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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."
I can see why some geeks would want to do it. I can't see why anyone else would care about it.
And that, folks, is why so many open-source projects never get finished, or improved.
He *should* just start working on WINE. Just because he can do whatever he wants, doesn't meant that his choices are good.
Many more open-source Vistas came before it.
With 300+ Linux distributions, ReactOS is just one more dead OSes.
(oh noes! cue-in the linux fanbois who'll troll-label this comment!)
The sad reality is that everyone little group have their own agendas and that causes a severe dilution of available talents for driving such a huge undertakings, forward.
Linus having kept a tight grip on kernel development is probably what saves Linux. But IMHO, there are far too many sub-specialized distributions. Imagine if all that talent could be focused in only 3 areas: embedded, server, desktop. the OS would have a much better change to reach mainstream.
To this day I'm convinced that if MS would ditch their kernel and slap their OS on top of the Linux/kernel, much like Apple sat it's OS on BSD/Mach, it would have a better chance to finally shut Apple up.
With his noodly appendages calloused and sore, rms found himself sadly defeated, unable to create a functional kernel to complement his array of system tools and complete the GNU Operating System. He assembled a team of programmers from his network of poly-sympathizers, then gave them the mission and their guiding slogan: "Technology Unlimited, Radical Development"
So, GNU's Project TURD was begun in earnest in the new decade of 1990, but it soon became clear that the excruciating squeeze to produce a revolutionary package was in fact, waste, owing to a crappy design decision. The public, who'd been waiting patiently by the door for some time, eventually moved on to the fertile pastures of Linux, and GNU's offering was flushed.
Look, I can guarantee you that ReactOS will never make it. It really has no meaningful audience, and when we get Samba 4, whatever audience it does have will walk away. Wine, as questionable as it is, does fulfill a role, but ReactOS's dream of replacing Windows was pretty nonsensical a seven or eight years ago, and considering the OS it's trying to replicate is now itself a decade old, it seems extremely pointless.
I'd much rather the effort be put into improving apps like OpenOffice and Samba which provide meaningful alternatives to the proprietary software the fuels the Windows ecosystem.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.