Taking ReactOS 0.4 RC1 For A Test Drive To Experience Open-Source Windows Compatibility

[GreatEmerald]

Why couldn't you do that in Linux? Surely you'd have the proper drivers for that printer. Also, USB to parallel converters are dirt cheap.

I doubt that, plus it needs Windows labelling software. Which may run in Wine, but as far as I know Wine doesn't allow direct USB access.

[schmidtbag]

I doubt that, plus it needs Windows labelling software. Which may run in Wine, but as far as I know Wine doesn't allow direct USB access.

I'm not sure what type of label it is, but you'd be surprised. I have a label printer (a Seiko SLP100) that can actually run from a serial port; there are no official CUPS drivers but I can still use it (via CUPS) by grabbing the original PPD file.

Using LibreOffice, I managed to create a template that fit the labels perfectly, and now I can use the label printer without any special software at all.

[Michael_S]

Spoken like true buffoons.

ReactOS developers are (or at least have done so in the past) contributing to the wine codebase.
It's not useless nor does it even seek to supplant wine.

Be reasonable. 70% of the internet is pornography, and 29% is misinformation and trolling. If we took all of that away, we'd have nothing left to do.

More seriously, I don't understand why anyone dumps on any free software project. Don't like ReactOS? Don't use it. It still think the project has enormous potential - even if it may never be realized.

[profoundWHALE]

Solitaire was working fine.

Perfect! That's all that my Uncle needs!

[GreatEmerald]

I'm not sure what type of label it is, but you'd be surprised. I have a label printer (a Seiko SLP100) that can actually run from a serial port; there are no official CUPS drivers but I can still use it (via CUPS) by grabbing the original PPD file.

Using LibreOffice, I managed to create a template that fit the labels perfectly, and now I can use the label printer without any special software at all.

Interesting. I might play around with that if I have time. I see that nouveau supports its graphics card (GeForce 2 MX) still.

[sarmad]

I don't see the point behind this effort, because the original Windows will always be ahead and ReactOS will never be able to catch up. It's not like Linux where every company is contributing to the same upstream open source repos.

[stiiixy]

I do believe they also petitioned the Russian government for support as an officially recognised Non-US project which has been a bit of an issue for the Rusky's due to all the tracking going on. W10 is a scarey beast purely for that reason, amonsgt all the other web-tracking etc. ReactOS has numerous and valid use cases, especially in light of the privacy issues, and hopefully they do get good support for modern applications (albeit newer versions of Office etc might have built-in blockers to try prevent this) as the very low level stuff becomes stable. I believe they just fixed up their NTVDM as well so even more DOS apps can run. I still remember one of the best ever point of sale applications I used being DOS-based. A lot of the 'new' stuff is watered down crap with addons that cost compared to what used to be standard.

Anyway, I'm in the 'excited' camp for this project. It's not a small task to build an entire OS, and they have done it.

[profoundWHALE]

Most companies that I have seen have some sort of Windows XP timeclock software which doesn't need to be running a modern OS with modern hardware. ReactOS would be good for companies in that respect.

[boxie]

I don't see the point behind this effort, because the original Windows will always be ahead and ReactOS will never be able to catch up. It's not like Linux where every company is contributing to the same upstream open source repos.

Mainly because most software still needs to support older Windows versions, so will use a "lowest common denominator" approach to windows APIs. I hope they are also taking care of the security side of things too in ReactOS - it could be a viable replacement for WinXP (for those that still want to use it)

[smitty3268]

I don't see the point behind this effort, because the original Windows will always be ahead and ReactOS will never be able to catch up. It's not like Linux where every company is contributing to the same upstream open source repos.

No one expects ReactOS to "catch up" and replace Windows 10.

The point is to get something which can replace Windows XP and let people play around with the source code in a non-unixy OS.

You'd be surprised how many old systems are out there still running old windows systems - they don't get upgraded because they have special hardware or software which only supported that old version of windows, and nobody wants to spend the millions of dollars it would take to upgrade those terminals with new hardware/software. So they just sit there. Why not target that market and see if you can come up with something better?