"Open-Source Windows" ReactOS To See Improved GUI Setup/Installation

[coder]

The Russians I know personally will tell you this is complete bullshit.

I guess they're all on a drip-feed of Russian state-sponsored media, then. Try asking them where they get all their news and information and then go away and check for yourself if any narrative that's not pro-Kremlin even has a possibility of reaching their eyes or ears.

Anyone who claims to be a "dissident" fearing for his or her life in their country is damn near always a shady person who ran afoul of the law in the first place. How many Chinese "dissidents" have we seen popping up in the US to rag on China, only to later be arrested by US police for felonies or fraud that they were already being prosecuted in China for?

No doubt there are criminals who try to abuse the political asylum system, but that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate dissidents. Not sure why you're broadening it out to China, but I'm not going to follow you on that tangent. Not that I couldn't, but we're already on one tangent.

[mos87]

What is the usefulness/effort ratio of this?

[vtorri]

Just let go of this time and money sink project, it's utterly useless, sorry. Linux + Wine will work way better, really, there's just no point in devoting any resources to ReactOS at this point.

actually, wine, mingw-w64 ReactOS and cygwin devs are interacting together. see https://www.mingw-w64.org/#friend-projects . So not useless, imho

[Quackdoc]

What is the usefulness/effort ratio of this?

at the very least, one of the warehouses I was working with at point wanted to look into reactOS after I brought it up, ultimately they never went through with it since it's not in a production ready state, however the interest is most certainly there for industrial applications

[SViN]

People call this a moneysink project or never going anywhere. And that is largely too. Its not just money that is needed to fund development but also large contributions from companies that need a Windows clone for whatever reason.
Unless Microsoft ever decides to actually kill legacy support on Windows(which they will never do) there will be no reason for the industry to focus any effort on making ReactOS usable for at least that.

[Retramon]

I wanted ReactOS to be a practical alternative to Windows, but I've been disheartened by how far behind it has been.

Improvements could have been done in so many ways which would fix a lot of mistakes, weird behaviors and shortcomings that core Windows users have been experiencing and asking for many many years, including ofcourse things that make people leave and use other OSes. Many linux people have valid against some things Windows does, but Windows was historically infact very customizable, tweakable, configurable and in no way a pro users would use default Microsoft settings which is what a large amount of linux users base their opinions of Windows on, it's a pity that there is this misunderstanding and a disconnect between the two advanced user communities.

Ofcourse this doesn't mean one OS has to replace another, fundamental differences the way OS behaves, the way things are configured, managed, looks, designs, GUIs, should be worked on their own direction and peaceful coexistance should be the goal, and then later this is where subjective tastes would come to play, these different directions and fundamental differences would have their own set of pros and cons and some people would like one over the other without being hostile to another. I myself use many different OSes and when I use linux, I put my own mind into linux-mode and I do not try to force Windows-type ways of doing things into linux and try to look at it with a netural viewpoint of how would I fix something in linux the linux-way of doing it, which would make sense for that OS.

I come from the Windows realm, in my personal opinion I am used to some of the things Windows does and for me it "makes sense" that way, and I find some things in linux either completely missing or inoptimal, like the way some thing's can't be configured or set or take a very high amount of customization into the depths of the subsystems, as they're not exposed to the GUI or other common settings. I forgot the exact examples right now so I'm a bit generalizing. One of the biggest things with linux is also it's complicated compartmentalization which isn't explained in some grand encyclopedia of the way different distros are hooked up together, while this isn't the strict normal users field, it's still important for advanced newcomers who come from other OSes, how much of that is the distros's own project to blame and how much is the users "failure to learn" I wouldn't want to speculate or weight right now, it's more complicated.

More recently, I've been a little worried about the Russia connection. Wikipedia claims it's received no support by the Russian government up to 2019. What about since then?

Well, they will start looking into other things naturally, but with opensource, it really should be just about the code, because it doesn't make sense to chase every possible misuse or inoptimal use, because all of these FOSS projects can be duplicated, copied, improved on covertly by whoever and are by different countries and their organizations without any kind of notice or knowledge to anyone else, for their private use which may or may not be hostile, who the heck knows, it's all going into very legal waters which can be complicated.

Are we going to stop using Vulkan-API because space aliens might have included it in their spaceship graphics projector or something, we would only limit ourselfs and they can copy (what actions would amount to stealing?) and improve it on their own, for example.

This is a double edge sword, or rather it's just laws of physics and reality, military and hostile actions use some if not many of the same tools and resources from the civilian world, because civilian and military distinction is an artificial thing where there is a lot of crossover, military men are also flesh and blood who eat the same food that civilians eat, it's very hard to put a fine line bewteen this. There's a lot of "this-depends-on-that-and-feeds-into-this", a long chain that the longer you stretch it the less direct of a support can be attributed to it, it's way too complicated for me to decide here, this is the job for civilizational-international negotiations where a lot of factors are weigthed, philosophy, and everything else.

[mos87]

The Russians I know personally will tell you this is complete bullshit.

Could you please elaborate as to what exactly?

Anyone who claims to be a "dissident" fearing for his or her life in their country is damn near always a shady person who ran afoul of the law in the first place.

LMAO.
Thank god Putin and his cronies aint claiming to be dissidents... or people could think they're are shady persons that ran afoul of the law. Tut-tut.

[mos87]

at the very least, one of the warehouses I was working with at point wanted to look into reactOS after I brought it up, ultimately they never went through with it since it's not in a production ready state

That's not overly encouraging then is it?
Yet this project is funded as AFAIU.

however the interest is most certainly there for industrial applications

Let's sSuppose so. But interest to it as what? As a replacement for an aging Windoze installation base needed to run some non-portable software? Or?..

[Quackdoc]

That's not overly encouraging then is it?
Yet this project is funded as AFAIU.

It depends, the fact that we were able to try it at all shows good promise, I reccomend following the reactOS twitter since for a long time, they were posting improvements quite often and even showcases some apps that worked on a near daily basis for a month or two https://nitter.net/reactos

Let's sSuppose so. But interest to it as what? As a replacement for an aging Windoze installation base needed to run some non-portable software? Or?..

correct as a replacement to windows, in the real world there are often times where it's not as simple as "just upgrade" they need a drop in replacement with minimal downtime, reactOS is the closest to providing this for them when it becomes stable enough. so they are indeed waiting patiently for it

People call this a moneysink project or never going anywhere. And that is largely too. Its not just money that is needed to fund development but also large contributions from companies that need a Windows clone for whatever reason.
Unless Microsoft ever decides to actually kill legacy support on Windows(which they will never do) there will be no reason for the industry to focus any effort on making ReactOS usable for at least that.

and yet people are still running windows XP and windows ME machines in actual use

[SViN]

and yet people are still running windows XP and windows ME machines in actual use

Those companies are still using XP and ME because they simply do not want to bother pay anyone. They have no interest in either paying for migration or paying for development of reactOS.