What is the point of ReactOS when you could just run Wine on a minimal Linux base?
What is the point of ReactOS when you could just run Wine on a minimal Linux base?
Cameron Gonzalez
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Henry Bailey
ReactOS actually works, unlike WINE
Joseph Sullivan
To not deal with the dumpster fire that is desktop Linux distros.
Dylan Rivera
>What is the point of ReactOS
ReactOS is a re-implementation of the whole OS including the kernel and so on. One difference would be that you can use things like hardware drivers on ReactOS and you can't do that on WINE.
Please, ReactOS's codebase is some basics like a kernel and a shell and 90+% WINE.
Wine is becoming increasingly pointless as time goes on, though. There's just way too few developers working on it and the progress is way to slow. A fully functional binary compatible Windows XP alternative would already have been somewhat outdated 10 years ago. Today? Who the fuck cares. I've been following it over the years since it's in principle free software and I love free software. Last year they made the huge announcement that printing to parallel port printers finally works on ReactOS. Really? Parallel port printers, eh? 15 years after someone last used one, eh? How about them fancy new USB printers? Perhaps in 5 years...
I admire their efforts and I do like the project. But from a practical point of view.. it's just not happening.
Gavin Gutierrez
do you mean reactos is become increasingly pointless?
Alexander Roberts
lol yes
William Wright
No, it doesn't.
t. actually installed it on real hardware.
Logan Carter
The plot twist of that comment is that ReactOS actually works, but nothing works on ReactOS
Josiah Bennett
ReactOS is a re-implementation of the NT architecture. It's not a Linux distro, and also not Windows.
It follows the functionality equivalents to the original vision for NT. NT was designed as a drop-in replacement for VMS (and had the very same architect as VMS).
NT had a lot going for it, but Microsoft got greedy early on. Development started in 1989, and Microsoft intended for a full release of a server OS by 1991.
That didn't happen, and the project was pushed back 1 year, then another. Eventually, Windows NT 3.1 was released in 1993.
The design of the NT system is pretty interesting -
You have your bootloader, a native 32-bit or 64-bit binary
Then you have NTOSKRNL, the actual kernel itself. It talks in Native Code, NT-subsystem binaries only.
All drivers and security plug into NTOSKRNL through ntdll.dll. That's your ring-0.
On top of this, usermode code runs in a Win32 subsystem.
NT binaries cannot run in Win32 by design. Once Win32 is brought up, NT binaries cannot be executed, as the subsystem is effectively unloaded.
In newer versions of NT, there are layers upon layers that interact with both ring 0 and usermode. Bitlocker integration changed a lot of the old NT architecture to include a sort of VM around ring 0.
ReactOS implements NT 1.0 (3.1) + NT5/6 era API's along with a few stubs for NT 10 API's. It's not feature-complete, nor will it ever be.
Luis Bell
Now, on to the future --
Going forward, Microsoft may try to do what they did with the Xbox - Virtualize Everything.
We know that the Xbox One utilizes at least 3 separate Hyper-V virtual machines to get into 'usermode'. Underneath, though, it's still using this ancient NT architecture to get the hardware booted - including the NT Subsystem, but not including the majority of the Win32 subsystem. Instead, the Xbox One uses a subset of the ill-fated Windows RT subsystem. Windows RT, otherwise known as Windows RunTime, was supposed to replace Win32 in its entirety... but adoption by developers has been stagnant. Replacing the entire subsystem of an OS that has been in use for 30 years isn't something you just do one day. As such, the Xbox One is the only proof of the power of Windows RT -- and that's not saying much for the platform, as crashes are still evident and possible.
ReactOS could effectively built their own ReactOS RT platform, which could essentially bring about a new player in the OS field - without relying on old API's that are known to be not so secure, and implementing the tech needed to run Xbox titles.
There is work being done right now to bring the ReactOS kernel to the original Xbox, for instance. This is primarily important for emulation of the Xbox in a completely legal means. While the hardware is well-understood by such groups as Xqemu, and Cxbx-reloaded, the use and requirement of having an original Xbox ROM is a huge problem.
Lucas Watson
>There is work being done right now to bring the ReactOS kernel to the original Xbox, for instance.
I think it'll be difficult to come by a functioning Xbox by 2050
Henry Harris
The underlying NT is all the xbox really needs - it too does not run Win32, but a very special Xbox subsystem, which is pretty well documented at this point, thanks to Cxbx-reloaded.
The idea at this point is to replace as much as necessary to boot a real console up, replicate it in the emulator for 1:1 reproduction in an emulator, then effectively just build up the Xbox subsystem by hand. It's entirely doable at this point, just a matter of adapting the bootloader to the extremely different bootloader that the Xbox hardware actually uses, adjust a few bits here and there, and get a video driver running in NT mode that actually supports 3d rendering.
While ReactOS does shit the bed with most applications, the underlying bits are all the Xbox guys need - none of the desktop crap that doesn't work.
WineD3D is utilized in some ways to get Xbox games running under a ReactOS kernel. The biggest hurdle, as far as I know, is the GPU, which is undocumented - but is slowly being documented on xboxdevwiki, as well as cxbx-reloaded's git. A lot is known about the internals of the chip -- far more than was was known even a year ago.
John Moore
Interesting read. Thanks user.
Oliver Walker
That sounds fuggin cool!
William Scott
I got interested in that project in 2005.
It would have been really cool even in 2009 but they're now over a decade too late and literally no one cares anymore.
Luis Brooks
>2035 - REACT OS IS FINALLY USABLE!
>a month later, MS releases Windows 2000 as opensores
Henry Rogers
God, what I wouldn't give to properly understand windows. It has a much more interesting architecture than all the unix-likes.
Sebastian Richardson
Native Windows drivers.
Jaxson Cook
Finally usable = Windows 7 or 10 levels of compatibility.
At that point, the source of W2K is going to be pretty much 100% useless.
Ian Wright
i wish i could tell you, i cant run this shit on bare metal no matter what. why the fuck wont it boot off the cd? or dvd if i tried that
Thomas Robinson
Can it be installed via USB yet?
Jaxson Davis
expensive legacy hardware that only works on ancient versions of windows is a huge problem for shit like factories, chem labs, etc. I thought that was React's target market
Evan Reyes
why writing your question when you could use telepathy to ask us?
Nathan Garcia
>I thought that was React's target market
It is. It also helps that ReactOS can run on toasters in comparison to other operating systems.
Jose Parker
>implying 7 or 10 won't be useless in 2035 too
Christian Baker
i've used wine on a near daily basis for over 1.5 yrs, and i can tell you with utmost certainty that wine is fucking garbage.
good effort, but it regualrly breaks software with "updates"
i would love to advocate to my friends that linux can be used for gaming but again wine is fucking garbage.
Colton Evans
Windows is cancer, ReactOS is answer.
Isaiah Bell
>Install ReactOS nightly
>Things surprisingly go well
>Boot into desktop
>The FUCKING MOUSE CLICKS DON'T FUCKING WORK
>Reboot
>Now the keyboard doesn't work
>Give up
You'd think with 20 years development, they'd figure out how to get basic shit like the mouse and keyboard working by now.
Jason Young
hahaha
what
fucking hell that's a thin client
Jaxon Kelly
>All drivers and security plug into NTOSKRNL through ntdll.dll. That's your ring-0.
ntdll.dll is a usermode dll nigger, it has native apis called by other dll's such as kernel32.dll, those native apis traps to kernel (syscall).
drivers calls api's directly from ntoskrnl.exe, it exports most of the kernel functions, a large part of these functions has the same name as ntdll.dll functions but it's solely naming convention.
Jaxson White
>it regualrly breaks software with "updates"
Perfecting the true Windows experience then
Nolan Adams
Try these patches github.com
Nolan Rogers
>20 processes
>21mb ram
nice.
kek'd, but seriously this wasn't an issue for me before windows 10, my cheapo laptop has needed reset twice in the last 1.5yr due to pajeets pushing shit software.
Nathaniel Martin
Linux is cancer, ReactOS is answer.
Hudson Reyes
>could just run Wine
you could not! I do not allow you!