Slashdot Mirror
ReactOS Being Rewritten, Gets Wine Infusion
xlotlu writes "ReactOS was meant as a free and open-source operating system, binary-compatible with Microsoft Windows. But after 11 years in development it never reached a satisfactory level of usability. Due to lack of developers, reimplementing the Win32 subsystem proved to be a much too complex task, holding the project back. Given the deficiencies of the current implementation, developer Aleksey Bragin decided to rewrite it from scratch, drawing heavily from the Wine project. Bragin's announcement on the ReactOS mailing list makes a compelling argument for this decision."
If it's based on Wine, why not just put their energy into Wine?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This project has been going on for 11 years already! I can't believe it has been so long. While there are good arguments for starting over, and hopefully time can be saved with this new plan, it seems it will be far too long before a stable product is released. By the time this gets out, it's use will be irrelevant. Sometimes you have to know when to throw the towel in.
Does that make ReactOS the Vista of the open source world?!!!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Because then Aleksey Bragin would just be just another nameless contributer to the Wine project and he wouldn't have his name and duplicated efforts getting on Slashdot.
Why bother with something that tries to implement windows API's when you can have the real thing with no effort at all?
But it just seems like it would be really depressing to spend so much time essentially replicating a product that hundreds of paid developers already designed and published.
But after 11 years in development it never reached a satisfactory level of usability
That sounds familiar
If you read the actual post, what this guy is doing makes a lot of sense. He's not re-writing ReactOS from scratch, he's just taking the parts of ReactOS that have worked out reasonably well (the kernel, bootloader, etc.) and tossing the stuff that hasn't worked out so well (the Win32 API subsystem). It just so happens that another project, WINE, did a really impressive job at getting that Win32 API layer implemented, and rather than maintaining two completely independent versions of it, piggybacking off the WINE work should make ReactOS usable relatively soon, and able to run a large number of existing Win32 applications.
Whether you think ReactOS is a sensible project or not, clearly some people think a complete, Open Source, Windows-compatible OS has some real value, and kudos to them for figuring out how to make that happen, or at least getting very close.
Bah interruptions...
Anywho... The why, at least for some of us, is a desire not to pay hefty fines and have our freedom impinged uponw.
Maybe they should rename it?
Re-ReactOS?
ReactOSRebooted?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Legality? Adaptability to new hardware? Free virtualisation of a windows hosting environment? Tracking new features as and when required, rather than needing to upgrade that (illegal) torrent XP? Offering an alternative to users of older hardware? The thrill of actually doing it? Just to piss you off?
The worst of this is that they're still very far from 1.0 and XP is already obsolete.
Perhaps because one does not wish to engage in copyright infringement?
I can see why some geeks would want to do it. I can't see why anyone else would care about it.
ReactOS is to Windows as XP or Vista is to Windows, not as Linux is to Windows (sort of, it isn't made by Microsoft).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No, XP is merely deprecated.
Obsolete means something is no longer in use, and even in 2010 there are a lot more XP machines than 7 or vista.
Words have meanings.
In the private sector, he'd get fired by his boss for trying to do the right thing and not just kludging in another feature and shipping.
In the OSS world, he will (hopefully) persevere and be proven right a thousand times over!
That's it!!! Vindicate me, baby!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Adaptability to new hardware?
Linux driver support sucks, mostly because the lack of intrest from manufacturers. XP driver support is declining. So I don't see that happening.
Even better, get the best of both worlds and run Windows in a VM on Linux as the host. That way when your Windows installation gets crusty simply revert to the original image. Saves tons of time with reinstalling the OS and apps.
If it's a gaming rig then your scenario is better in the long run.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but if you want to run Win32 binaries, run Windows.
What version of Windows? The one that comes preinstalled on most PCs nowadays, or the one that Microsoft still sells? The last time I read the front page of ReactOS.org, the project's mission was to clone Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and specifically their device driver environment. (Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a different driver model.) Then you get to the issue where a retail copy of Windows for use in Parallels Desktop is no cheaper than a Wii-size Acer Aspire Revo PC with preinstalled Windows for use in KVM Switch.
...and as long as XP will keep running, there will remain more XP machines than 7 or vista. Atleast in my house.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You should get modded down, for being an idiot.
Solaris and BSD have linux binary compatibility layers, they work fine. Wine is coming along nicely and the pay for version supported LFD2 the night that game shipped. Bloat can come from many things but merely implementing another API ain't gonna be it.
ReactOS is not cross platform though its a Windows workalike. ReactOs is to Windows as gnu/Linux is to NetBSD. Its a differnet platform but more or less intended to run the same application layer software.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If I want to run a UNIX app, I can do that on Windows (Interix, Cygwin, etc), OS X, Linux, HP/UX, VMS, AIX, FreeBSD, BeOS, or Xenix.
That's because it's an API that was guided, among other things, by portability. The first cross-platform UNIX emulation was the Software Tools Virtual OS, and that came out of Bell Labs. The only modern OS that hasn't been based one way or another on the UNIX API is VMS. Windows NOT excluded.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but if you want to run UNIX binaries, run Solaris. I don't ask Sun to let me run Solaris or AIX Apps on my Solaris 7 OS. If I want to run a SCO App (Which I do occasionally) I either do it on my SCO Server or a SCO VM within my Solaris OS. Trying to build Cross OS support in to an OS seems like something that would cause extensive bloating.
ReactOS is to Windows as XP or Vista is to Windows, not as Linux is to Windows (sort of, it isn't made by Microsoft).
Likewise, "Sam's Cola is to Coca-Cola beverage line as Diet Coke or Coke Zero is to Coca-Cola beverage line, not as Pepsi is to Coca-Cola beverage line"? I don't think so. (Or was that your "sort of"?) What makes it Windows® is that it is made by Microsoft, just like what makes something UNIX is that it is certified by The Open Group. Windows Mobile is Windows; it just isn't Windows NT.
But after 11 years in development it never reached a satisfactory level of usability.
Wait, ReactOS or Wine?
If I want to run a UNIX app
If I want to run a UNIX app, I can do it on Cygwin, MSYS, or any of the UNIX or UNIX-clone operating systems you mentioned. But what do I do if I want to run a UNIX driver? The point of ReactOS is that it runs not only NT 5 apps but also NT 5 drivers.
The only modern OS that hasn't been based one way or another on the UNIX API is VMS. Windows NOT excluded.
Especially when you consider that Windows NT is based on concepts that Dave Cutler brought with him from VMS.
Sorry, but the first thing I read is ArwinSchutzStaffel.
Yes, I have a sick mind.
Have you ever had a look on piratebay?
I can see why some geeks would want to do it. I can't see why anyone else would care about it.
This is Slashdot. News for Nerds!
Or as it says on http://www.reactos.org/en/about_whyreactos.html
"ReactOS offers a third alternative, for people who are fed up with Microsoft's policies but do not want to give up the familiar environment, architectural design, and millions of existing software applications and thousands of hardware drivers."
This is exactly why ReactOS interests me.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Of course, a lot of corporate IT projects fail, too. Software is hard. It's a wonder any of it works at all, sometimes.
It doesn't mean they're bad either. Or indifferent for that matter. Maybe if you had a crystal ball and could reliably foretell which projects will have have been important in five, ten or twenty years time, maybe then you could make that judgment. But without some sort of prescience it's impossible to make reliable judgments. That's why all those corporate projects flop; someone in authority makes a judgment about which strategy to pursue and in five years time one or more of their key assumptions is shown to be false and the software is rendered useless.
Of course, the same thing happens to free software projects as well. The difference however is that the Free Software developmental model tends to result in massive parallelism. Lots of projects fail, some are unexpected successes, and the successes aren't always the ones you'd expect. Think of it as a sort of software Darwinism: lots of projects die out, but the ones that thrive are well adapted to the needs of their userbase.
Looked at in that way, the lack of central direction in Free Software isn't the flaw that many perceive it to be. It is something to be celebrated.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Me? Personally? No.
Just because there are people out there uploading a ton of stuff that they don't have the rights for, doesn't mean everybody here agrees with that. Your previous premise is that, "If it's already out there, it's okay to do wrong." Just because Windows is available on Pirate Bay does not make it right to download and use it without a license that you didn't pay for.
Because some people like the idea of FOSS. It took FreeDOS 5-8 years to fully clone 16bit MSDOS and then improve on it. Today there is a fully functioning alternative to DOS that is used extensively in the embedded space (particularly manufacturing subsystems where it's still common). By providing a fully functional clone of MS-DOS the FreeDOS people have removed the MS yoke from an entire sector of IT.
FreeDOS and ReactOS if it's successful are useful tools in dismantling the MS monopoly or making it more customer focused. Many of the DRM components in Vista and 7 wouldn't be possible if ReactOS was a fully working clone when Vista was announced. Now that MS has fully abandoned XP it gets even easier for ReactOS because they don't need to worry with MS coming in and rewriting a big chuck of win32 to obfuscate the development. ReactOS might just provide the necessary pressure for MS to dismantle the DRM subsystem in future versions of Windows if it begins gaining significant market share. This likely won't gain any traction in the retail market, but a successful implementation could destroy sales of MS licenses in the corporate climate, something MS would take very seriously as it accounts for most of the their windows income.
Nonsense. His freedom to do whatever he wants far outweighs my interest in getting him to work on something else for nothing. I doubt if anything outweighs my desire for free stuff.
They started trying to emulate NT4 or win98. What exactly are they aiming for today?
Definitely time to throw the towel.
...the Duke Nukem Forever of Open Source operating systems... ;)
I'm not cool enough to have a
You never used iBCS under Linux I take it? I used to use it extensively to run SCO, and other Unix binaries, on Linux (back in the 2.1/2.2 Kernel Days -- maybe even earlier) and it worked GREAT! I ran many proprietary, binary-only, serious applications on Linux that were only for other Unixes.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
buy windows 7 and save all the pain of using WINE or ReactOS, or ReactOS on WINE. the amount of time you save in trying to get things work (wow! my apps just work without any hacks!) will very quickly pay for the cost of the windows license. (of course time itself doesn't buy a windows license, assuming you have an income ;)
For me using Wine and ReactOS there is no saving *yet* - just a whole lot of wasted time. If it eventualls gets high level of compatibility/stability then great, but for now it's a great toy in my experience can waste a lot of time.
Are you asserting that the piratebay has legal copies of windows, or are you just trying to make yourself look like a dumbass by completely missing the point of what the GP was saying?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Is it that hard to be bug for bug compatible with Windows? I guess writing bugs is an art to itself
For some perhaps. Others invite such an entry into the free world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not as bad as Windows driver support.
There are a handful of high profile things that do not have opensource Linux drivers. (NVidia video cards are probably going to get supported this year, despite the best efforts of NVidia.)
If you don't believe me, go check Balmer's quotes about Linux hardware support vs. windows hardware support.
Counter intutively, lack of a stable ABI has helped Linux develop the driver support that no other operating system is close to. If customers demand a Linux driver, it is so much harder to provide it as a binary instead of as source that the vast majority of the time the manufacturers either provide the source or documentation so the Linux community can create open source drivers, the net effect is that drivers for some specialized hardware is only available for Linux and DOS, there is also hardware that has Linux and Windows XP drivers, there is also hardware that only has Windows 7 and Linux drivers.
Work bio at MMWD
Windows lacks the advanced tools that Unix has, such as the Bash shell, for instance.
Wrong. Why don't you Linux enthusiasts ever try educating yourself about modern versions of Windows. You actually think it hasn't changed since 2000?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powershell
I've been following this project for a long time and I'm not sure if this is still on the site or not, but back near the beginning of the project they looked at using the Win32 subsystem that was in Wine. At the time it was very basic, directly hooked into X and was using many hacks and things that made the use of the Wine code unfeasible. In about a month ReactOS had a better Win32 subsystem than Wine did.
At some point a group of developers working on the Wine project decided to toss the old Win32 implementation and properly implement it abstracting out the interfaces to X. Since Wine has more developers, they were able to find more that were willing to work on the Wine32 subsystem and it is now a lot better than ReactOS's. Basically they've taken a look, saw how much better Wine's implementation is now and decided to switch to it.
As for the already shares code part, ReactOS from the start used as many wine components as possible to give them a good start on their implementation. Every once in a while on the updates you'd see listed that the wine components had been synced back into the project. It comes down to that in ReactOS they need to talk to actual hardware, where Wine talks to X and POSIX.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I don't know if you've heard or not, but two of those "embedded, server, desktop." Linux is not just mainstream, but dominates
Another uninformed Linux zealot who doesn't know what he's talking about.
The embedded world is dominated by QNX and VxWorks. They are not Linux, no matter how many times you characters try to claim they are. As far as desktop, with its 1% market share, I'm pretty sure Linux does not dominate.
With IIS having somewhere between 45% - 50 %, Linux does not dominate servers either.
Linux cannot "dominate" anything.
Look, I can guarantee you that ReactOS will never make it. It really has no meaningful audience
It does though. What if I want to run a Windows machine, but have the full source code to it? One of the primary charms of Linux (to me, anyways) is that there is no such thing as an unanswerable question - you have all the source. Having that kind of insight into a Windows system would be *fantastic*.
Second point. Given the above, the dev community will be able to solve their own issues and create their own bugfixes rather than wait for Redmond. ReactOS has the potential to be a flavor of windows that is actually more stable than the original it is copying! It could potentially wind up being better than the original.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Does Mono and GTK# work on ReactOS?
Many things in Unix were designed correctly to begin with, Windows was not. Linux was never intended to be a binary replacement for any Unix based OS, but rather it was itself a Unix based OS. Trying to achieve binary compatibility with Windows (chasing a moving target) is not only unlikely to succeed, but if it does you still have Windows. It's like trying to create an open source Yugo. Maybe it can be done... maybe it can't... but even if you succeed, you've only reimplimented a bad idea. Even if you win, you still fail.
I have been waiting for ROS to reach usability as a legacy gaming platform that can use windows drivers. It seemed promicing when I tried it before. I do not recommend re-writing it from scratch, because much work will be thrown out and I am afraid it will end up like Duke Nukem Forever.
Just to see what Microsoft would do to a company that's implement their own version of .NET and a Windows-like OS.
IIS running more parked domains than Linux does not mean it dominates.
what about stuff that matters?
Are you sure you even used windows2000? You aren't limited to 26 filesystems, that's nothing but the number of drive letters you can have. You can mount filesystems as folders inside a drive letter, just like you can on unix. And you can name them pretty much anything you want. FUD apparently is alive and well.
http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-xp/how-to-mount-an-external-drive-partititon-as-directory-in-xp/
one if these days, i'll get wine infusion, too.
"Submission: ReactOS gets Wine infusion"
OMG. A DRUNK Windows clone! Is this REALLY what we need??
Just kidding ;)
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
You keep using that word, "solved." I do not think it means what you think it means.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
People installing Warp 4 wished they had install CDs, too. When it first shipped, Warp 4 arrived in a box containing an enormous stack of Warp 4 install floppies (3 1/2", roughly 1.44 MB form factor).
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You've accidentally illustrated the difference between hardware and software. If you had, instead, said something similar about a hypothetical effort to clone the PC XT, expressing your admiration for the architectural design of the ISA bus, longing perhaps for the "real true, and familiar, full length slot" of the XT chassis, and the thousands of add-in cards like 9600 Baud modems and Parallel Printer Adaptors that you could still pick up at ReCompute, people would immediately mod you into oblivion, and I wouldn't even have to see your idiotic post. But if you say anything, no matter how crazy, about software, it makes you a hero in the eyes of somebody with mod points.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
All they need is some sort of layer that would allow Linux to use Windows Drivers.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
How about contributing to some cross-platform .Net development in the form of Mono? http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:Runtime
When it works perfectly, they'll have an open source OS that's obsolete by about 15 years. Sounds like a great use of time. After this, they can go pour their efforts into some other go nowhere projects like Free/Net/OpenBSD, Haiku, open source GPU drivers, and Slashdot.
We've all heard stories of old Windows 95/98 computers running a "business critical" function on obscure software using even obscurer hardware. We've surely going to see this in infinitely larger proportions once XP starts pushing up daises, sure if you're lucky and driver model doesn't count out your device then Windows 7 might play ball but beyond Windows 7; emulation of XP might well become patchy. ReactOS if successful could provide a patched up-to-date OS for legacy applications / hardware and although it'll never be up with the latest hotness from Microsoft could also provide a very stable and familiar corporate desktop for many organisations, who let's face it are afraid of technological progress.
It's 2010. Wine still crashes trying to run fairly low requirement (in terms of system calls) applications written for Windows '98. That's why including Wine doesn't give you decent windows emulation/simulation/replacement. It's probably why this guy is heading off on his own, too. He's probably as tired as I am of trying Wine and watching it crash.
I'll tell you what, if there was an open-source, binary compatible with windows OS that worked... I would *totally* get behind it. Not that I'm anti-commercial, exactly the opposite -- I'm just tired of the supposed fix for a buggy OS being to upgrade to a new, less compatible, more DRM'd, have to "authorize", still buggy OS.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I remember Reece Sellin melting down and reducing himself to a flaming pile over Freedows. But then again, he was a kid back then with dreams of doing more. He was fond of asking people to name him any other kid his age working on a microkernal system that was competing with Microsoft. Of course he would melt down when anyone said, 'O.k., show us.' He was a master at flame wars, but not much of a project lead.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I'm probably going to get modded to hell for this, but I don't mean it in a disparaging way at all.
I can't be the only one who's noticed a tendency for open source projects to get close to completion only for the mastermind behind it to decide it's no good, scrap it and start again. To my mind, this is a natural tendency for geeky types - they want things to be perfect and aren't usually willing to compromise on this. When it becomes apparent that what they're working on has gone up some perceived blind alley, their natural reaction is to destroy it and try again, only this time they'll get it right. Until some other snag appears...
And this is why sometimes, loath as most of Slashdot's readership may be to admit it, it helps to have good management keeping an eye on things. Somebody with a sense of perspective who's able to put a little bit of distance between themselves and the project, and recognise when things are Good Enough, and then get it out the door.
The problem is that many open-source projects don't work to deadlines and are self-determined - nobody's standing over hobbyist programmers cracking the whip, things are done when they're done. And if it's not quite how it should be, well, we'll just take a bit longer. Until the developers get bored and move onto some new problem instead. Just look at all the stalled projects on Sourceforge for ample proof of this. And so with infinite dicking-around time at their disposal, our OSS developers choose to dick around - after all, the journey is in some ways more important for them than the destination, they're coding for their own amusement, not necessarily to provide the world with a service.
There's nothing wrong with this - they can spend their time how they like. But I just wonder how often promising things have been scrapped and restarted because there was nobody around able to take a detached look at it and say "Y'know, maybe we should just get this out, and we can do the rewrite in version 2".
If it works I'd take it.
I've always wanted a non-linux free OS to fool around with. Linux is just a pain to deal with for casual everyday fooling around, it might be a lot of fun for people who want to mess with Os programming themselves and good for a corporate server environment. But it's only the kernel is ever unified, and even that is missing what casual use needs for basic OS stuff. Which is why it'll never get into everyday use unless Google manages to maintain and expand Android as an easy, de-facto build for devices.
I think that the number of people who 1) are too cheap to buy Windows, but are against infringing MS's copyright on it by downloading it from BitTorrent, or 2) actually care about having an open-source clone of Windows, is vanishingly small.
is going to reinvent UNIX? It's amazing, she's never even programmed before! I guess that's where the "poorly" part comes in.
Geez! That just drips with sanctimoniousness. I Don't say it's right or wrong to pirate software. I just say that it is. It happens...it's happening. The problem with a free alternative to windows is that one already exists called....windows. I personally wish that it was impossible to pirate windows...I wish everyone had to pay through the nose for it. That would enable alternatives to gain market share. I think that Microsoft winks at piracy, small scale anyway, because it helps keep things like linux at bay. Regardless though, piracy is happening and an incredible number of computers are running an illegal installment of XP. This is what ReactOS and Wine compete against. If people want to run windows software it's easier to do it on windows and because of the ready availability of illegal torrents there's no need for them to pay for it. Nobody has to agree with piracy....it doesn't matter whether you or I agree or not, it's reality.
Heh, I got his point. You, genius, missed mine. Have a nice day.
This seems kinda similar to FreeDOS, except less useful. FreeDOS is a binary-compatible version of MS-DOS that some OSS devs put together, and actually works well. Except that no one really uses it, except for specialty things like boot/driver disks
and the sale of classic MSDOS PC games through outlets like D2D, GOG.com and Steam.
You could begin building your collection with Commander Keen.
Of course, then there's real-world things, like Broadcom wireless chipsets, where the reverse-engineered Linux drivers still don't even claim to have support for all variants of the chipset, and some of the ones they claim to support are still unreliable. Using ndiswrapper works for some of these particular cases (including most, though not all, network drivers) but only because a NT driver already exists. It's a case of making Linux able to load Windows drivers, not of Linux actually having a driver for the device.
In case you're curious, I ran into this just a few weeks ago - brand new distro with brand new kernel. Used the firmware cutter (which again required the Windows driver) and loaded it into the reverse engineered Linux driver for Broadcom wireless chipsets. The light came on, NetworkManager reported a new network interface, and... I still couldn't scan for or connect to an access point. Unloaded the native driver, installed ndiswrapper, loaded the Windows XP driver for my card, and it worked.
Hypothetically, if I'd been using a functional ReactOS, all I'd have needed to do would be download the Windows XP driver and install it. Sure, the driver wouldn't be open source, but it would actually, you know, work!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Oh, rewrite from scratch...
That's a typical russian approach. Usually done with a help of number of vodka bottles and few nights. Amazingly, it usually works fine, although some russian swearwords needs to be learnt, that usually used as a black magic spell to make it work flawlessly.
why did Win 7 remove the telnet command???
Why do I find telnet.exe on 64 Bit Windows 7 Home Premium? It is not enabled by default - but it is there.
And RDP?????
In Win 7 Home Premium try searching for "Remote Desktop Connection." Remote Desktop Services
Are you alluding that you're using Cygwin under Win7? Why not just say so..
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
People who want to run Windows will pay for it; they aren't going to opt for a free implementation that even has one difference. The days of the Window software clone is over because Linux is here to stay. There is no need for a binary compatible Windows anymore because there are good, alternative free choices.
ReactOS might just provide the necessary pressure for MS to dismantle the DRM subsystem in future versions of Windows if it begins gaining significant market share. This likely won't gain any traction in the retail market, but a successful implementation could destroy sales of MS licenses in the corporate climate, something MS would take very seriously as it accounts for most of the their windows income.
DRM in Windows has two components:
Distribution and performance rights management of digital media in the home entertainment market and others.
[This interests folks who look at the $1 billion dollars Avatar grossed in its first eighteen days of theatrical release.]
Enterprise digital rights management - sometimes called information rights management.
Authentication. Secure distribution and so on. These are things the corporate buyer wants and needs to see.
Wouldn't it have been quicker for him to just work a few hours at McDonalds and buy a damn academic version of Windows 98SE?
If you like Linux, but needs access to win apps, why not just run ubuntu and wine?
Or Windows and and cygwin
Why spend all that time trying to make Linux binary compatible with win32 ... don't get it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a really interesting project. Wine is an incredible piece of software and if ARWINSS can increase the amount of collaboration between ReactOS and Wine and bring a driver-compatible NT replacement closer to reality then that's a great thing.
I would, however, hope that ARWINSS doesn't swallow up ReactOS whole because - while ReactOS is a fairly slow moving and cumbersome beast - it still has an extremely worthwhile goal. Even if it takes 5 years for ReactOS to reach functional beta stage, win32 software and obsolete hardware with win32 only drivers is still going to be out there. Why not use it if we can make it work?
Or can't justify the budget.
Small Example -- a friend has a very expensive transparency scanner that he sees no reason to spend several hundred bucks to replace -- but it will only play ball with Win98. So he keeps a Win98 system for its sole use, that being more economical than replacing the scanner.
Large Example: There are a lot of point-of-sale units out there that will only speak to some older version of WinNT, or at best to Win2K. Which is more cost-effective for a cash-strapped small business -- replacing dozens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of these units at a couple grand apiece, or maintaining a few paid-for NT/2K servers for their benefit?
While this is definitely a niche market, don't dismiss the need -- it has real economic impact, and as a result it's unlikely to go away any time soon.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yeah, obsolete like a '92 Camry is obsolete.
Couple new air bags, new cupholders, new radio...
IT'S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CAR!
Now go read a book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Services_for_UNIX
It seems that there is (almost) source compatible POSIX interface for windows in some editions, but you would have to compile all the coreutils yourself.
I doubt if anything outweighs my desire for free stuff.
I concur. I doubt anything outweighs AC's desire for free stuff.
It's 2010. Wine still crashes trying to run fairly low requirement (in terms of system calls) applications written for Windows '98. That's why including Wine doesn't give you decent windows emulation/simulation/replacement.
Um, have you tried using Wine lately? I first used wine back in 2000 and it would only show a splash screen for most programs. Now, I'm playing full games at better framerates and with more flexibility than I can get in windows. Sure, not everything is 100%. But I've gone through all my recent games (about 20) and about 75% of them work. Several of them install seamlessly as if they were native Linux programs. And they were all made within the last 5 years. Heck, Dragon Age just came out in November and already works on Wine, as does The Sims 3. Brand new games working at Gold or Platinum status? That's a major milestone. I think game makers might be finally catching on that wine is mature enough that if they do a little testing with it and make their games more compatible, they don't have to make a Linux version. I'm fine with that.
So It is nothing short of amazing what the wine team has done so don't try to belittle it. Whenever I think that something is impossible, I remember wine and then I'm fine.
ReactOS's killer feature isn't application compatibility, it is generic driver compatibility.
MS is in the inarguably comfortable position of having the people who actually engineer PC computer hardware have to pay them for the privilege of then going and writing their own drivers for their newly-developed hardware... so that the new hardware works in windows.... Then they have to pay even more (and disclose their source code to MS) to get their driver rubber stamped by MS. Then if they want windows to "Just work" with their hardware they have to pay more again to persuade MS to ship their driver with windows...
If you want an example of this "just works" phenomena, just plug a professional range Canon camera into a Windows workstation. Most manufacturer's don't bother, which interestingly the average user never blames on MS, but on the hardware manufacturer.
Contrast this with what happens when someone complains that linux "sucks" because it doesn't work with that new hardware: Some brave soul has to step to reverse engineer the hardware to the point that they can write their own driver support into linux. Asking the hardware manufacturer for details to help do this is often met with indifference or hostility.
I guess the hardware manufacturers' look at the cost of windows driver development as just another part of general development costs. Often there's no budget left for a linux driver on top of that.
The true value of ReactOS is that it could allow all of these expensively developed Windows drivers to be used. In one fell swoop, the open source world suddenly gets the hardware support that the average Windows user is long accustomed to. (And not just for network cards, which is all ndiswrapper is good for. )
In order to really gain traction, ReactOS needs to be able to fill the enthusiastic gamer niche - and why not?
A super lightweight operating system is exactly what is most wanted to scrape the last iota of performance out of a PC gaming rig. To do this it needs to be able to either be compatible enough for Microsoft's DirectX to be loaded, or to provide its own alternative DirectX module. It also needs to work with ATi and nvidia drivers. With those features, it wouldn't need to have a pretty desktop.
Ideally, after installing the video card driver, a contemporary game installer with its own bundled DirectX installer should just work.
Given the way that the enthusiast gaming niche seems to drive hardware performance, it's a no-brainer. Video game software developers and video game hardware manufacturers looking for an edge will be falling over themselves to take advantage of ReactOS. This will provide the corporate backing (full-time paid programmers) that this OSS project is missing.
If this happens and Microsoft wants to maintain any relevance in this niche, it had better "play nice" and help ReactOS work with its proprietary DirectX. If they are adversarial it is ever more likely that an open source DirectX replacement will come along, and this could potentially cut MS completely out of the loop.
It is worth pointing out that at the moment, ReactOS has no plans to implement a DirectX module of its own.
Of course, it is unlikely that this will happen until ReactOS reaches the point of basic usability. It needs to deliver on both application compatibility, as well as driver compatibility. Working in virtual machines as the developers are is counter-productive to the goal of driver compatibility, although likely necessary for the moment in order to implement what is currently missing.
Moving forward, ReactOS represents an excellent development opportunity for fine tuning the performance of demanding applications. Consider the possibility of a real-time kernel alongside customised proprietary video card drivers to enable guaranteed minimum frame rates, or perhaps production quality low latency audio performance. The possibilities for improving the reliability of mission-critical applications is endless.
The fundamental increase in security enabled by agile open source development is not to be sniffed at either. Critical vulnerability fixes in hours rather than months is known to be possible. "Many eyes" and not "broken by design" trumps "security through obscurity".
But there's no way to use a UNC as the current directory in DOS, is there? Would there be if I took some time to learn PowerShell?
I had to look it up, but apparently, yes.
As a note, I tried the double/triple backslash thing, and that didn't work. However, "cd \\server\share" did.
Not sure how to enumerate shares though.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
They do. For starters, the summary is terrible. I've been following ReactOS for 5 years or so, here's more info. It's not a real rewrite where you throw code away. It has been controversial, and not everyone in the project agrees it's the right way to proceed. If I can try to summarize the intent, it's like hoisting the house so you can repair the foundation, while keeping the upper levels intact. In reality it's like building a separate foundation so you can move the house onto either one, which makes mine just another in the long list of terrible analogies on Slashdot.
The article is about a partial rewrite held in a separate trunk. ARWINSS is a branch designed to make more use of WINE, so that the core OS functionality that is missing in trunk can work, and higher-level work can be done. In theory, bugs with GDI and/or User code will magically go away, so that the people working on usermode will be able to test and fine-tune their code in ARWINSS branch while the people working on the kernel fix the bugs or rewrite properly or whatever else in trunk. Alexsey has already found/fixed several existing bugs by playing with this branch, which were ported into trunk (based on SVN history at CIA.VC, watching for "merge from ARWINSS" commits in trunk).
It is not intended to be the direction of the project, and several developers are pretty much ignoring this branch except as a curiosity. Since ReactOS uses most of the WINE user-mode code, implementing a basic WineServer lets the WINE merges happen with a lot less hacking. Ultimately, this branch everyone's making a big deal out of will probably be deleted. That's not the project's opinion, that's my own, based on the project's stated goal of being a reference implementation of documented Windows functionality. Having a Wine server in there is one thing, X functionality propping it is the really cool part. Imagine native X-Windows sessions to your server box instead of using WTS/RDP? Maybe it will continue as an alternative branch just for the coolness factor.
To ramble further, any fixes that ReactOS does are sent upstream to WINE, ReactOS is helping. They are testing WINE's correctness in an actual Windows environment, sometimes copying ReactOS libraries (containing WINE code) onto a Windows box to test proper functionality. As an example, you can put na app and its libraries in the same folder and override DLL loading to use local libraries (the ones in the same directory) - except for a few reserved system libraries I think in newer Windows versions.
Further, WINE has a very large number of test cases which run in an automated framework. So ReactOS is double-testing both Wine's code and its test cases. If you hate Windows and love Wine, you should support ReactOS simply due to the additional testing effort and bugfixes submitted.
Any questions? I don't represent the project, but I do have a long-term outsider's view and I do compile and fiddle with the code. I have seen MS source code, so I don't contribute to the project other than the occasional comment.
The giant shitstorm above can pretty much be summed up by this post.
Ummm... as the very second line of the Overview section points out, SFU/SUA (on Win7 it's called Subsystem for UNIX Applicaitons, but it's essentially the same as SFU) includes "Over 350 Unix utilities such as vi, ksh, csh, ls, cat, awk, grep, kill, etc." It also includes a complete working GNU build toolchain, and much more. That's just the Microsoft download; additional tools (including "bash, OpenSSH, sudo, CVS, ClamAV, bzip2, gmake, curl, emacs, Apache, XView, Ruby, Tcl, Python") are available as downloadable binaries.
Note that while SUA is included with (higher editions of) Windows, it is just the POSIX compatibility layer; you have to get a (free) download from MS that includes all the utilities and libraries. Once you have those, you'll have a fully functional, if somewhat limited (not much software beyond standard utilities) UNIX-like system. The folks at http://suacommunity.com/ maintain a package manager and a repository of binaries for SFU/SUA, which provide a pretty good working environment.
I do occasionally compile programs or libraries from source (if the desired package isn't in the repository) and most of the time it works fairly well. The packages I use most commonly though - ssh, bash, svn, grep, etc.) were all either included in the SUA install or available as binary packages.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Sorry, I'm not a native speaker.