Major ReactOS Release: Themes, Shell, ACPI, WiFi

[werfu]

In Windows there's core functionnality and there's fluffy eye candy. Once it get sufficient to most people needs, the user base will increase, bringing awareness to the project, thus more developpers and resources. Recreating an OS from scratch is far from easy, and these guys have all my respect for doing this.

[GreatEmerald]

In any event, ReactOS poses some real value: it allows a user's software (whether proprietary or not) to be Freed from an OS that may be problematic in the future. e.g., Windows XP lifetime is about up and will no longer receive security updates, yet some Windows XP software does not run on Windows Vista or later. Likewise, some of this software may be dependent on hardware that has XP drivers but not Linux drivers.

There's value in all software being Free. Maybe not always on the date of release, or not even until a decade or more has passed, but at some point that old software is no longer supported, maintained, or sold by its original publisher, and Free versions allow continued maintenance and study long past those "artificial" deadlines.

Indeed. ReactOS is essentially the FreeDOS equivalent of early Windows implementations.

[kraftman]

Product activation and DRM :-P

But thanks to this there's STEAM available for Windows users.

[RealNC]

I can't name a single feature Linux lacks compared to Windows.

Product activation and DRM :-P

[kraftman]

Yeah, turns out you can say that about pretty much every desktop OS that isn't Windows.

I can't name a single feature Linux lacks compared to Windows. I hope applications and games aren't features you're talking about.

[onny]

you can support this project easily via their offical Flattr profile: https://flattr.com/profile/reactos

btw. I'm still missing a Flattr button on Phoronix

[schmidtbag]

i like comparing reactos to chemistry:
lets say windows is a really complicated molecule that can cure cancer (lets face it though, windows is in actuality a cancer) that uses hundreds of atoms. reactos wants to be like windows, but it has no idea what compounds are used, so they make it up.
reactos just happens to use some, but not all, of the same molecular structure as windows, so instead of curing cancer, it just slows down the growth. as the molecule gets built upon, it gets closer and closer to reversing cancer, but the chances of this molecule ever becoming exactly like windows is very slim. they could both have the same amount of atoms, but 1 uses carbon while the other uses silicon. this 1 atom difference could mean that one is actually more efficient than the other, but it could also be the difference between functional and not.

i believe reactos needs to take everything 1 step at a time. cover stuff like drivers and kernel functionality first, then get to working with applications. they could probably rely on the wine project to do most of the work for them. once reactos' driver "molecule" becomes identical (or close to it) to windows', that should mean any driver you install will work without failure. an open source OS having the ability to install ANY windows driver is a powerful thing.

[XorEaxEax]

I think I remember finding something sometime about trying to make ReactOS self-hosting using the openWatcom compiler. Apparently they have focused on the MSVC instead (which could be problematic since it is closed source).

Anyone heard anything else about Watcom and ReactOS?

Can't recall that I have, either way it builds with both GCC and MSVC (previously it only built with GCC).

[staalmannen]

Watcom?

I think I remember finding something sometime about trying to make ReactOS self-hosting using the openWatcom compiler. Apparently they have focused on the MSVC instead (which could be problematic since it is closed source).

Anyone heard anything else about Watcom and ReactOS?

[mrugiero]

In regards to program compability: With Microsoft moving towards Metro/Web programs perhaps soon Win32 and will no longer be a moving target (or at least will slow down) and the ReactOS project will have a much easier time playing catch up. Just look at Haiku, with R1 they basically recreated the last BeOS release under an open license!

How far is the project coming along in respect to compability with Windows' drivers?

I can't tell in general, but in my case (with a K8M800) there was only one driver I couldn't install (I unpacked it manually, but currently there is a regression in trunk which doesn't allow me to complete the boot sequence anymore; I'll test a little more this weekend), the IGP's one. Network, audio and something else I already forgot worked nicely. USB, though, is not supported in trunk yet, and VIA's and intel's implementation is not supported in the branch either yet.