ReactOS 0.3.14 Released

http://www.reactos.org/en/news_page_70.html

by jhack • 14 years ago

110 34 14 years ago

reactos.org

wildster• 14 years ago

To get were they are is an amazing achievement, but it still looks like Window 95.

sp3322• 14 years ago

Edit: that's in the FAQ https://www.reactos.org/en/about_userfaq.html#changegui

It's a Free, binary-compatible clone of WinNT. You can now run (old) Windows apps with no license fees paid to MS, and without any proprietary code on your system.

edit2: did I mention it's more secure by default than a normal desktop Windows install? WinNT has some pretty nice security mechanisms, if you use them right. As a trivial example, users aren't admins by default.

wvenable• 14 years ago

From the release notes: "ReactOS now has the infrastructure needed to theme the user interface and shell, allowing users to install and use something besides the classic Windows theme."

prg318• 14 years ago

Another thing noted on the homepage to keep in mind -- "Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.14 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is not recommended for everyday use." That being said, I gave it another shot in VirtualBox with the recommended guest settings (Windows NT 4) and I was pleasantly surprised of how smooth it felt. This project has come a long way.

iRobot• 14 years ago

The second they launch a stable version I can use to replace windows XP embedded will be a real milestone.

Lots of plant touchscreens and industrial computers run a stripped down version of windows NT 3.51, win2k or XP (XP embedded is just a stripped down XP) which dont need any bells and whistles, just a solid network connection and the ability to run the win32 api. I have over 30 of these panel pc's around various factories running touch screen apps in place of explorer.exe so the desktop is not important to me and the demand is expanding all the time.

Thanks for the time and effort lads, I'm downloading it now to give it a go :-)

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

Not sure why you need ReactOS if that's the only requirement. You should just put stripped-down Linux installs in their place and run WINE, on which almost all applications work perfectly well. ReactOS in fact is mostly a kernel project. The majority of their userland support comes from WINE. The difference is that they are trying to clone the kernel to provide the truest Windows-like experience (including driver compatibility).

If you don't need the hardware support the reality is that you'll be much better off using a newer version of WINE on a Linux installation than you would be using a ReactOS snapshot.

bwarp2• 14 years ago

Driver compatibility is likely to be more important as a lot of embedded systems use proprietary and certified drivers which will never work on Linux.

Not to mention, WINE is far from perfect. I'd argue that ReactOS, albeit with chunks of it coming from WINE is still far more likely to behave like a real Windows machine.

At the end of the day, it'll probably come down to cost and an in situ replacement of the OS without any application rewrite or hardware changes is cheapest.

userulluipeste3• 14 years ago

Thanks for the effort, indeed. It's a hope for a more sane free world we will live in!

dpark• 14 years ago

Is the cost of a Windows XP Embedded license really a significant part of the total cost of a custom touchscreen computer install in a factory? I'm genuinely curious.

devindotcom• 14 years ago

Nice. I won't pretend I've been following the project closely, but it really is an interesting and powerful thing they're doing.

tigerweeds2• 14 years ago

does it work on a bootable flash drive?

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

I think somebody got it to install, but if I remember correctly, USB support is not yet in stable releases.

tigerweeds2• 14 years ago

I just tried it and doesn't boot. Would really like to have it on a flash drive, shame it doesn't work yet... :\

sp3322• 14 years ago

If you get the livecd image, you can use Yumi to chainload the bootloader from the ISO file. Just run Yumi under Windows and have it add the iso to your thumb drive.

jamesu• 14 years ago

Having followed this project for around a decade, it amazes how slow it is being developed compared to Haiku.

On the surface it looks like windows 2000, but as soon as you try and do anything useful, you bump into problems. Firefox hangs the system when loading. Fonts don't always draw correctly. LOTS of things are missing. Quite often i press a button on a dialog, and it does nothing - why was is it even enabled if it doesn't work?

Still a long way to go!

diminish• 14 years ago

I have been watching this project for 7 years already; why doesn't ReactOS simply target running IE7, 8, 9? if they could do that millions of people would use it in VMs.

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

Unfortunately WINE and WINE derivatives are not in a state where they can be trusted to render pages as IE would render pages. WINE changes very quickly. The drawing code is no exception; they've spent the last year or so integrating a DIB engine, which will be among the flagship features of 1.4.

WINE is not likely to reflect a pixel-perfect representation of what your IE users will see and that's the simple fact. I've been bitten before by trusting the output of an IE in WINE. For testing IE, there is still no substitute for the official Windows platform. I don't think there will ever really be one, but it may be a decent distant-future goal for WINE: consistent pixel-perfect rendering in every IE version.

bwarp2• 14 years ago

I think that's because it's an order of magnitude more complicated than Haiku. BeOS was fairly new and well designed when they started. Windows however has nearly 25 years of evolution to reproduce.

ReactOS is remarkably functional considering though!

xxqs8• 14 years ago

I still don't understand the motivation for this project. If you ought to run a windows application, you use windows anyway. If you like to move to an opensource platform, you have to invest in migrating your applications anyway.

I don't get where ReactOS fits in this picture.

also how people can spend their precious time in re-implementing an existing architecture? There's lots of interesting and creative projects to actually build something new.

acuozzo3• 14 years ago

> There's lots of interesting and creative projects to actually build something new.

Can you recommend one that involves building a kernel, from scratch, that at least _some_ people will use?

xxqs8• 14 years ago

excuse me for answering with a question to a question, but

why would you need a new kernel? There's BSD, there's this list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_sys... , there's GNU Hurd... why do you need another one?

Besides, if you really want a new kernel, why should it be win32 binary compatible?

rbanffy• 14 years ago

You either build something new or you build something people will use. Building a Win32-compatible kernel is not something new. It's only a reimplementation of something very old.

It's not saying it's not an interesting project in itself - it's just not something I would attempt

userulluipeste3• 14 years ago

> If you ought to run a windows application, you use windows anyway. If you like to move to an opensource platform, you have to invest in migrating your applications anyway.

This is a false premise. Even before ReactOS to get traction, there was WINE. From your point of view WINE "doesn't fit" either?

And people are spending their precious time in something actually useful for the entire world. They canonize a proven and currently used (in massive proportion) architecture and take it out of the Microsoft's whims. They put their time and effort in a public solution which is an alternative to Windows, yet not a sadomasochistic option like Linux & related (trying to shove down to mainstream user's throat something that was not designed for him). Finally, they do something that is obvious and had to be done a long ago, and I'm shocked how there could be people questioning the even the reason for ReactOS's existence.

xxqs8• 14 years ago

(thanks for not pulling down my karma :))

I am in fact an open-source developer, but there's some business case behind each of my project. I just don't see a business case behind ReactOS.

I know about WINE (never used it though), and it makes at least a bit of sense to me, unlike ReactOS.

ReactOS 0.3.14 Released

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