ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Making Progress On x86_64, Multi-Monitor

[tildearrow]

Hardware keys are being replaced with online licenses. Costs many times less, problems with customers solved faster and gives "free" telemetry.

Also makes it impossible to run the software if the developer decides to shut the license servers down.

[cb88]

"Useless"? People still run DOS today on embedded industrial applications. NT 5.2 is a Workstation grade OS and I'd be happy with an FLOSS Windows ME, an underrated version of windows, the last hurrah for DOS based Windows, the last time you could activate windows Off-Grid and was designed to be useful without internet. Windows XP was mostly like that, but you needed online/phone activation, but everything changed between Windows 7 and Windows 8. Everything, even software you bought on disc started to assume an internet connection to a server that wouldn't be running forever. Windows XP could also allow the user to install kernel level rootkits if they so wanted, now I don't like the driver level anti-cheat rootkit. But, if you could control the rootkit you could have a really good software level firewall. It opens security holes, but it opens potential for the user to have more control.


If there's ever a ReactOS 1.0 that's fully NT 5.x compatible, I think new software will be compiled targeting it and some people might switch even in 15 years. Even now, I recently performed a thought experiment of extending pre-Win95 DOS hardware with application specific accelerator cards. Like using a PCI add-in that decodes h265 video and uses the computer as like a jukebox controller and have the NIC have support cryptography. You could still do modern things on a Pentium pre-MMX. If you can do that to DOS, imagine what you can do to XP.

No they don't. Sure there are 30 year old machines out there running DOS... but you'd have to a bricks for brains to run DOS of all things on a new installation. Most new stuff is running some form of embedded Linux. Or something Like VxWorks, or a proprietary kernel. Or in the case of some industrial hardware no OS at all... just an infinite event loop.

[commodore256]

So you can have a useless OS and run nothing on it? Ya, that makes a lot of sense.

"Useless"? People still run DOS today on embedded industrial applications. NT 5.2 is a Workstation grade OS and I'd be happy with an FLOSS Windows ME, an underrated version of windows, the last hurrah for DOS based Windows, the last time you could activate windows Off-Grid and was designed to be useful without internet. Windows XP was mostly like that, but you needed online/phone activation, but everything changed between Windows 7 and Windows 8. Everything, even software you bought on disc started to assume an internet connection to a server that wouldn't be running forever. Windows XP could also allow the user to install kernel level rootkits if they so wanted, now I don't like the driver level anti-cheat rootkit. But, if you could control the rootkit you could have a really good software level firewall. It opens security holes, but it opens potential for the user to have more control.


If there's ever a ReactOS 1.0 that's fully NT 5.x compatible, I think new software will be compiled targeting it and some people might switch even in 15 years. Even now, I recently performed a thought experiment of extending pre-Win95 DOS hardware with application specific accelerator cards. Like using a PCI add-in that decodes h265 video and uses the computer as like a jukebox controller and have the NIC have support cryptography. You could still do modern things on a Pentium pre-MMX. If you can do that to DOS, imagine what you can do to XP.

[Ladis]

You’ve spelled rootkit wrong.

Yes, rootkits are forbidden in recent versions of Windows. The software makers had to create patches to support new Windows.

[Ladis]

For example you cannot run various security providers which rely on hardware keys with wine.

Hardware keys are being replaced with online licenses. Costs many times less, problems with customers solved faster and gives "free" telemetry.

[brad0]

I would prefer to get FLOSS Windows XP compatible OS in 15 years than not get it at all.

So you can have a useless OS and run nothing on it? Ya, that makes a lot of sense.

[holunder]

...until you run into the anti-cheat software issue (some of them require access to very low-level routines which may involve kernel drivers...).

You’ve spelled rootkit wrong.

[tildearrow]

Awesome, perhaps in 15 years we finally have complete feature party with Windows XP!...
Its a fun pet project of course, but its so insanely far behind the Windows 2000/XP kernel it was built around its going to be unusable for pretty much everything.
Wine on Linux is the logical choice here to run Windows applications open source, because you actually have reliable drivers for it on modern systems.

...until you run into the anti-cheat software issue (some of them require access to very low-level routines which may involve kernel drivers...).

[dragon321]

Awesome, perhaps in 15 years we finally have complete feature party with Windows XP!...

I would prefer to get FLOSS Windows XP compatible OS in 15 years than not get it at all.

[blacknova]

Awesome, perhaps in 15 years we finally have complete feature party with Windows XP!...
Its a fun pet project of course, but its so insanely far behind the Windows 2000/XP kernel it was built around its going to be unusable for pretty much everything.
Wine on Linux is the logical choice here to run Windows applications open source, because you actually have reliable drivers for it on modern systems.

Unless wine begin to support various Windows drivers, it would be mostly useless for a lot of workloads. Playing games and running office is not the only thing people need from Windows.
For example you cannot run various security providers which rely on hardware keys with wine.