ReactOS 0.4.0 Released For Open-Source Windows Experience

[SystemCrasher]

Maybe Minix or Hurd, but any BSD is way more functional OS than Reactos or Minix or Hurd.

I'm not a big fan of "hardware support" in BSDs and many BSD devs are using something else as their main desktop OS (just checked freebsd maillist x-mailer strings and GPG versions, they aren't BSDish half of time). But I have to admit you have a point: comparing BSDs to ReactOS is kinda rude. At least, I'm yet to see even a single ReactOS dev using their OS to develop it or doing something practical/daily activity/etc. Basically, it is the very same like 17 years back into past. Unstable crashey OS, crude GUI, no drivers.

[TiberiusDuval]

Reactos to Windows is what Minix/Hurd/BSDs to Linux. .

Maybe Minix or Hurd, but any BSD is way more functional OS than Reactos or Minix or Hurd.

[SystemCrasher]

Reactos to Windows is what Minix/Hurd/BSDs to Linux. Yet another strange project which never managed to take off. It has been like 17 years in development, yet no Reactos devs are using their crap. Not even to develop operating system itself. So it may or may not boot on particular hardware. Most often it does not. One who pays attention to details could notice pattern: Reactos showcases are coming from VMs. Because it not to be taken as granted reactos would manage to boot on your particular hardware.

As far as I managed to learn about 'em, reactos devs are using Windows and MSVS for development, even 17 years later. Needless to say, they do not give a fuck how it performs. Furthermore, reactos pipe dream is that they have to write os kernel and reuse existing windows drivers. Ironically, windows proven to be moving target, driver vendors do not give a fuck about reactos, they are not allowed to redistribute copyrighted blobs in install/live images, etc.

So, at the end of day, result is: 17 years later and counting, most windows drivers are still failing to work in reactos and nobody bothered to write own opensource drivers either. So you get crippled/bugged windows clone, far worse than Win95 betas and virtually unusable for anything but lame showcases in VMs and pointless bragging.

[starshipeleven]

It's clear that you cannot support every device on Earth and I'm not complaining about the fact Linux dropped support for devices no one have.
What I'm talking about is that I still need some OS to run that unsupported hardware that I have.

Well, if you only need something that can just "run" the hardware for its own sake, that's fine.

If you want to actually do something more than look at it booting and shutting down, ReactOS remains a worse choice than just swapping GPU and keep using linux.

Also, what's "still work perfectly fine"?

AFAIK full support for nvidia and ATI (not worse than back then anyway), not that you can do anything with their 3D anyway due to ancient, crappy, non-standard or nonexistant OpenGL 3D hardware not supporting modern 3D programs anyway.

What they will still do perfectly fine is 2D acceleration. That is, running a desktop with applications that aren't 3D games or cad or some of the modern GUIs that need 3D to do cool effects.

Proper support for 3d acceleration on XGI volari? I don't have this card but I would be grossly surprised if there is any.

I was talking of 2D support inside those ().
Just like VIA Unichrome, the XGI volari have 2D acceleration on linux. They theoretically have 3D capability, but none is giving a damn about that nowadays since they are obsolete and their 3D hardware does not have anything to offer.

2D acceleration is all you really need from so old cards. I don't understand why you keep talking of 3D. If you wanted to retrogame you'd have kept the PCs on ancient Windows OSs, on linux they only need 2D acceleration to be ok.


While these cards work fine for the most likely usage of such old PCs (office, web browsing), the driver for matrox cards was dropped alltogether or is broken because it cannot use the newer kernel interface all other drivers are using. Matrox cards don't have 2D acceleration currently, they fallback to VESA, that is, CPU must do the 2D work that was offloaded to the GPU.


Which is why I said, it's a very particular case, and you can solve it easily changing the GPU with another old one that still has support.

[onokun]

It's clear that you cannot support every device on Earth and I'm not complaining about the fact Linux dropped support for devices no one have.
What I'm talking about is that I still need some OS to run that unsupported hardware that I have.

Also, what's "still work perfectly fine"? Proper support for 3d acceleration on XGI volari? I don't have this card but I would be grossly surprised if there is any.

[starshipeleven]

Now, since you can't get 3d acceleration on hardware older than 5-6 years on linux, I'm looking for an alternative os to run my p3-p4 era boxes and react os looks like a good choice.
Working drivers for Matrox g400? Yes, please.

Ummm... g400 hardware was released in 1999. That's like 17 years old hardware, not 6.

Afaik the drivers for Matrox were dropped when the kernel dropped support for a legacy interface or something, after a lng while that none was feeling like adding/fixing the new driver interface for a card line that was beyond obsolete anyway.

5+yo nvidia or ATI cards (or even unichrome in 2D-only for that matter, hell, even XGI volari) still work perfectly fine afaik.
I'm pretty sure you can find a random ancient ATI card for a couple bucks in a electronics far or something. I always see swarms of old AGP cards and quite a few PCI ones when I go at fairs.

[onokun]

Now, since you can't get 3d acceleration on hardware older than 5-6 years on linux, I'm looking for an alternative os to run my p3-p4 era boxes and react os looks like a good choice.
Working drivers for Matrox g400? Yes, please.

[starshipeleven]

As hardware and Windows evolve faster than they can achieve work this project will never end... unless a miraculous amount of money found it.

In Soviet Russia money finds you. (also for real, they are sponsored by russkies now.

[starshipeleven]

Considering that it is basically reverse-engineering, that's great.

Anyone that compares this to the advance rate of Linux or even of Windows is a moron. Reverse-engineering is orders of magnitude more PITA than just coming up with something from scratch like other OS do, or even change stuff every kernel release if it seems better for performance to do so (like linux).

On the other hand, if you compare it with OSX..... (yeah, kidding a bit. But a bit of truth too)

Wait until 2028. That's when they'll have full HDMI support.

fixed.

ReactOS was a very interesting and promising project... about 10 years ago.

SATA support as a new feature in 2016 is beyond pathetic. Seriously, *all* our company computers are running on M.2/NVMe. Same goes for my home PC. By 2020 they *might* get full XP win32 compatibility, but don't hold your breath lol.

It is interesting since there are barely any similar projects. But like many hobbyist projects, it may not particularly useful and it doesn't necessarily have to be.