ReactOS 0.4.14 "Open-Source Windows" OS Brings Many Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ReactOS 0.4.14 "Open-Source Windows" OS Brings Many Improvements

ReactOS as the "open-source Windows" operating system developed by the community with an aim for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows is out with a big update. The last release was ReactOS 0.4.13 all the way back in April 2020 while this week has been succeeded by the big ReactOS 0.4.14 update...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-0.4.14-Released

[kylew77]

92MB of RAM used at boot should be applauded. I've gotten lower than that on Linux before but only on Gentoo. Some of the BSDs will have a first start RAM usage lower than that too but once you enable the gui and stuff will sail past it. 92MB of RAM with a GUI is hard to do.

[monkeynut]

Looking forward to trying this on a old Pentium 4 I have lying around.

[V1tol]

Wine Staging 4.18 user mode DLLs

That's fresh

92MB of RAM used at boot should be applauded. I've gotten lower than that on Linux before but only on Gentoo. Some of the BSDs will have a first start RAM usage lower than that too but once you enable the gui and stuff will sail past it. 92MB of RAM with a GUI is hard to do.

I remember having 70MB on Windows XP not so long ago. Of course it was heavily stripped distro but fully functional.

[rene]

92MB of RAM used at boot should be applauded. I've gotten lower than that on Linux before but only on Gentoo. Some of the BSDs will have a first start RAM usage lower than that too but once you enable the gui and stuff will sail past it. 92MB of RAM with a GUI is hard to do.

32MB i486 w/ https://t2sde.org Linux: no problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYgCE0wFE4

[doragasu]

92MB of RAM used at boot should be applauded. I've gotten lower than that on Linux before but only on Gentoo. Some of the BSDs will have a first start RAM usage lower than that too but once you enable the gui and stuff will sail past it. 92MB of RAM with a GUI is hard to do.

It's easy having a lower than 32 MiB memory footprint on Linux if you use a sane init environment (like procd from OpenWrt, and absolutely not systemd), Busybox and do not use a GUI. I have installed OpenWrt on many routers that have that amount of RAM (or even less in the past).

If you go to the usual stuff (systemd, coreutils, window environment), you can reach that footprint if you choose wisely. I.e. I have about 110 MiB RAM used on boot on my destktop PC using i3-wm (and without using a login manager). Some time ago, on a Samsung ARM Chromeboot, I had an Arch install using about 90 MiB RAM with LXDE and even with a login manager (lightdm).

Anyway I think optimizing 10 MiB of RAM seems a waste of time if later you are planning on opening things like an Internet Browser that will easily make the memory usage go above 1 GiB in an instant. If talking about ReactOS, I think it should be better spending time on making the USB stack work properly for example.

[skeevy420]

32MB i486 w/ https://t2sde.org Linux: no problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYgCE0wFE4

You monster, drinking out of a regular coffee cup. I can't go back to a regular coffee cup after getting a 12oz yeti mug. Keeps a cup hot for hours. I haven't had to reheat a cup of coffee since I got it.

Not gonna lie, I cringed every time you'd move and saw that wire moving up and down that coffee cup and was thinking "use the Arctic Silver, not the Folgers".

[monkeynut]

It's easy having a lower than 32 MiB memory footprint on Linux if you use a sane init environment (like procd from OpenWrt, and absolutely not systemd), Busybox and do not use a GUI. I have installed OpenWrt on many routers that have that amount of RAM (or even less in the past).

If you go to the usual stuff (systemd, coreutils, window environment), you can reach that footprint if you choose wisely. I.e. I have about 110 MiB RAM used on boot on my destktop PC using i3-wm (and without using a login manager). Some time ago, on a Samsung ARM Chromeboot, I had an Arch install using about 90 MiB RAM with LXDE and even with a login manager (lightdm).

Anyway I think optimizing 10 MiB of RAM seems a waste of time if later you are planning on opening things like an Internet Browser that will easily make the memory usage go above 1 GiB in an instant. If talking about ReactOS, I think it should be better spending time on making the USB stack work properly for example.

Which is all well and good until the font guy doesn't know how to work on the USB stack and instead of getting one thing, you get nothing.

[Iridium]

Less than 100MBytes to boot is definitely impressive, compared to modern OSes, but I think it’s a photo of how incomplete it is when compared to a full Linux Mint system running. If we run the strip-down game, you could try AROS, or its Icaros distro, the AmigaOS open source cousin, and boot in less than 16MBytes, GUI included, but what for?

[rmfx]

Why is the key component (Wine) so old in ReactOS ?