ReactOS Is Finally Able To Build Itself

[Guest]

I never understood software nostalgia.

[waxhead]

Do you mind sharing some info on the programs you've been able to run? My understanding was that nothing but a few extremely simple programs would run. If it can run business software, it's probably worth a second look.

No at all , but it would not be very interesting. The programs I have been using on ReactOS is DoubleCommander, Notepad++, CodeBlocks, DOSBox and SummatraPDF plus a selection of my own programs. Most of these programs (except mine of course) are in the ReactOS application manager and is just a few clicks away.

I mostly use ReactOS for "toying around", but I have also been able to run work related things at home even if I don't have Windows. So in that respect ReactOS have for me worked as a free replacement of Windows just fine and saved me the hassle of driving to work a few nights.

[PluMGMK]

Can't it run the Steam client? Or do the newer versions not work anymore?

[wirelesslayers]

I dream of a day when ROS will be fully "qemu friendly".

By "qemu friendly" I mean:
virtio sto
virtio net
virtio balloon
virtio serial.

At ROS 0.4.8 I am able to start qemu using "-vga qxl" and "-spice port=[..]" and I can install spice-guest-tools without problems.

ROS detects and uses the "redhat qxl VGA" but the "spice vdagent" does not start due to "can't find graphics card" error.

Using "-usb -usbdevice tablet" I am able to map the mouse using "spice html5" + websockify in a browser (chrome or ff).

But the "auto resize" function from spice + qxl vga does not work b/c the vdagent is not started.

Few releases ago I could not install spice-guest-tools.

There's so much potential for small web-html5 ROS VMs.

For those who want to test 0.4.8 using qemu + spice (starter script below) :
1 - create a qemu raw disk for your ROS
2 - install ROS using my start_ROS.txt (change do shell or run at cmd directly) pointing to ROS iso
3 - download/apt/yum virt-viewer and use remote-viewer to connect using spice protocol
4 - install FF inside ROS and download spice-guest-tools
5 - git clone https://github.com/eyeos/spice-web-client.git (and use it with apache or nginx)
6 - download/apt/yum websockify
7 - start websockify like: websockify -v your_host_ip:5959 your_host_ip:5902 (where 5959 is the ws port and 5902 is the spice port from qemu)
8 - accesss your webserver (clonned from github) using index.html?host=your_host_ip&port=5959
9 - enjoy ROS using spice-html5
10 - my qemu script:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p /var/run/qemu-server

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm \
-monitor unix:/var/run/qemu-server/reactos.monitor,server,nowait \
-chardev socket,id=qmp,path=/var/run/qemu-server/reactos.qmp,server,nowait \
-mon chardev=qmp,mode=control \
-pidfile /var/run/qemu-server/reactos.pid \
-daemonize \
-smbios type=1,uuid=5C4606FA-192F-453A-B299-7B088C63BB9B \
-name reactos \
-serial none \
-parallel none \
-smp 1,sockets=1,cores=1,maxcpus=1,threads=1 \
-nodefaults \
-nodefconfig \
-no-user-config \
-boot d \
-vga qxl \
-no-hpet \
-cpu host \
-m 512 \
-object memory-backend-ram,id=ram-node0,size=512M \
-numa node,nodeid=0,cpus=0,memdev=ram-node0 \
-machine pc,accel=kvm,kernel_irqchip=on,mem-merge=off \
-k en-us \
-spice port=5902,addr=192.168.1.11,disable-ticketing,image-compression=lz,streaming-video=off,playback-compression=off,jpeg-wan-compression=always,zlib-glz-wan-compression=always \
-device pci-bridge,id=pci.2,chassis_nr=2,bus=pci.0,addr=0x1f \
-device pci-bridge,id=pci.1,chassis_nr=1,bus=pci.0,addr=0x1e \
-device virtio-serial,id=spice,bus=pci.0,addr=0x9 \
-chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent \
-usb -usbdevice tablet \
-device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spi ce.0 \
-device virtio-balloon-pci,id=balloon0,bus=pci.0,addr=0x4 \
-cdrom react-0.4.8.iso \
-hda ReactOS.img \
-net nic,model=ne2k_pci \
-net user \
-rtc driftfix=none,clock=host,base=localtime \
-serial file:"/tmp/roslog.txt" \
-global kvm-pit.lost_tick_policy=discard

exit 0

#-smbios cant be obtained using dmidecode
#change -spice port=5902,addr=your_host_ip and you can connect using virt-viewer's remote-viewer spice connector spice://your_host_ip:5902
#-serial file is for debug mode logging.

[azdaha]

Microsoft's next acquisition, as they focus on Linux-like development

[DMJC]

I never understood software nostalgia.

Sometimes the older version of a piece of software is just better. Example: Caligari TrueSpace 6.6 vs 7.x in 7.x series they did a Windows XP to Vista shark jump of the UI. They took something that was very usable and made it completely garbage. Crucially they never did a 64-bit rewrite or introduce major architectural improvements before Microsoft bought them out and canned development. So there is very little justification for changing so much (not to mention that the 7.x version doesn't run in WINE or on ReactOS so it's useless in multiple ways.) The older versions had incrementally improved the UI so anyone working with versions upto 6.6 was comfortable with what they were doing. ReactOS actually runs TrueSpace 6.6 really well. All the tools run, rendering works. It's a great tool for getting 3d modelling/animation work done quickly.

[grok]

I dream of a day when ROS will be fully "qemu friendly".

By "qemu friendly" I mean:

My dream is a software simulated GPU with a driver for ReactOS (or old versions of Windows). It would work no matter the hosting hardware/software and just running games circa 2001 in 640x480 would be fantastic for me.
Um perhaps someone can even port llvm-pipe to ReactOS and then there wouldn't even a need for the hypervisor/qemu/Virtualbox etc. to support a simulated GPU, on its own this would only give OpenGL and indirectly Glide but that's something already and would allow to play games I miss!. D3D to OpenGL wrapper would be doable (?) given it's part of Wine which ReactOS is already built on. But I'm trying not to ask too much from people I don't know who work for free for me and us all.

[DrYak]

ReactOS had great potential... around 15 years ago. Since then, everyone moved on. Too bad.

Wine didn't move on. Actually ReactOS and Wine project collaborate on the user-space component that reimplement the API needed by software targetting Windows APIs. The NT-like kernel re-implementation is what sets them apart.
So no, a sizeable chunk of ReactOS' effort are relevant today even if you never use it and only run Wine / CrossOver for your legacy software needs.