Re:Why aren't there more contributors to this proj
on
ReactOS 0.3.15 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The graphic routines reside in kernel space?
An absolute necessity for performance reasons. They tried doing it in userspace in NT4 and it just couldn't keep up.
the drivers can kill the kernel?
Windows 7 moved a lot of drivers to userspace. Yes, some code will still be run in the kernel. Some code is run in the kernel on Linux. The solution is for that code to be written well, not to give up and pretend that kernel mode doesn't exist.
If there was a compatibility layer to run OSX applications on Linux, that might actually be a viable option. OSX has most of the big things people want: MS Office, Adobe Photoshop and friends, AutoCAD, etc. Conceivably, such a compatibility layer could be easier to write, debug, and maintain than WINE, since there is a lot less legacy baggage (and the underlying architecture is much closer to what Linux expects). But I am not aware of any such project so far, and I don't have anywhere near the level of systems programming experience needed to start it.
I can't stand the interface of OSX; it's even worse than Windows 8, and everything is in the wrong place and none of the shortcuts and gestures wired into my brain and fingertips work right. But with a compatibility layer on Linux, the apps could be run while allowing the desktop to be customized fully.
One thing that is absolutely non-negotiable, though, is that the font rendering needs to be fixed. In its current state, it's uttterly atrocious, the worst I've ever seen on any OS. The Microsoft core fonts expect aggressive hinting and snapping to the pixel grid, and Linux doesn't want to cooperate.
Why aren't there more contributors to this project
on
ReactOS 0.3.15 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
ReactOS is a project to build a free, open-source clone of Windows, compatible with both drivers and userspace software. Why on earth hasn't this received more support from the OSS community? It's the only realistic chance of dethroning MS from the desktop in favor of an open alternative. Linux is fine for servers, portable devices, and embedded systems, but trying to stick it on the desktop is a foolish dream that has failed for over 10 years.
I'm with you on the Start Screen Search though, it's good to see that working as it should. Long term, I'm happy to see the end of the Start Menu. Sure it looked nice, but pixel perfect mousing when you were four, five levels down and the whole thing reset because you moused onto the desktop was annoying, plus the thing was just a hive of.lnk files under the bonnet that seemed to redraw half the time I was using it. It was archaic and needed to go and I'm surprised so many people were up in arms about it to be honest.
That was true of the 'classic' Start menu, but Windows 7 didn't even have that. The modern Start menu lets you get the tree-view of everything that every installer spammed in your system - it's under 'All Programs' - but what you're supposed to do for your most commonly used applications is pin them to the left panel. You can pin any application on Win7 by right-clicking and choosing 'Pin to Start menu'. I usually also turn off the default option to 'show recently used programs' on the Start Menu - I'd rather have it only show the stuff I want, not the stuff the system thinks I should want.
Yes, different people want different things, and that's the point. Windows used to be highly customizable, but Win8 virtually eliminates this. Partly it's due to marketing and partly due to evil "UI experts" who believe one size should fit all and that options are bad.
What Microsoft should be doing on the desktop is making the whole thing skinnable and customizable with XAML. That way, if someone doesn't like the way things are by default, they don't have to resort to a third-party solution; they can just change it. I've never understood why themes in Windows are locked down and require a hack to use. What are they concerned about? Just add a group policy switch for businesses, even default it to 'disable themes' if they must – but allow full customization for those who want or need it.
Firstly, solar cells traditionally lose a large percentage of their performance after the first couple of years of use. If the small assemblies are experiencing a 50% power loss after 2 years, then achieving 50% after 7 years on a high-quality large assembly is reasonable. I'm not really sure why people are expecting solar cells to last 25 years.
Because if they don't last that long then they aren't worth buying. At least not at current prices. If they got a lot cheaper then 10 years might be acceptable. Marginally. Replacing heavy panels on the roof is an expensive process in and of itself and cannot affordably be done on a regular basis.
Most apps people think they need windows for will run in WINE or have equivalent free versions.
I checked the compatibility list for WINE recently, and it's seriously lacking. Microsoft Office 2013, and the 64-bit version of Office 2010, are listed as "garbage". Even 32-bit Office 2010 is no better than "silver" for most apps, and that's a generous assessment; major chunks of functionality are broken. Photoshop CS6 is "gold", which sounds good, but according to the description, the brush tools don't work, and "Most of the time, when I click and drag, it will register the click, and draw a dot, but will not register the drag and only draw that dot." This isn't going to be very appealing to most users. All versions of AutoCAD from 2009 onward are "garbage".
And, no, suggesting knockoffs like OpenOffice or GIMP is not an acceptable solution.
Also, Linux font rendering is absolutely terrible, the worst I've ever seen. There is no way to make it look like it does with ClearType in Windows (and a couple years back, I tried very hard).
Turning off Aero on Windows 7 actually hurts performance. Aero has hardware acceleration; Classic Mode doesn't. (They could have rewritten Classic Mode so it just looked like the traditional interface and used the new back-end, but apparently couldn't be bothered.)
Because if users aren't forced to use Metro, then developers won't have to develop Metro apps, and then Microsoft won't have many apps available for download to their unpopular Windows Phone. Microsoft is trying to use its desktop OS monopoly to muscle into the relatively new phone market.
Part of the problem is that tablet makers have taken a UI designed for 4" phones and shoved it onto 10" tablets. Why can't most tablets run two or three phone apps side by side?
A 10" screen is way too small for that. You have to get well above 20" before two side-by-side windows start to become feasible.
Windows is still an effective monopoly on the desktop. They are lagging in the phone and tablet markets, and are trying to exploit their desktop monopoly to grab market share there. This is the core of the problem. What they're doing is morally wrong, should be illegal, and is terrible from a user experience perspective.
Part of this is due to Microsoft's marketing department (they want to force people into Metro so they can get a cut of app sales), but another part is due to the arrogance of modern UI "experts". Received wisdom in the UI design fields is that you should never give users a choice, it just confuses them. Come up with one method that is simple enough for everyone to understand, then force everyone to use it. We will have to beat back these idiots if we ever want to have workable desktops again. Note that they have infected Ubuntu as well.
Word from inside the company is that Sinofsky made the devs "p4 obliterate" the Start menu code, meaning not only did they delete it but they wiped the entire history of the code from their source control. If true, it would mean that they couldn't just "bring back" the start menu, they'd have to entirely rewrite it.
I hadn't heard about that particular bit of stupidity; what possible business justification could there be for it? He deserved to be fired for that alone. Still, it's really not a big deal. If multiple third parties can implement reasonably good facsimiles of the Start menu in as short a time frame as they did, Microsoft shouldn't have any trouble. Heck, they could buy the rights to Start8 out of pocket change and merge it with their source tree.
That's not the point. I shouldn't have to resort to third-party hacks to get core functionality that should be in the main OS, and was in the OS before Steve Ballmer started wishing he was Steve Jobs.
To that, we have all the extensive integration with bing and skydrive which could/should be considered another abuse of a monopoly position.
I doubt most of Microsoft's corporate customers are thrilled with the idea of "cloud" garbage which they don't control being built into the OS by default. Hopefully the SkyDrive crap can at least be turned off through group policy.
Was the interface really that broken?? This doesn't even sound like it's a usable environment.
The Metro interface is basically a mediocre clone of the iOS/Android interface. It's OK for tablets and smartphones, but an absurd joke on the desktop.
What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it: We don't want to see or interact with Metro, at all. Ever. It has no place on the desktop.
I would never have figured Mexican labor would become cheaper than that found in China. Sure, there's an education gap between Chinese and Mexican labor, but Mexico has been successful at producing exports in a variety of industries.
Significant to what I'm seeing in that comparison is that while the "build it wherever labor is cheap" attitude has certainly been prevalent, I have to wonder if rising fuel costs will begin to whittle away at that? Several years ago, a man who ran a raw cotton storage facility told me that the cotton was grown here in Texas, shipped to China, manufactured into completed products, and shipped back to the United States. How much longer can transportation to and from across the Pacific be cost effective compared to other options?
Shipping costs are a major issue when a product has a low value-to-weight ratio. Almost all drywall used in the US is manufactured domestically, because these are massive, heavy sheets and only sell for $10-$20 each at retail. Shipping them across the Pacific would be cost prohibitive. (We did import some drywall from China during the 2004-2007 housing boom, and it was a disaster – much of it leaked hydrogen sulfide gas, corroding pipes and wiring in the affected houses.) Likewise, plywood is mostly made in the Western Hemisphere; it's sometimes imported from Latin America, but Chinese plywood is less common. You can get quality US-made plywood at Home Depot and it's not really that much more expensive than the foreign stuff. Again, this is because shipping costs dominate with a heavy and relatively cheap product like plywood.
Solar panels are big and bulky, so manufacturing them in China and shipping them to the US will become a worse and worse idea as prices drop.
Yes, control of the supply chain is key. You can get high-quality goods manufactured in China if you want, but not if you take a "hands off" approach. You have to do what Apple did, and oversee the operation at every level. And guess what? Once you do that, you'll find that the overhead means that manufacturing in China isn't as cheap as everyone makes it out to be. You really do get what you pay for. That's one reason why Apple is considering bringing some of its manufacturing back to the Western Hemisphere.
The good news is that, eventually, this will probably get sorted out. Producers and installers with brands and reputations (not to mention business contracts) to defend will eventually get fed up with dealing with shitty suppliers, who will either clean up their act, go out of business, or retreat to the purgatory of "known to be poor quality", where there's still plenty of business to be had (see again the desktop PC market), but not much money to be made.
To a large extent, that's already happened. After being heavily criticized for poor working conditions and high suicide rates, Foxconn increased worker salaries by about 25% and reduced overtime work in early 2012. Working conditions are still crappy by Western standards, of course – but they're not so bad by Chinese standards, and seem to be improving. This added pay means that Foxconn isn't going to be competing much for the bottom-end, low-margin business. Instead they are going to focus on high-value-add products like Apple devices. (In fact, Apple is considering making a new, cheaper iPhone with a different supplier – which seems to indicate that Foxconn might be raising the bar a bit on contract prices.) There will still be plenty of factories in China that crank out crap for people who care about nothing but the lowest price, but the Chinese leadership doesn't want their country to be known for producing only junk. They want to move up the value chain.
Part of the problem is that the medical education system is deliberately set up to ensure a continuous shortage of doctors. As a result, all doctors have extremely high pay and are almost immune to any kind of employee discipline; they know that the hospital needs them more than they need it. We let the AMA run medicine like a medieval guild, while almost everyone else is exposed to ruthless market competition – it's no wonder that we get nonsense like this, and that health-care costs have been rising faster than inflation for decades.
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The graphic routines reside in kernel space?
An absolute necessity for performance reasons. They tried doing it in userspace in NT4 and it just couldn't keep up.
the drivers can kill the kernel?
Windows 7 moved a lot of drivers to userspace. Yes, some code will still be run in the kernel. Some code is run in the kernel on Linux. The solution is for that code to be written well, not to give up and pretend that kernel mode doesn't exist.
If there was a compatibility layer to run OSX applications on Linux, that might actually be a viable option. OSX has most of the big things people want: MS Office, Adobe Photoshop and friends, AutoCAD, etc. Conceivably, such a compatibility layer could be easier to write, debug, and maintain than WINE, since there is a lot less legacy baggage (and the underlying architecture is much closer to what Linux expects). But I am not aware of any such project so far, and I don't have anywhere near the level of systems programming experience needed to start it.
I can't stand the interface of OSX; it's even worse than Windows 8, and everything is in the wrong place and none of the shortcuts and gestures wired into my brain and fingertips work right. But with a compatibility layer on Linux, the apps could be run while allowing the desktop to be customized fully.
One thing that is absolutely non-negotiable, though, is that the font rendering needs to be fixed. In its current state, it's uttterly atrocious, the worst I've ever seen on any OS. The Microsoft core fonts expect aggressive hinting and snapping to the pixel grid, and Linux doesn't want to cooperate.
ReactOS is a project to build a free, open-source clone of Windows, compatible with both drivers and userspace software. Why on earth hasn't this received more support from the OSS community? It's the only realistic chance of dethroning MS from the desktop in favor of an open alternative. Linux is fine for servers, portable devices, and embedded systems, but trying to stick it on the desktop is a foolish dream that has failed for over 10 years.
I'm with you on the Start Screen Search though, it's good to see that working as it should. Long term, I'm happy to see the end of the Start Menu. Sure it looked nice, but pixel perfect mousing when you were four, five levels down and the whole thing reset because you moused onto the desktop was annoying, plus the thing was just a hive of .lnk files under the bonnet that seemed to redraw half the time I was using it. It was archaic and needed to go and I'm surprised so many people were up in arms about it to be honest.
That was true of the 'classic' Start menu, but Windows 7 didn't even have that. The modern Start menu lets you get the tree-view of everything that every installer spammed in your system - it's under 'All Programs' - but what you're supposed to do for your most commonly used applications is pin them to the left panel. You can pin any application on Win7 by right-clicking and choosing 'Pin to Start menu'. I usually also turn off the default option to 'show recently used programs' on the Start Menu - I'd rather have it only show the stuff I want, not the stuff the system thinks I should want.
Yes, different people want different things, and that's the point. Windows used to be highly customizable, but Win8 virtually eliminates this. Partly it's due to marketing and partly due to evil "UI experts" who believe one size should fit all and that options are bad.
What Microsoft should be doing on the desktop is making the whole thing skinnable and customizable with XAML. That way, if someone doesn't like the way things are by default, they don't have to resort to a third-party solution; they can just change it. I've never understood why themes in Windows are locked down and require a hack to use. What are they concerned about? Just add a group policy switch for businesses, even default it to 'disable themes' if they must – but allow full customization for those who want or need it.
Firstly, solar cells traditionally lose a large percentage of their performance after the first couple of years of use. If the small assemblies are experiencing a 50% power loss after 2 years, then achieving 50% after 7 years on a high-quality large assembly is reasonable. I'm not really sure why people are expecting solar cells to last 25 years.
Because if they don't last that long then they aren't worth buying. At least not at current prices. If they got a lot cheaper then 10 years might be acceptable. Marginally. Replacing heavy panels on the roof is an expensive process in and of itself and cannot affordably be done on a regular basis.
Most apps people think they need windows for will run in WINE or have equivalent free versions.
I checked the compatibility list for WINE recently, and it's seriously lacking. Microsoft Office 2013, and the 64-bit version of Office 2010, are listed as "garbage". Even 32-bit Office 2010 is no better than "silver" for most apps, and that's a generous assessment; major chunks of functionality are broken. Photoshop CS6 is "gold", which sounds good, but according to the description, the brush tools don't work, and "Most of the time, when I click and drag, it will register the click, and draw a dot, but will not register the drag and only draw that dot." This isn't going to be very appealing to most users. All versions of AutoCAD from 2009 onward are "garbage".
And, no, suggesting knockoffs like OpenOffice or GIMP is not an acceptable solution.
Also, Linux font rendering is absolutely terrible, the worst I've ever seen. There is no way to make it look like it does with ClearType in Windows (and a couple years back, I tried very hard).
it sounds like marketing got involved and caused development to really shit the bed on this release
That is exactly what happened.
Turning off Aero on Windows 7 actually hurts performance. Aero has hardware acceleration; Classic Mode doesn't. (They could have rewritten Classic Mode so it just looked like the traditional interface and used the new back-end, but apparently couldn't be bothered.)
How can Microsoft innovate if what "most of us" want is the same old thing?
I don't want Microsoft to "innovate". The traditional Win95-derived interface is just about perfect for a desktop.
Because if users aren't forced to use Metro, then developers won't have to develop Metro apps, and then Microsoft won't have many apps available for download to their unpopular Windows Phone. Microsoft is trying to use its desktop OS monopoly to muscle into the relatively new phone market.
Save us, European Union, you're our only hope.
Part of the problem is that tablet makers have taken a UI designed for 4" phones and shoved it onto 10" tablets. Why can't most tablets run two or three phone apps side by side?
A 10" screen is way too small for that. You have to get well above 20" before two side-by-side windows start to become feasible.
Windows is still an effective monopoly on the desktop. They are lagging in the phone and tablet markets, and are trying to exploit their desktop monopoly to grab market share there. This is the core of the problem. What they're doing is morally wrong, should be illegal, and is terrible from a user experience perspective.
Part of this is due to Microsoft's marketing department (they want to force people into Metro so they can get a cut of app sales), but another part is due to the arrogance of modern UI "experts". Received wisdom in the UI design fields is that you should never give users a choice, it just confuses them. Come up with one method that is simple enough for everyone to understand, then force everyone to use it. We will have to beat back these idiots if we ever want to have workable desktops again. Note that they have infected Ubuntu as well.
Word from inside the company is that Sinofsky made the devs "p4 obliterate" the Start menu code, meaning not only did they delete it but they wiped the entire history of the code from their source control. If true, it would mean that they couldn't just "bring back" the start menu, they'd have to entirely rewrite it.
I hadn't heard about that particular bit of stupidity; what possible business justification could there be for it? He deserved to be fired for that alone. Still, it's really not a big deal. If multiple third parties can implement reasonably good facsimiles of the Start menu in as short a time frame as they did, Microsoft shouldn't have any trouble. Heck, they could buy the rights to Start8 out of pocket change and merge it with their source tree.
That's not the point. I shouldn't have to resort to third-party hacks to get core functionality that should be in the main OS, and was in the OS before Steve Ballmer started wishing he was Steve Jobs.
To that, we have all the extensive integration with bing and skydrive which could/should be considered another abuse of a monopoly position.
I doubt most of Microsoft's corporate customers are thrilled with the idea of "cloud" garbage which they don't control being built into the OS by default. Hopefully the SkyDrive crap can at least be turned off through group policy.
Was the interface really that broken?? This doesn't even sound like it's a usable environment.
The Metro interface is basically a mediocre clone of the iOS/Android interface. It's OK for tablets and smartphones, but an absurd joke on the desktop.
What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it: We don't want to see or interact with Metro, at all. Ever. It has no place on the desktop.
I would never have figured Mexican labor would become cheaper than that found in China. Sure, there's an education gap between Chinese and Mexican labor, but Mexico has been successful at producing exports in a variety of industries. Significant to what I'm seeing in that comparison is that while the "build it wherever labor is cheap" attitude has certainly been prevalent, I have to wonder if rising fuel costs will begin to whittle away at that? Several years ago, a man who ran a raw cotton storage facility told me that the cotton was grown here in Texas, shipped to China, manufactured into completed products, and shipped back to the United States. How much longer can transportation to and from across the Pacific be cost effective compared to other options?
Shipping costs are a major issue when a product has a low value-to-weight ratio. Almost all drywall used in the US is manufactured domestically, because these are massive, heavy sheets and only sell for $10-$20 each at retail. Shipping them across the Pacific would be cost prohibitive. (We did import some drywall from China during the 2004-2007 housing boom, and it was a disaster – much of it leaked hydrogen sulfide gas, corroding pipes and wiring in the affected houses.) Likewise, plywood is mostly made in the Western Hemisphere; it's sometimes imported from Latin America, but Chinese plywood is less common. You can get quality US-made plywood at Home Depot and it's not really that much more expensive than the foreign stuff. Again, this is because shipping costs dominate with a heavy and relatively cheap product like plywood.
Solar panels are big and bulky, so manufacturing them in China and shipping them to the US will become a worse and worse idea as prices drop.
Yes, control of the supply chain is key. You can get high-quality goods manufactured in China if you want, but not if you take a "hands off" approach. You have to do what Apple did, and oversee the operation at every level. And guess what? Once you do that, you'll find that the overhead means that manufacturing in China isn't as cheap as everyone makes it out to be. You really do get what you pay for. That's one reason why Apple is considering bringing some of its manufacturing back to the Western Hemisphere.
The good news is that, eventually, this will probably get sorted out. Producers and installers with brands and reputations (not to mention business contracts) to defend will eventually get fed up with dealing with shitty suppliers, who will either clean up their act, go out of business, or retreat to the purgatory of "known to be poor quality", where there's still plenty of business to be had (see again the desktop PC market), but not much money to be made.
To a large extent, that's already happened. After being heavily criticized for poor working conditions and high suicide rates, Foxconn increased worker salaries by about 25% and reduced overtime work in early 2012. Working conditions are still crappy by Western standards, of course – but they're not so bad by Chinese standards, and seem to be improving. This added pay means that Foxconn isn't going to be competing much for the bottom-end, low-margin business. Instead they are going to focus on high-value-add products like Apple devices. (In fact, Apple is considering making a new, cheaper iPhone with a different supplier – which seems to indicate that Foxconn might be raising the bar a bit on contract prices.) There will still be plenty of factories in China that crank out crap for people who care about nothing but the lowest price, but the Chinese leadership doesn't want their country to be known for producing only junk. They want to move up the value chain.
Part of the problem is that the medical education system is deliberately set up to ensure a continuous shortage of doctors. As a result, all doctors have extremely high pay and are almost immune to any kind of employee discipline; they know that the hospital needs them more than they need it. We let the AMA run medicine like a medieval guild, while almost everyone else is exposed to ruthless market competition – it's no wonder that we get nonsense like this, and that health-care costs have been rising faster than inflation for decades.
But... hang on a bit... how come 20 years ago this wasn't an issue?
Who says it wasn't?
So your whole company is a giant bureaucratic clusterfuck. Got it.