Slashdot Mirror
ReactOS 0.4.8 Released (osnews.com)
jeditobe shares a report from OSNews: With software specifically leaving NT5 behind, ReactOS is expanding its target to support NT6+ (Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10) software. Colin, Giannis and Mark are creating the needed logic in NTDLL and LDR for this purpose. Giannis has finished the side-by-side support and the implicit activation context, Colin has changed Kernel32 to accept software made for NT6+, and Mark keeps working on the shim compatibility layer. Although in a really greenish and experimental state, the new additions in 0.4.8 should start helping several software pieces created for Vista and upwards to start working in ReactOS. Microsoft coined the term backwards compatibility, ReactOS the forward compatibility one. Slashdot reader jeditobe adds: "A new tool similar to DrWatson32 has been created by Mark and added to 0.4.8, so now any application crashing will create a log file on the desktop. This crash dump details the list of modules and threads loaded, stack traces, hexdumps, and register state."
The announcement, general notes, tests, and changelog for the release can be found at their respective links. A less technical community changelog for ReactOS 0.4.8 is also available.
The announcement, general notes, tests, and changelog for the release can be found at their respective links. A less technical community changelog for ReactOS 0.4.8 is also available.
So now that Vista is almost 12 years old, ReactOS almost supports software written for it!
Has NT5 support been finished yet? It does seem like a good idea to finish one thing before starting a new thing. NT5 hasn't changed in over 10 years.
I wish the ReactOS project success.
In the past I was not interested because it didn't even run on real hardware; you had to run it inside a virtual machine. Checking their web site it seems it does run on some real hardware now, but only some devices are supported. Actually that is great progress and I hope that it will attract more developers.
It's not that fun to work on a project when it's super primitive and everything is broken. When it works a bit and just needs a tweak here and there, more people will be interested in working on it. I hope that will be the case for ReactOS.
I would love to have a Windows-compatible system that doesn't phone home constantly and can run some of my favorite games. It will take a while but it's starting to look like they will get there.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Boot from ext2 when?
like HDSDR, SDRsharp, SDR_Console and the device drivers for popular SDR devices then i will be glad to dump windows, while Linux supports most of what i have some features are missing and if i need them it only takes a minute to reboot to windows and fire up HDSDR or SDR_Console, while GQRX is fairly nice software for SDR receivers it lacks a notch filter, which is important feature for trying to listen to that weak station in the distance.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... IBM did! Check out VMs in the early 1960s etc.
That said, Tandem had perfect backwards compatiblity, since 1977. Check it out.
Microsoft did pretty good, though, within reason.
I would prefer to add a layer of hooks for Win64 kernel features and a layer to run native .exe binaries on Linux would be more preferable.
Unfortunately Linux is a macrokernel while WindowsNT is a hybrid with layers for WSL for Linux and win64 and win32 as seperate runtime layers exokernel. I wonder if this is possible.
ReactOS is quite limited and I prefer to run full binaries natively under a Linux kernel that is as good as WSL on Windows.
http://saveie6.com/
I've followed this project on-and-off for years, in much the same way I've followed AROS.
But what the heck; I downloaded the ISO and set up a VMWare VM for it to install into.
The install was painless and fast; much better that Windows in that respect.
Once the desktop was up, it struggled with some device drivers. No biggie; it can run without sound.
The big problem came when installing software. This is supposed to be Windows XP compatible, so I dug out my VB6 disks. I loaded disk 1, double-clicked Setup, and instant bluescreen. Ok, not good... I rebooted, and the system would get to "Loading personal settings" and that was it: frozen. I could now not get past this screen ever.
ReactOS is interesting and I'm sure the developers are having a blast. But as a piece of functional software and a WIndows replacement: not so much.
Pass.
No, YOU change your name!
I tried downloading the live CD of 0.4.8 a couple of times earlier today. Each time, on completion, Firefox claimed that it contained a virus and deleted it even after I told it I wanted to live dangerously and keep the file. Since when does a web browser make that call?
Does anyone know whether the live CD is safe to use? The checksum matches, but that means nothing if the file was infected before the checksum was calculated.
I was activly following the project a few years ago, then stopped as live goes on.
The important change about ReactOS is not that its more stable now or that it's supporting more hardware the acivemet is that the comments on slashdot are now very positive.
Few years ago you couldnt find a single positive comment about it and everybody was calling the project crazy. but now even google sommer of code is supporting the project
Is there support for 64-bit Windows apps yet?
I heard somewhere on the internet or something like that that Sean Hannity has failed to deny that he hasn't molested children since 1996. Around the same time as ReactOS started. Coincidence?
It's the one thing most missing from open source projects - quality assurance reporting the problems all the end users will see, before the end users see them - hopefully leading to them being fixed, before release to end users. It's a boring, less prestiguous and more tedious job - but if you don't have it, you're always going to be missing the mark on each release.
WINE was already mentioned, which makes up quite a bit of the core ReactOS libraries.
Alphabet has sponsored a fair amount of development, such as NTFS driver, through Google's Summer of Code projects.
They even ran a direct community fundraiser to pay for development of core components.
More companies helping development would probably be a good thing.
It is also a bit of a double edged sword, just look at Microsoft and their DLL Hell. Most of that hell was a constant push to get things done fast, instead of doing them right.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
And based upon the version number, it isn't quite half-way done. This is turning into another GNU-OS.