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

[zexelon]

Random question, can it load any semi-modern video driver yet for a GPU from AMD or Nvidia?

[user1]

Random question, can it load any semi-modern video driver yet for a GPU from AMD or Nvidia?

Highly unlikely, since it's closer replicating NT 5.0 (up to Windows XP).
Even if you manage to run it on bare metal on more than a decade old hardware, good luck not running into crashes, freezes, etc.

[user1]

But seriously, with its current state and pace of development, I fail to understand who is ReactOS for. It looks like nothing but a hobby project by the developers for themselves. And it's not that I dislike small hobby operating systems or something. I think os like Haiku or others are pretty cool. But this? I just don't get the point of replicating an old version of Windows that barely can even run on bare metal of old hardware.

[kpedersen]

But seriously, with its current state and pace of development, I fail to understand who is ReactOS for. It looks like nothing but a hobby project by the developers for themselves.

Same was said about Linux many years ago.

Linux himself said:

“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. [...]”

As for the shell improvements, I am a little disappointed they are trying to make it look like Windows 10. Trying to chase these gimmicks will just waste time. However if they are enjoying theming it, then I suppose this is another thing entirely. Let them have their fun if that's what they're into

[user1]

Same was said about Linux many years ago.

Linux himself said:

See my edited comment, I think you replied before I finished it

[billyswong]

As for the shell improvements, I am a little disappointed they are trying to make it look like Windows 10. Trying to chase these gimmicks will just waste time. However if they are enjoying theming it, then I suppose this is another thing entirely. Let them have their fun if that's what they're into

The screenshot is likely an XP-format theme painted with Win10 style color. It has nothing to do with what the "shell improvement" they are writing about.

[sheldonl]

Same was said about Linux many years ago.

Linux himself said:



As for the shell improvements, I am a little disappointed they are trying to make it look like Windows 10. Trying to chase these gimmicks will just waste time. However if they are enjoying theming it, then I suppose this is another thing entirely. Let them have their fun if that's what they're into

You're comparing apples and oranges. ReactOS has been in the works for literally decades (first released in 1998.) When Linux was released it was big within about 5-6 years and there was actually a unique need and use for it. There were no open source operating systems at that time.

[billyswong]

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

Because "releases/0.4.14 branch was forked from master on 2020-04-24", which means this version of ReactOS has entered bug fix mode since >1.5 years ago, then stuck by too many regressions.

[Charlie68]

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?

...real! This story of the ram used by the system makes sense only for some particular purposes of the OS or on a PC whose place would be an ecological landfill. Nobody or hardly cares ... most people care about having everything they need, ready to use. Today a pc should have at least 4Gb of ram, so the use of ram at startup has become obsolete.

[F.Ultra]

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.

You can run systemd on low memory systems as well: https://elinux.org/images/6/69/Demystifying_Systemd.pdf

https://github.com/solettaproject/soletta