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

[Old Grouch]

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.

I wish I had your insight into other people's motivations. It's hard enough understanding my own.

It is certainly valid to ask what the use-case for ReactOS might be, apart from being one, or several people's pet hobby.

Legitimate copies of older versions of Microsoft Windows, even if unsupported, are getting increasingly difficult to come by. One possible benefit of ReactOS is a path forward for running old Windows applications on a legal platform.

ReactOS is not ready to be used 'in anger', but it might get there and provide an option for people who, for one reason or another, would like to run something that is 'bug compatible' with older versions of Windows. Given ReactOS is still being developed, it might do <whatever> even better than the Windows it is replacing.

I can only guess. A lot of people are interested in ReactOS, for one reason or another, and that in itself is a good enough reason for it to exist. Its existence might even be beneficial.

If you don't like it, you can ignore it, and go and scratch your own itches.

[Jabberwocky]

ReactOS is a valuable project. It's like FreeDOS for Windows. Just because you might not have a use case for it doesn't mean others don't. I could install MSDOS 6.22 from pirate websites, or I can download and use FreeDOS. Which I currently use to run Wing Commander 1/2/Privateer on a MiSTer FPGA console. I've been trialing ReactOS in a VM using BTRFS as the filesystem. It works well but is not yet ready for widespread use and that's ok. WINE will never run some Windows software, for example it doesn't load ThrustMaster joystick USB drivers so the ThrustMaster T.A.R.G.E.T software won't work in WINE. This is just one example, there are thousands more. ReactOS fixes this by allowing you to load Windows native drivers. It's also providing a non-tracked Windows NT environment which is becoming more critical every year. Windows is on a path to spying/control hell. Any tool that helps people get off of it is a good thing. In most open source projects 80% of the contributors are minor contributors and 20% of the contributors are doing most of the code merges. It wouldn't shock me if ReactOS only has 2-3 core programmers and the rest are small contributors that don't merge into upstream very often.

I found https://86box.net/ to be better in 99% of my retro workloads. I didn't test any joysticks though.

I still like the idea of ReactOS but at it's current pace it's going to take multiple decades to become useful to me. I am concerned about Windows tracking but I think it will be easier to reverse engineer windows prevent tracking than relying on ReactOS. There are people on public forums that have posted guides to remove tracking from Windows 10 and 11. It's very annoying but it can be done.

[betam4x]

Great to see some ReactOS news, I would have contributed to the project my self if I had more time and programming expertise, and if I had the budget I'd donate even more or hire some others to do some good practical help. It's really a pity that there isn't more enthusiasm around such a project, probably because a lot of opensource developers are non-windows oriented and a lot of the time these also have wrong perceptions of Windows and the depths and capabilities of it because they were never serious users.

On Windows side, the users can be just as advanced and experienced and doesn't mean they only use Windows and that Windows pro-users were a lot of the time just as upset with Microsoft as everyone else, for literally doing nothing to improve windows for any kind of serious uses when it comes to file management, sys admin, developer and creator, os management and maintenance, most of the improvements are superficial for the masses and not really important to the most important users in the ecosystem. Took ages to get a GUI for environmental variables.

Windows is only as great because of the amazing work by some key third party applications and solutions, which are just miles ahead in every way of anything on linux in many fields, even the ones that are free. Sure there are some special programs which just happen to exist only on linux and they do the job fine for the main purpose they're built. Responsible 3rd-party application creators stick to a great standard on Windows of menus, locations, buttons, and it's all made for serious and workstation type users, without Microsoft having to mandate/check/approve/verify anything, it's just great, and when you get a program, you get a well done and fully fledged program that while mainly comes with a GUI per default, offers command line control or fine tuning of settings,

Microsoft was never interested in supporthing this great 3rd party ecosystem, they do pretty much the opposite, stifling and interrupting it, making Windows harder to adjust, tweak, configure, customize and work with, requiring more and more deeper and time consuming tweaking and modding to make things work the way workstation users want, to a point that ofcourse with Windows 11 many things aren't possible anymore.

I used to be a contributor in the early days, but ended up quitting due to lack of time and income. Sometimes I want to get back into it.

[mrg666]

Linux can run Windows applications. Linux can also do SMB, NTFS. Linux GUI can look like Windows too, Is ReactOS trying to achieve these?

[DMJC]

ReactOS is a valuable project. It's like FreeDOS for Windows. Just because you might not have a use case for it doesn't mean others don't. I could install MSDOS 6.22 from pirate websites, or I can download and use FreeDOS. Which I currently use to run Wing Commander 1/2/Privateer on a MiSTer FPGA console. I've been trialing ReactOS in a VM using BTRFS as the filesystem. It works well but is not yet ready for widespread use and that's ok. WINE will never run some Windows software, for example it doesn't load ThrustMaster joystick USB drivers so the ThrustMaster T.A.R.G.E.T software won't work in WINE. This is just one example, there are thousands more. ReactOS fixes this by allowing you to load Windows native drivers. It's also providing a non-tracked Windows NT environment which is becoming more critical every year. Windows is on a path to spying/control hell. Any tool that helps people get off of it is a good thing. In most open source projects 80% of the contributors are minor contributors and 20% of the contributors are doing most of the code merges. It wouldn't shock me if ReactOS only has 2-3 core programmers and the rest are small contributors that don't merge into upstream very often.

[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.

[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

[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?..

[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.

[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.