windows box free from the conglomerate that everyone here seems to hate. This site is news for nerds, stuff that matters. Well im a nerd and i think this is awesome and really matters. Sure this is probably a troll but come on guys and lighten up, these guys are having fun with what they do and are doing a good job at it.

It's a driver issue

[tepples]

Getting 100% compatibility with windows is hard, if not impossible. They definitely won't achieve it if they also have to deal with the minutae of building a full fledged operating system from scratch.

On the contrary, they can't achieve it except by building a full fledged operating system from scratch. If you don't have a WDM compatible HAL and driver layer, then how do you expect to install a random sound card driver, a random scanner driver, or what have you? In theory, it appears ReactOS may be more likely to support some recent peripherals with Windows-only drivers than Linux can, because ReactOS can run WDM drivers.

Que?

[blackmonday]

If the Xbox is a broken PC, then ReactOS is a broken Video Game.

Oh Great...

[durtbag]

Once again the mod community pulls through in their quest to make a Microsoft product less stable.

Just kidding, good work all.

Nobody finds it objectionable?

[Anonymous Coward]

That such an obvious clone of a commercial product is being produced? This just stinks of plagarism to me. Dislike of Microsoft does not justify ripping off their efforts, whether it's free or not.

If Windows is so terrible, stop copying it and produce something better. Linux is certainly not it. I remember when the Start button showed up in Windows 95 and everyone was so critical of it, and now Red Hat 9 has a start button. Nice.

It's like photocopying a best-selling novel and then claiming you dislike the author.

Re:Nobody finds it objectionable?

[nickos]

After reading your post I was reminded of Compaq's reverse engineering and reimplementation of IBM's BIOS chip - a necessary feat if anyone was to clone the PC.

Everyone hated the then monopolist IBM at that time and technically the PC was not the nicest of designs. Some time later chip manufacturers would make clones of the Intel x86 processors, completing the commoditisation of the PCs hardware.

If ReactOS lives up to its goals we will have competition at every stage of the "Wintel" hardware/software stack.

Wouldn't be too difficult

[Sycraft-fu]

I don't even know that you'd really need the source, though maybe. The big thing about the Xbox is its unified memory architecture. Normally in a PC you have system RAM and then a totally seperate graphics RAM on the card. Not the case with the Xbox, they both can access the same unified 64MB. Not a problem for a single user, single process game console, not so good for a multiuser multitasking OS.

However I don't see any problem with writing drivers that do sharing of some kind. The integrated Intel graphics cards use system RAM for their video memory, and Creative Labs sound cards use system RAM for their samples. I'd imagine the same thing could be done for Xbox hardware. The drivers would handle diving up the memory between the subsystems.

Other than that, it's all standard hardware. It's an Intel CPU (modified Celeron more or less, x86 P3 class instruction set), and nVidia gaphics, sound and mobo.

The other challenge, aside from drivers, would be working in that small amount of memory. XP wasn't really designed for 64MB systems. I've never tried it, but I imagine it wouldn't be pretty, if it worked at all.

Now the embedded version is a different story. I could easily see XP embedded with some shit you don't really need stripped out working just fine.

As a practical project, I don't see much use. The Xbox really isn't that cheap when you get down to it. Any stripped XP you could build wouldn't be able to run anything in the way of games, given the small amount of memory, and the graphics processor is really the only thing that makes it any intrest over a cheap, old PC. I mean the processor is 733mhz and it has 64MB of memory.

Well Said

[Anonymous Coward]

and thank you for your hard work

Re:The what runs on the which now?

[Anonymous Coward]

christ, don't you people recognise a (lame attempt at) humour when you see it?

Sheesh, what a bunch of fucking babies.

New joypad soon

[zenst]

I look forward to the modded controllers with CTRL/ALT/DEL. Kick, block shoot and reboot.

I'd like to see Plan-9 for XBOX, now that would be some funky fun to be had.

Re:New joypad soon

[glesga_kiss]

I look forward to the modded controllers with CTRL/ALT/DEL.

On most chipped boxes you can get the same effect by pressing both triggers and the white & black button already! ;-)

ReactOS rules!

[808140]

Ok, first off: I hate Windows. I hate its stupid UI, its ugly fonts, and the company that produces it. I jumped ship and switched to Linux before Windows 95 came out. I mean, I hate it, and I would never run an OS that even superficially resembles it. That includes ReactOS.

But.

ReactOS is a perfect example of the OSS spirit. Lots of folks here have been making comments along the lines of "You ought to be working on Linux" or "You ought to be working on WINE" or the like. It surprises me that a site as devoted to the OSS concept would parrot such ridiculous drivel.

It's possible that Linux-based OSS has gotten so popular that we now have lusers of our own. You know what makes a hacker? Someone who codes because he (or she) loves to code. Loves, you know? Not to be productive. Not because they want to change the world. These things may be true of some hackers, but these things alone do not a hacker make.

There was a time when people here respected this. When the majority of Slashdotters were active hackers themselves. Don't be fooled by my high UID -- I remember those times. We wrote software because we loved to. I rather suspect that lots of folks would have told Tim Berners Lee that the web was a dead end idea, or that at the very least it would never be useful. Lots of people have belittled Linux over the years using the same flaccid arguments.

You know GNU? The group that started it all? What was their goal? To produce a free UNIX. Yes, a clone. You understand this? In those days, there was no Windows (1984). A hacker at MIT decided that he wasn't going to put up with this proprietary software bullshit and he said, "I'm going to make a free UNIX clone." And people laughed at him. They said it would never happen. But it did, didn't it? I'm typing this from my Debian GNU/Linux workstation. People like Stallman and Torvalds made that happen. All they wanted was a free OS to replace the one they used at school/work and loved.

Now, most of us (myself included) dislike Windows. We dislike Microsoft (but then, I'm sure RMS disliked IBM, Sun and HP, too). But aren't you missing the point? Some guys like Windows. They like its interface. But like RMS, they demand freedom. Freedom, you know? In this world of the business-friendly "Open Source" movement, people seem to have forgotten this concept, the concept that motivated hackers to create a free UNIX in the first place. It's easy to forget about uncomfortable, uncomprimising ideals like Freedom. But people like Richard Stallman and Theo De Raadt -- and even Linus -- for all their failings -- are motivated by this ideal.

ReactOS is simply another GNU project. But this time, the hackers that have undertaken it aren't fond of the UNIX way. So what? They like an OS I don't like, but so the fuck what? Look at what they're doing. They're creating a free replacement. Free. As in Freedom, you know. So people everywhere that like Windows can use Free Software.

As difficult as it is for me, a unix-geek, to believe, some people don't like UNIX. Some people prefer VMS (I actually quite like VMS and wouldn't mind a FreeVMS). Some people prefer Windows. BeOS. Whatever.

People seem to think that if these guys weren't working on ReactOS, they'd be working on Linux, or BSD, or the HURD, or whatever pet project you have. But that's not how it works. Developers scratch and itch, you know? Because they're coding for love, because they like to code. Not for you. Not so that you can sit on your fat ass and benefit from their work. They do it for themselves, in an ultimately selfish way, to scratch their personal itches. And if you benefit, that's great.

Lusers are people that think FS devs are out to serve them. But guess what: just because you discovered Linux last week and found out that you can run on your machine and get work done doesn't mean that its a "product" that is being "produced" for you to consume. It's a labour of love, made by

Re:ReactOS rules!

[ceradactyl]

Well said. A lot of drivel is going on saying "work on Linux" and other things are a waste of time. React OS is a perfect example of a bunch of hackers following their dream and believing in their own ideas. Good job guys !

Re:ReactOS rules!

[Spacejock]

But aren't you missing the point? Some guys like Windows. They like its interface. But like RMS, they demand freedom.

Another reason I would look at Reactos: Legacy apps. We're running an inhouse accounting program which works fine on Win98 workstations, we have zero need for Win2K or XP or Longhorn or any other tarted-up consumer OS.

If Reactos gets to the stage where it can run legacy apps reliably on new hardware, then it would be worth a look. Win98 has issues with machines over 2ghz when they have a NIC (I think it's 2ghz), MS has a patch but it seems you have to phone them for it. I'd be just as happy with a locked-down minimal install of Reactos as Linux in a business environment.

Re:ReactOS rules!

[bhima]

After reading a lot of the posts previous posts I am mystified at all the negative juvenile drivel. ReactOS _is_ an interesting project and has many interesting implications. I downloaded it and tinkered with it the last time it came up in discussion.

What gets me is that this is not the first discussion this month where the negative juvenile drivel gave me pause but more like the tenth or twentieth. I wonder is Slashdot really degrading this fast or finally after 40 years am I growing up?

Re:ReactOS rules!

[zarr]

Some people ... Makes me want to throw up.

Couldn't agree more!

A windows compatible cheap and free system

[pierrejean.coudert]

You could make a completly free computer by mixing ReactOS and WinLibre or TheOpenCD on an Xbox hardware.

Re:A windows compatible cheap and free system

[richy freeway]

Neat, where do I pick up a free Xbox from then?

XBOX !=PC

[big ben bullet]

there are major differences...

pci bus scan being the biggest hurdle to overcome in making windows work on an xbox

also there's only 64 Mb om memory... wich is ok for winnt/98 but that's the end of it

Re:XBOX !=PC

[dosius]

I run Win2K rather well in 64 MB, this includes MAME (which runs better on 2K than 98 even in 64 MB!), BT, Virtual Dub for fansubbing - sure, it can't take as much running at once, compared to 98, but it still does the job better than 98 for most purposes.

Moll.

Let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

They have created an operating system which basically does nothing yet, has many many half implemented features, and they sat down and said, 'hey I know, lets make it run on the xbox!'

Surely this is fairly futile at this early stage, I'd have thought it would make more sense to get a working system first before porting it to other machines...

But then like many others here, I think the entire venture is fairly futile. There is no way this can ever match windows for functionality, if you are copying someone, you are always going to be at least one step behind them.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Grommet - Space Cade]

NO...what they have done is used the xbox whixh has a bios which we can hack and known hardware configs from Linux and then build a windows NT style HAL and it works....mostly...usb support is a minor thing except for the fact it's the only way an xbox will take input

The idiot comment

[jesterzog]

-1 Idiot!

Woah, control yourself. I actually found it amusing (albeit misleading), despite your comment.

Why is it so accepted to call someone an idiot just because they make a mistake? There's such a thing as constructive criticism, and it's possible to comment on something without acting like a jerk while doing it.

If the earlier poster was deliberately provoking it or if you were a regular troll then I could understand it and ignore it, but you've gone out of your way to also correct what was said. Slashdot's great for conversation with tech-minded people and that's what keeps me here, but all that fostering this attitude does is to make potentially interesting slashdot conversation appear even more childish and immature to anyone who reads it.

Yeah I know. This is slashdot. Whatever.

Bravo

[SaDan]

I just recently downloaded and tried out ReactOS, and think you guys are doing a hell of a job. I wish I could code!

Thank you for all of your hard work.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, I recently downloaded ros-explorer and the amazing thing is... it even works on windows 98! (yeah, i sometimes have to kill mmtask to get it started, but err, it's not like the thing /was/ designed as a replacement explorer for win 98 :)

http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/

change system.ini to run taskman instead of explorer then launch ros-explorer, it's cool!

Yes, but

[RAMMS EIN]

Will it run XLiveCD?

Seriously, ReactOS has been making some amazing progress lately. I don't know why anyone would want to use it (other than geek factor), but it shows that even Microsoft's crown jewels aren't safe from assimilation.

Overheard at the EB lines for Halo 3

[Provocateur]

D00d these aren't *gamers*. THese people are lining up to buy used Xboxes! They're *gasp* GEEKS! Let's get the f**** outta here!!

The Tarantino-esque reply

[Provocateur]

the next big craze will be getting OS X to run on Xbox 2.

That sound you hear is the sound of the ReactOS team fainting and one of them going for the shotgun to hunt down Rude Turnip...

Re:The Tarantino-esque reply

[Rude Turnip]

Cool! As long as I get to use a Hatori Hanso sword!

Splash

[excaliber19]

Splash, the official ReactOS newsletter, had a small piece on it:

"Ge van Geldorp has been fiddling with getting ReactOS on the XBox: I think most of the differences between a standard PC and the Xbox can be handled by using a custom HAL for the Xbox, after all, that's what the HAL is for. At the moment, we build 1 HAL, based on the value of MP in config it's either a UniProcessor HAL or a MultiProcessor HAL. Which code is compiled is based on preprocessor statements. I'd like to be able to build 3 HALs in parallel, the UP, MP and Xbox HALs.

Alex Ionescu noted that a new kernel will probably be needed to sucessfully get ReactOS on the XBox. This is because, despite how hard Microsoft tried, the kernel is still architecturally dependant to a degree. Furthermore, between Steven Edwards and Alex, they decided that ReactOS on the XBox would be complicated by the lack of BIOS, proprietary graphics, lack of legacy I/O, proprietary PnP, etc.

Steven eplains a little more about the propietary graphics: [It] is a standard NVidia GeForce Chip minus a VGABios. VBE works fine on it and we have been in discussion with the xbox-linux people about how to trick it in to working with the Nvidia windows binary driver. The Windows driver supports everything from the old Riva cards up through TNT, GeForce[2,3,4}, etc. All we have to do is add a few hacks to videoprt.sys, the HAL and a few other places and it should load according to the research I have done. They have not done this on Linux already because of lack of resources.

GvG hopes that it won't be necessary to put Xbox specific code in the kernel, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Maritn Misuth brings up an interesting question regarding how ReactOS will behave under the XBox: I've heard that XBOX WinNT kernel implementation has only around 120 kb in mem, allows single process only, (propably windows messaging) is done by polling and has not memory protection, so games can access hardwae directly. Will ReactOS on XBOX mimic this behavior? This was answered with a definitive "No". The XBox port is meant to run ReactOS on the XBox, not to create an XBox OS. It should be noted that the port of ReactOS is not mean to run XBox games (like the XBox WinNT kernel port by Microsoft), but merely to run ReactOS on the hardware."

Wine??? Come on

[brunes69]

(W)ine (I)s (N)ot an (EW)mulator... hell even the name spells it out for you!

An emulator emulates another architecture's CPU. All WINE does is impliment Win32 API calls so that they are native on Linux.

WINE is no more an emulator than the Linux binary support in FreeBSD is.

Re:Wine??? Come on

[danheskett]

The problem is that I frequently hear comments and read mis-documentation of Linux binary "emulation" on FreeBSD.

DOH.

only a fun-project

[Anonymous Coward]

To port ReactOS to the XBox is only a fun-project.
Because it can only run on the "old" XBox1.
But the time comes, where MS no longer sell the XBox1.
And XBox2 is not based on an x86-chip. It is based on an ppc-chip. So than it will no longer possible to port it.

Re:only a fun-project

[SnarfQuest]

And XBox2 is not based on an x86-chip. It is based on an ppc-chip. So than it will no longer possible to port it.

You believe that because you think that C compilers only exist for the x86?

I regretfully inform you that C compilers also exist for the PPC. All it will take to make it work will be a re-compile, with whatever changes are necessary for the surrounding support hardware, and whatever it takes to get around Micro$ofts latest "you may only run programs on your computer that pay us money" code.

Re:only a fun-project

[Grommet - Space Cade]

also there is a very strong chance that they are going to try and make it backward compatible....how they will do this is going to be very intresting but the CPU which is going to be used for it as a final product is not in manufacture yet ....its just passed prototyping....strained Silicon PPC/64.....its looking to be about the same speed as a 4Ghz Cisc processor but its risc in concept from what i understand of it....(white papers are somewhat vague/too dppe for me) the key to it all is that the source can be recompiled for whatever if you have a compiler for the platform....its more the fact they wrote a HAL layer anyways

Wow

[Manan Shah]

Even the website emulates windows. Mostly slow with a couple crashes thrown in randomly.

Wow, real irony on slashdot.

[Carrot007]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=emulate

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony

nuff said.

Networking

[jacksonai]

It seems to me that the more newsworthy accomplishment of Reactos is that they have been able to enough of a tcp/ip stack together to get it online and browsing the web with lynx. Currently, I think only a certain kind of Realtek NIC card is supported, but it goes to show how quickly this project is advancing. I build low end computers for people and would love to have a free operating system that will eventually work with the 9.99 software they pick up at Wal-Mart. Great job guys! Keep it up!

User interface

[orasio]

That is what brought me out of windows!!
first, it was the fact that the command line was not useful, then, that there was no _easy_ way to connect remotely. VNC sucks for dial up links, and terminal services doesn't run or at least I don't know how to make it run in a non-server computer.
User interface is outdated, old, and ugly.
Gnome 2.6, at least, provides much more beautifl widgets and themes. Nautilus has lots of UI imporvements over explorer.exe.
Windows doesn't handle workspaces. I can't believe you are supposed to deal with 20 open windows with just a taskbar!!.
Windows doesn't bring a pre-installed office system. You need to go and buy it, if you didn't think about it the first time. Buying software is a big usability issue. You need to drive to a software store, find the box, pay it, then come home and install it. In any modern distribution, you just install it, or wait for a download.
Windows is a pain to maintain, you need to know about antivirus software!
The last time I cared about that was in DOS with the stoned virus, and I ran the McAfee Scan.
You need to download antivirus software, go through the hassle of paying for it, and care about its configuration.
If you need to do any productive thing with windows, you need to go and buy the software, or download off a non-standard distribution system, very different stores with lots of different licenses and end user license agreements hostile to the user.
I don't know how you see it, but as I see people actually have to deal with all that stuff to use windows, I see it as part of the user experience, and I don't understand why it doesn't bother most people. Of course, I would like to hear from someone that doesn't care about all that stuff, so they explain it to me.

Re:User interface

[magnwa]

Just a point of order. I run Linux and Windows.

I didn't have to buy a Virus scan for windows, nor did I have to buy an office suite. Those were all on the internet ready to download, and they were free. (Yes, the virus scan was free as in beer..)

So.. I did it the same way for windows that my gentoo box does it. Download and install.

And if you think software in linux is fundamentally different in distribution and such than software in windows, then you've been sticking your head in the sand and ignoring what methods of distribution exist in windows nowadays.

Different context, different meanings

[orasio]

The idea in general is that emulators intercept and emulate hardware calls, or at least, low level kernel calls. So you run your software into a virtual box.
With wine, you have an actual implementation of the system, so there is no interception of calls, it's an implementation of the functions that conform the API.
The idea to keep the word "emulator" for what we call emulators is useful, because it helps us know what we are talking about. In this field, there are lots of things that could be called the same (a router, a bridge, a switch, could all be called "routers", but they aren't) but just shouldn't, so we can better understand each other

Re:Different context, different meanings

[Anonymous Coward]

emulate
To strive to equal or excel, especially through imitation: an older pupil whose accomplishments and style I emulated.
To compete with successfully; approach or attain equality with.
Computer Science. To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system.

The word emulate has very little to do specifically with hardware or software. It just happens to apply to hardware/software systems, it still means the same thing. Mainly to try and imitate. A reimplimentation, trying to have the same look/qualities/features, is an emulator. A person can emulate another person (see first definition).

What you're referring to is a specific type of emulator, i.e. a hardware emulator.
But despite it's attempts to appear otherwise, is an emulator. It is also a wrapper, one designed to emulate the win32 API.

Re:Different context, different meanings

[orasio]

It's a wrapper. An emulator works at a lower level. It's not a matter of dictionaries and definitions, it's a matter of knowing what you are talking about. Either you get it, or you don't. You don't seem to.

hmmmmmmm

[orasio]

No, they shouldn't

in other news

[compro01]

microsoft bans the modder form x-box live for unotherized modification.

oh, and the price of tea in china skyrockets!

Reason for this

[elgatozorbas]

Some guys like Windows. They like its interface. But like RMS, they demand freedom. Freedom, you know? In this world of the business-friendly "Open Source" movement, people seem to have forgotten this concept, the concept that motivated hackers to create a free UNIX in the first place.

My experience is that a lot of linux users also have an (illegal) copy of Windows. "So why would you need an OSS replacement for windows? It is already there". They do not realise that this is stealing. Even from yout worst enemy, be it M$ or someone else, stealing is wrong. Wine and ReactOS offer a legal alternative. And a cool one. When you want something: either pay for it, or be happy someone gives you something because they like to. And don't tell these people what to do: they owe you nothing

Z

OR....

[bandrzej]

OR with the WinXP install is running under Virtual PC for Mac running Mac OSX under PearPC with Xebian Linux on my Xbox cluster.

Oh yes it is like wine....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most of the gui code comes from wine, in fact there is a lot of sharing between the two, in ReactOS they have implemented a windows kernel underneath, instead of running on top of wine, as time goes on more and more code will be shared between the two.

Microsoft is NOT the largest software co. in world

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Microsoft is NOT the largest software company in the world. That distinction belongs to IBM.

People just don't realize it because IBM does so many other things too. Not a one-trick pony like MS.

What it can offer

[adcm]

There is a potential offering for ReactOS where it can improve things for mankind. Microsoft has been shoe-horning Windows into every possible device it can find and many hardware manufacturers and software developers are feeling the pressure to combat this.

With a Windows work-alike that's open source it'd give an alternative for these devices which would require a minimum of additional investment to cut the Microsoft cord for their products. Sure they could use Linux or a multitude of other options, but none currently have the same option for reduced difficulty in transitioning.

It can hardly hurt to have another option for an operating system. Linux and BSD don't necessarily meet every need and there's no point belittling anyone who doesn't follow the mainstream and go to them. The payoff is not always immediately visible with any project.

Re:What about UltraHLE?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does that mean UltraHLE is not an emulator either? UltraHLE interprets the graphics and sound list data directly, rather than emulating the N64 hardware itself. That sounds very similar to what wine is doing.

Porting to Xbox

[Grommet - Space Cade]

Porting it to XBOX gives them some advantages which are quite intresting..... Every xbox talks the same way...no variant motherboards (well not coing wise) Therefore xbox-Linux information tells them how the hardware reacts....Dodgy PCI bus, fully understood bios....open source dashboards so they understand the directx crap and basically its about them building a HAL not the OS HAL is probably a bigger problem than the APIs because alot of API stuff Wine has built/worked out....the HAL although is ReactOS's problem alone

The big picture

[Captain DaFt]

I've been reading all of the "Why? We got linux!" and "They're wasting their time!" comments and I think a lot of you are missing the main aim of Reactos.
What happens when it's viable?
Foo Inc. receives notice from Windows that support for Windows (flavor) is being discontinued and they need to liscense Windows (NEWflavor) to maintain support. What Do they do?

A. Sign up for Windows (NEWflavor) pay all the support and fees, knowing that most likely all their current software will need replacing when all the time Win (NEWflavor) versions come out. (Bleeding money profusely in the process, but you get to blame all your problems on Microsoft)

B. Switch to Linux, Change to new software and/or run old software under emulation. Resulting in more costs for training, getting support from multiple vendors, plus increase in inhouse support.
(Cheaper, but a bigger logistic headache. Can stll blame Microsoft and/or other vedors for problems, But they all blame each other and/or you.)

C. Install Reactos, old software still runs the same way, most employees never notice a difference. Pay to train/hire new inhouse support for an OS that looks/feels like the old one, but company now has total control over it. (Should be as cheap or cheaper than B., but with fewer headaches. Now problems are blamed on inhouse crew, satisfying rolling of heads ensues.)

So, Which way do you think they'll decide?