Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ReactOS 0.4.8 Released (osnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the experimentally-supported dept.

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.

6 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Status: pre-alpha by steveha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Status: pre-alpha by nine-times · · Score: 2

      As an IT person, I'd love to see ReactOS get to the point of being reliably and thoroughly compatible with Windows XP, even if it were only a VM.

      It'd solve a real problem: Sometimes I have clients with old Windows apps that they need to run, but don't run on Windows versions newer than XP. It's more common than you might think. One way or another, you end up trying to support an old unsupportable OS that you can't get a valid license for.

  2. Decided to try it; kersplat by neilo_1701D · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Decided to try it; kersplat by DMJC · · Score: 2

      Meanwhile, I tried it in a KVM instance, got Caligari trueSpace and 3D Studio Max version 3.1 running and it's fast enough to be a usable replacement for a Windows install on my PC. Pretty nifty.

  3. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I tried a recent release and I was shocked at how far it's come since I first tried it many years ago. It's not perfect, but they've done an amazing job of getting the system to work with normal binaries in a reliable way. At least on the software I've tried.

    The big problem though is that some required libraries can't be used as MS prohibits them from being used on other platforms, so .net programs can be an issue.

  4. Re:Awesome by iampiti · · Score: 2

    Nope. NT5 support is not finished. ReactOS has very few developers. I believe it's because the intersection of people capable of developing an OS and willing to commit their time to learning Windows internals and actually develop such an OS is pretty small.
    I think the only real possibility of it reaching maturity in the short term is to somehow get some company to pay for development (as it's done for Linux (multiple compnanies) and Wine (Codeweavers make a commercial product out of it)).
    That said, I would love it reached to point of being an alternative to Windows, not because I don't want to pay, but because the current version of Windows (10) has many drawbacks. I gladly paid for Windows 7