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Russian Univ. Launches Course Based On ReactOS Led By Alex Bragin

Posted by timothy on from the wardrobe-by-david-byrne dept.

New submitter jeditobe writes "Aleksey Bragin reported that starting in February he would be a lecturer at the Moscow State Technical University teaching the operating system course. He said that he intends to incorporate ReactOS into the lab work so that students would have the opportunity to work on an actual operating system. He also intends to translate and upload the slides he will use for class for others to see." (Bragin is the Project Coordinator for ReactOS.)

11 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Why not teach with BananaOS ? by burni2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm fed up with the posts "Why not use .." just shut up, ReactOS works and well it is not without bugs and not matured so it's perfect for
    students to get their minds dirty .. what bugs me more is that an open source develloper turns into Vladimir Putins la(p/b) dog to get funding,

    btw.
    Why not use FreeBSD ? the soruce for kernel & userland is extremly well organized within the source tree
    and well it's a unix, happy now ?

    btww.
    Why not use BananaOS instead ?

    PRO:
    a.) it's virtually non existent
    b.) the architecture is highly adaptable due to it's virtuallity
    c.) the memory footprint is rather low (8 bytes!!)
    d.) it can virtually do everything
    e.) has a nice gui it appears of the OS tast the user likes! ...
    CON:
    it really does only exist in ones mind

    1. Re:Why not teach with BananaOS ? by Pentium100 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ReactOS would be extremely useful if it was ever completed. A free OS compatible with Windows, that would allow users to drop Windows but continue to use their software and hardware as normal (after all, Linux/FreeBSD is a very different OS, most Windows software does not work on it).

      If ReactOS was ever completed it would be a big problem for Microsoft....

    2. Re:Why not teach with BananaOS ? by muuh-gnu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Reactos ever threatens to get into an usable state, Microsoft can simply outspend them by moving on and letting Reactos always play costly catch up.

      The effort invested into Reactos would make much more sense if invested into Wine instead.

      Using Reactos still means using Windows and writing Windows apps in the first place, so it benefits the Windows overall ecosstem. If the effort were spent on Wine instead, people would be able to run their Windows apps, but would have to switch to Linux first, and Linux would be their new primary environment while Wine would be just a compatibility layer. Nobody would directly write apps for Wine, it would be just a way to run old apps until they are ported to your new native environment, Linux.

      Reactos is not the necessary step away _from_ Windows, it _is_ Windows with all the usual downsides of Windows, but without the benefit of a company like Microsoft supporting it.

    3. Re:Why not teach with BananaOS ? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The effort invested into Reactos would make much more sense if invested into Wine instead.

      Perhaps, but ReactOS does borrow code from Wine. There's cross-pollination of ideas/code(license permitting) between the developers of each project. Wine benefits by having their implementation battle-hardened on a non unix-like foundation.

      Anyway, some folks prefer the Windows XP paradigm to, say, Unity or Gnome 3. Each to their own...

    4. Re:Why not teach with BananaOS ? by ByteSlicer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The effort invested into Reactos would make much more sense if invested into Wine instead.

      ReactOS uses the higher level libraries and services from Wine, so any improvements they make in those will improve Wine too (and vice versa).

      Besides that, everyone is free to invest their time and efforts in whatever they want.

  2. Re:Actual Operating System by ottawanker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm assuming by 'work on' he means the actual code of the OS.

    Its impossible to do this with Windows, and Linux is already fairly feature complete. Maybe ReactOS has places where it could use some fairly simple code that would at the same time teach the students how to write code for an OS...

  3. Re:why? by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If the problems are already solved, then it's more difficult to be the one who solves them. If the solutions are already extremely optimized then it's more difficult to be the person who provides a better solution. Sometimes you want to repeat other people's work, but sometimes it's worth trying to be the first person to do something. A less tuned OS like ReactOS might be good for teaching on.

    I'd be more concerned about the question "why use a complex OS like ReactOS rather than a simple one like Minix" since lots of the key teaching points could get lost in the arcane details, but again, there's also plenty to be said for showing the real world from time to time rather than just academic theory and using one thing doesn't stop you using the other.

    The most important thing is probably the quality of the teaching and if ReactOS motivates the professor to be interested in what his students are doing then it's probably going to give them a better course than they could ever have otherwise.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  4. Re:why? by kthreadd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not use Linux or any OS that actually works? ReactOS is terrible.

    The obvious reason is Aleksey Bragin is a ReactOS developer and thus has intrinsic knowledge about the ReactOS system. Apart from that it could also be claimed that ReactOS is smaller and less complex, making it a good example to study.

  5. Re:why? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because Aleksey is a clever young fella who was offered a teaching gig. Naturally he'd pick an area of interest that he's expert in.

    I'm sure there are plenty of other OS theory courses worldwide that use Linux, Minix, Hurd, L4, FreeBSD etc - this is one unique course, so why the hate?

  6. Re:Actual Operating System by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    > Its impossible to do this with Windows

    If the course is focusing on Windows internals, there's a program called Windows Research Kernel from Microsoft, which some universities can apply to and get access to Windows XP / 2003 kernel source code complete with a build environment. So you can compile it and test any changes. It has the advantage of being bug-free (relative to ReactOS), having well-structured and well-commented code (I've seen it), and it being something that is being used by millions of people out there as production OS.

  7. Re:Actual Operating System by ThePhilips · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It has the advantage of being bug-free (relative to ReactOS),

    That is actually a disadvantage for an academic OS. When there are obvious problems, there is no need to think much of lab assignments.

    Problem is, as system programming goes, Windows is very boring. As you say, it is very stable - but it is also closed-source. Meaning that whatever students implement remains an academic exercise.

    --
    All hope abandon ye who enter here.