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Windows Replacement? ReactOS 0.3.16 Gets Themes, CSRSS Rewrite, and More
jeditobe writes with this announcement from the ReactOS home page: "The ReactOS Project is pleased to announce the release of version 0.3.16. A little under a year has passed since the previous release and a significant amount of progress has been made. More than 400 bugs were eliminated. Some of the most significant include completion of the CSRSS rewrite and the first stages of a shell32 rewrite. 0.3.16 is in many ways a prelude to several new features that will provide a noticeable enhancement to user visible functionality. A preview can be seen in the form of theme support, which while disabled by default can be turned on to demonstrate the Lautus theme developed by community member Maciej Janiszewki. Another user visible change is a new network card driver for the RTL8139, allowing ReactOS to support newer versions of QEMU out of the box."
You can download release images here.
Want to see how it handles Windows software? Here are demos of Office 2003, Photoshop CS2, and OpenMPT.
Slashdot will soon return as http://soylentnews.org/
Wake me when it gets to version 1.0 at least
Have the ReactOS guys reached feature parity with NT4 yet? Last time I tried it, it was almost as unusable as slashdot beta!
Do you have to think in Russian?
Now before I say anything, do know that I GREATLY applaud the efforts of the ReactOS platform. I am incredibly impressed by the huge undertaking the ReactOS team has decided to pursue. Programming an open source, binary-compatible alternative to Windows is, in my opinion, the most difficult OSS project to ever make happen - after all, Microsoft can't exactly do it right when they have the actual source code, a lot more software developers, and a LOT more money. I do one day hope to be able to use it as a primary operating system that will work with my existing hardware and software as seamlessly as it presently does with Windows, leaving Windows as a memory as the ReactOS community take the best parts of OSS development and apply it to making my very expensive Windows software run.
One day.
I really don't mean to be a jerk to the devs, because I know that I have no skill, talent, or ability to write an operating system. I know that they have to hit a constantly moving target, while making plenty of rough decisions along the way: two pieces of software exist. One doesn't work past Windows XP. One works only on Vista/7/8. Which do you make compatible? Microsoft clearly has their way of going ("forward", i.e. Win8 apps), but ReactOS could easily spur adoption by catering to people who have $5,000 pieces of hardware that are no longer made, perfectly fill their needs, and don't have drivers for >WinXP. This is a tough question to answer, and one I do not envy or posit a response.
Based on their demos, it seems that they're going the 'Open Source XP' method, as can be deduced based on their demos of Office 2003 and Photoshop CS2, the former being four revisions out of date, and the latter being five (assuming we count 'CC' as a single version). If the /only/ thing it will run is old software that is not being updated, I understand that - it's no longer a moving target, after all. However, constantly playing catch-up with Microsoft, though inherently a consequence of the nature of the project, is all but impossible to truly consider a replacement.
Perhaps I need to read up on their website or do some Google searching, but are they planning to start eyeballing Win7 at all? What about more recent iterations of DirectX? I'd love to be independently wealthy enough to dump a few million at the project, and yes, next payday I plan on sending $20 or somesuch to the cause. That doesn't mean that the devs will be able to achieve critical mass effectively.
Having said all of that, if they could get an OSS flavor of Windows ThinPC up and running (i.e. completely iron out hardware compatibility and a remote desktop client), and charge even some nominal amount for it so that companies could use it instead of ThinPC (which is stupidly licensed), that'd be a great way to start making inroads.
Unless the new site runs on ReactOS, please shut the fuck up about slashdot beta.
Unless the new site runs on ReactOS, please shut the fuck up about slashdot beta.
Using the URL http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 should fix that.
I only occasionally visit the actual /. site (instead preferring to digest my news via feed-reader), but when I did last week, I was immediately pleased with the aesthetics of the redesign. What are the (perhaps not-so-subtle) nuances I'm missing with which people are so unhappy?
"ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system based on the best design principles found in the Windows NT architecture. Written completely from scratch, ReactOS is not a Linux-based system and it shares none of the UNIX architecture. The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on a Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow people to use it as an alternative to Windows without the need to change software they are used to." anybody tried this? pretty obscure, first I heard of it.
What's a vm? Will this run on my dell win8 laptop ok, without ruining my current setup?
Virtual Machine, yes a VM will run on your computer and allow you to test ReactOS safely.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
Why use 10 year old software to demo a "Windows replacement"? If a successful demo only works because it is old software, that somewhat speaks volumes.
Thanks.
VM is Virtual Machine. Go here for a start https://www.virtualbox.org/
If the new site runs on slashdot beta and you're from Soviet Russia, ReactOS shuts the fuck up about YOU.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I see the new Beta is managing to attract new readers! Welcome!
A VM or "virtual machine" is a type of computer program that creates an emulated software environment. Not that any real person actually knows what that means. Think of it as a sort of a computer that runs on another computer. You can run multiple "virtual machines" on a single computer; then you give access to individual "VM" to all your clients or employees. Busy executives like yourself love VMs because it saves them so much money on hardware; why waste money on 100 servers when you can just buy one and make it look like you have 100 computers! All your peons down in IT would probably recommend against running it on Windows8, but that's just because they like running complicated things like Linux. Windows 8 can handle VMs just fine, and - thanks to its colorful and touch-friendly interface - it's so easy to use that you can fire all those overpaid geeks and have your secretary handle everything for you. Think of the cost savings!
I hope that helps; this is just one of those useful tips you'll find on the new Slashdot, now featuring shorter articles and nice big pictures. Not only has Slashdot has been redesigned to make all this computer gibberish more palatable and understandable for management and accounting types, but we've hidden all the comments from all those grumpy greybeards and nerds to make for a better C-level executive experience! Thanks for coming, and enjoy your stay!
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
why go nowhere?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
in my timezone, one more hour. until then, please, find the person responsible for slashdot "beta" and fuck him/her. they very much need it :)
Rich
its the best OS evar!!! http://i.imgur.com/1uNNZSp.png
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If you are not a troll and this is a serious question: If you don't know what a VM is, don't try to use something like ReactOS. Start with something easier, like Ubuntu.
If you are a troll, very well done.
Is it just me that sees ReactOS as a "lab" kind of software - it's theoretical and doesn't follow the outside reality.
I can't see how it can ever catch up to, say, a lightweight virtualised Linux with Wine for those people who want to avoid a Windows licensing fee. The overhead of a full Linux is absolutely minimal on modern hardware while the hardware support and control is phenomenal.
Sure, I imagine purists prefer a ReactOS but it's really only for the purists and always has been. Which is probably why Wine etc. get much more of a developer following.
doesn't seem to like installing on ESXI 5.1 though
Only one way to find out. Burn the Live version and boot it.
Weren't you folks supposed to be on some boycott this week?
Note that so far there has been no admission of just how bad the beta is, only promises to implement missing features and fiddle with the layout. They don't think it is badly broken, that's the problem. It just needs polishing and some more features in their minds.
The end is coming. The acknowledgement of the problems changed nothing, other than to stop the protests. It seems like most people are just waiting for the end now, consciously or not.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry, some of us give a shit and don't want the site to die. Feel free to give up, but don't try to shut down other people's protests.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm looking for help on an OS/2 Warp open source clone.
Comments, suggestions or hate mail is welcome. Even flaming is considered good feedback on the OS/2-eCS community :)
http://openwarp.blogspot.com/
Alas I never could get OS/2 to install, had to set up a video camera and record the monitor while it was loading; then sneak up on the error frame by frame - was my video driver.
Being before public Internet access I was stuck. Doom was telling me to play it just one more time; and I lost interest.
OS/2 would be a very nice os to keep running, while never running it myself all around me were and was coming across as a much nicer OS than Windows was pushing.
Oh ya; I'm make a great Admin, lots of server commands I'd like to try out :}
I Wish you luck.
All I needed was evidence that audio worked, thanks!
The bitching about beta looks like it could drive me away from this place before I even see beta.
WTF should we have to wade past hundreds of offtopic posts before we get to the comments about the article?
Which at least is interesting in that iirc a lot of the codebase for ReactOS is WINE... They're sharing a lot of the API code... Though other than specific drivers and system applications, most programs run in later versions of windows with minimal issue... the most I've had to do for some older programs is manually install outside of the "C:\Program Files" path... generally, I do a C:\Legacy\* for older programs that don't work in the proper security context. Most work without issue.
I've only seen a few specific instances of hardware where it was worth while to maintain an old version of windows in place.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Oddly enough, this comment could be about ReactOS Beta, which has been promised for years now.
Though I'm personally confident that the ReactOS Beta would be more welcolm among the /. community (aka, the "audience") than Slashdot Beta.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm not sure what place OS/2 has in this day and age, even as an exercise in creativity for an OSS implementation. I always liked WPS, and even used one written by an IBM dev for Windows 3.x back in the day... Today, there are several dock and WM implementations that are similar to OSX or OS/2 Warp. There are also REXX interpreters for most platforms today.
...
I don't feel that most of OS/2 at its' core is really worth preserving as it is. DOSEMU does as good with the dos applications on modern hardware as OS/2 can, and windows has all but dropped a lot of that legacy. For GUI applications, other modern toolkits are easier to target and develop for than OS/2 offers. Not to discourage you, but I'd rather see efforts towards improving and mainstreaming some of the OpenStep bits over anything that could be re-implemented from OS/2
Don't get me wrong, I loved OS/2 for a long time, and until NT4-SP3 came out, it was my main OS. Windows 2000 was really the first version of windows that I used regularly outside the workplace. OS/2 had a lot of power, and was really awesome in many ways. I just feel that there's not much worth taking and preserving from it, when compared to other systems of today.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I like the redesign, and the occasional redirection to the beta just makes life interesting.
Geez, take it easy. You act like Slashdot killed your dog.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't really like to contribute to the off topic threads on this any more, but I have to still throw in my two cents here. Dice did buy Slashdot. It's sad that it's been bought by an entity that doesn't seem to care for the community and the history of Slashdot the way we do, but they do own it.
People have talked about boycotts and Slashdot alternatives and both of those are perfectly valid ways of attempting to influence Slashdot or just plain leave it behind. I'm wondering, however, if anyone has considered putting together an offer to Dice to buy Slashdot back from them? I've been using Slashdot since very close to the start (came in after Chips and Dips, but very shortly after that and lurked and posted as AC for a long time before getting an account). I have enough of an emotional investment in the site that I'd certainly be willing to throw a few thousand dollars into owning a piece of it. How many Slashdotters are there who care enough to do the same? Could we get together twenty thousand people willing to throw in a thousand dollars each and pay Dice the $20 million they paid for Slashdot? 200,000 willing to pay $100.00 each? Are there anything like that number of Slashdotters who really care? Anyone know what the best way to do that would be? Would a Kickstarter campaign be a valid avenue, or would it be better to create some sort of co-op or corporation and sell shares, or are there other ways a large group of people could get together to do something like this (in a form that might allow for a return on investment, but probably not)?
Has anyone already proposed this? Is anyone already working on it? I would search comments for that, but Slashdot's search tools have been broken and near useless for years, even before Dice came along. Maybe if the community actually owned Slashdot, we could do something about the problems with Slashdot. Personally, I've always wanted an open API for Slashdot so that users can use whatever front-end suits their fancy and even download the entire Slashdot database (well, not the entire database, obviously, but the comments and articles certainly). Maybe, if we owned it, we could actually do something like that and everyone, including Dice, could be happy about how it turned out.
It's probably a pipe dream, however. There's a lot of vocal complaint (enough to really damage enjoyment of Slashdot lately and I'm sorry to be adding to this thread for that reason), but I don't know if there's really enough of a "core" Slashdot readership left who would be willing to put in that much for our beloved site.
Considering XP is 13 years old...being a decade late is not a problem :-)
I would swap all my mod points for a +6 funny here.
nope, still just getting a domain name placeholder. about equivalent to slashbeta
I'm not sure what place OS/2 has in this day and age, even as an exercise in creativity for an OSS implementation....I don't feel that most of OS/2 at its' core is really worth preserving as it is...OS/2 had a lot of power, and was really awesome in many ways. I just feel that there's not much worth taking and preserving from it, when compared to other systems of today.
See, OS/2 as a desktop OS, I concur. I got a copy of OS/2 Warp 4 off of eBay for $5 on a whim (Weird Al said it best when he said "junk keeps arriving in the mail...from that worldwide garage sale..."). I installed it on a Thinkpad T61 because I was bored. Half of me says that the choice of a T61 was to give OS/2 the best shot of actually installing without throwing up and that OS/2 wouldn't have done all that great on more exotic hardware not made by IBM who, incidentally, did have an OS/2 driver selection for the laptop on its website. The other half is surprised that a decade-old OS was able to install just fine on the hardware I threw at it, detecting and working with everything but the fingerprint reader and the Intel 5300 802.11n wi-fi chipset. It was a fun experiment, but given that the only software I was able to find to run on it was the garden variety open source stuff you can get for literally every Linux ever, I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.
That said, I do know that OS/2 had a few places where it rocked. Notably, ATMs almost universally ran OS/2, and probably still would if it weren't for the requirement for the headphone jack to read everything for the blind community (and no, I'm not upset with the blind community or the legislators that made it possible for ATMs to be used by those with visual impairments - I'm genuinely glad that the problem was addressed). OS/2 is still running in your local Pep Boys; every PoS terminal running there runs OS/2. Microcenter might as well, actually, but I don't have confirmation on that. A friend of mine tells me that he runs OS/2 on a server and was serving up traffic that would max out most rack servers running LAMP (10,000 requests/sec for a PHP heavy forum), but using OS/2 and Domino Server (for web, not mail - he didn't hate himself) on a server with a quartet of 500MHz processors and a gig of RAM (maybe two, I forget).
I don't know if I'd go all the way to "preserving it", but I do think that open sourcing the existing builds would be wonderful, as its object oriented implementation of...basically everything (including file metadata) could stand to be borrowed elsewhere in desktop OS world.
More importantly, does the video driver support Hercules mono mode?
Let's talk!
Signed,
J.G. Wentworth
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I tried following the link to check out the reactos website but received a Certificate error. Meh...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Whatever happened to osFree?
You are bad programmer, because you should know that not even single bugless software exists.
Wouldn't a good /etc/hosts file successfully drop beta.slashdot.org, while allowing Slashdot.org? Yeah, yeah, I know, ReactOS won't support /etc/hosts
The community stills hangs out at http://www.os2world.com/
There is a OEM version of OS/2 called eComStation, which has ACPI, AHCI and some updated drivers to run on newer hardware. But it is not like the company behind eCS covers all the needs for the platform and community.
I think that OS/2 also deserves a shot on trying to be cloned and have an opportunity in the open source community. Sadly we don't have the resources to do this, but we need to build up a team of interested developers and supporters to do this.
osFree (http://www.osfree.org/) was having a god moment some years ago, but sadly we lack developers to continue the project.
What I think that it will be interesting is trying to clone the close source components that runs on top of OS/2 Warp like WPS, SOM and PM.
- Presentation Manager - http://www.osfree.org/
- SOM - https://sourceforge.net/projec...
- WPS - XWorkplace and other OSS WPS classes
I think we should focus first in only one component that can run over OS/2 Warp 4.5x or eCS to later continue and gain momentum for the rest.
You are bad programmer, because you should know that not even single bugless software exists.
But 400+ is acceptable?
You must be the best programmer in the world...