
ReactOS 0.4.9 released - messe
https://www.reactos.org/project-news/reactos-049-released
======
pierrec
Sometimes I wonder why every single release of ReactOS seems to make the front
page of HN. Then I'm quickly reminded of how well-written, interesting and
detailed the release notes are. It's like reading through an adventure story
where the contributors are heroes. More open source projects should have this.

~~~
orionblastar
I agree other FOSS operating systems should get the same coverage as ReactOS.

~~~
wiz21c
I suppose it's because ReactOS is replicating Windows, that is, it awakens
fond memories of old activists (times when MSWin was the private enemy number
one).

Nowadays, I guess the new activist would be more bothered by something that
can replace Android (or Apple for extra kudo).

------
coolspot
It amazes me how they were able to move forward all these 20 (!) years without
losing motivation.

~~~
petetnt
It also seems that migrating to GitHub paid off too, as seen in the release
notes:

> Since the transition to GitHub, the project has also received many pull
> requests from old and new contributors alike.

~~~
whatshisface
It's funny that Microsoft now hosts the source code of both major Windows
implementations.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Nobody perceives ReactOS as a threat at the moment, but I wonder what
Microsoft's stance would be if the project developed much faster, for example
by receiving funding from a bigger institution...

~~~
osullivj
Cut Windows licensing charges for corporates to ensure that the total cost of
ownership of Windows is lower than ReactOS. IMHO ReactOS should target
corporates who have old Win32 apps still running on XP or Win7 that they can't
or won't migrate to Win10.

~~~
jacobush
There should be a ReactOS crack team out there, helping people with such
things. I have seen in the corporate world, virtual machines running Windows
XP, carefully hidden from the watchful eye of the Nazgul, I mean corporate IT.
Why? Some function or other can not run in newer versions of Windows.

However, such a ReactOS installation would hardly be blessed by IT either...
not anymore than a random Linux installation. :-/

Where I think ReactOS _could_ shine is in the embedded realm. In that realm,
you often have custom development anyway. 100% compatibility is often not
needed. You might have product initially done on Windows Win32, then tweaked
to run on Windows CE (or whatever they call it nowadays). Instead you could
tweak it to run on ReactOS and call it day. Since ReactOS can take standard
Windows drivers, getting BSP support should be feasible.

Also, ReactOS should offer EC2 images like Ubuntu does:

[https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/](https://cloud-
images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/)

~~~
osullivj
I've seen that too - but with corporate IT dept support - at a large UK
mortgage lender running a loan origination system initially built in the 90s
with an MFC Win32 GUI. Over the years the system has been so heavily
customised by the vendor that it's practically bespoke. Migrating the existing
system to run on modern OSes, or adopting a new system would be a huge
expense, and can't be justified by any rational cost benefit analysis. IMHO
there's a huge overhang of legacy Win32 GUIs out there. I'm hoping they'll
fund my retirement.

------
jkabrg
Has anybody tried running some old computer viruses on it?

Or what about those "tech support" calls you get, where they try and take over
your Windows computer? It would be fun to follow their instructions in
ReactOS, mainly out of curiosity (and to screw with them).

Seriously, next time you get a call from one of them, give them an excuse to
ring you back later; then install Virtualbox, ReactOS, some mic and screen
recording software, and wait.

~~~
simcop2387
A few people have done this,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr220CbJTQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr220CbJTQc)

It usually confuses them a lot.

~~~
ddevault
This doesn't look like ReactOS was involved in any capacity other than its
logo.

------
hitekker
It’d be hilarious if Google started donating to the project. No endgame in
mind, just trolling to get a paranoid reaction out of Microsoft.

I’ve heard that Steam OS was partly created to nudge Windows out of its
windows gaming intiative during the Windows 8 era.

~~~
jacobush
At the very least, Steam OS was kind of a far off hedge. Like building a
fallout shelter in your back yard. Pretty cheap, kind of spectacular, very low
chance of it being used. But, boy, should the need arise you'd be happy to
have it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I don't think that was the original intent, just what it came to be after it
was clear that Microsoft wasn't going to aggressively dismantle the open*
nature of Windows as a platform. Based on Microsoft's language around the
Windows App Store and UWP at the time, and just being Microsoft, that was a
reasonable concern.

*That is, open for anyone to develop and release software for without going through a third party.

~~~
megaman22
What a waste of time and energy the Windows Store and UWP are. I've yet to see
any apps on there better than the pre-existing standalone ones, and the
developer messaging on that front has been all over the road. At various
points C++, C#, and JS have been touted as the way to go forward, but from
where I sit everybody is still banging on Win32.

~~~
digi_owl
The big holdup with UWP, IMO, is that they strictly limit access to the file
system. And if you want to give an UWP program access, up comes the age old
win32 picker dialog.

If MS really wanted UWP to take off, they should have bundled a UWP file
manager on par with explorer, and a matching picker.

As it is, UWP is just another .NET dumped on top of the same old win32/NT
base.

~~~
jacobush
From a technology standpoint, no it's not. UWP is very much closer to the
Win32 roots than .NET ever was. UWP is COM+ basically, with a thin wrapper.

From a marketing, developer's and practical point of view, I agree with you
100%. They bet _so_ much on UWP, yet their footsteps falter the last mile. UWP
is like running an Android emulator on your PC - you have 2 different worlds
at once. Really weird and it must confuse "normal" users much more than us who
know a lot about both the history and the technology.

------
andyonthewings
I've just tried to install it as a VirtualBox VM, and it kinda works! I had to
select a different network adapter for the network to work, and the
screensaver screen made the system unresponsive. But it's still impressive.

I totally love it that it has a 50/50 chance of getting stuck in the login
screen like a Windows 98.

~~~
mclehman
What did you do to get the network working specifically? I was hoping that
adding the legacy network adapter would do it, but it prompted and
subsequently failed to install an ethernet driver after I did.

~~~
andyonthewings
Use PCnet-FAST III as mentioned in their wiki:
[https://www.reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox)

------
tombert
Anyone here tried running ReactOS full time?

~~~
bArray
I tried with limited success on a very old laptop (on the previous release):

* USB drives didn't come up correctly - it couldn't see anything past the "root" hub (as an end user it was just a USB port on the laptop).

* Wasn't able to connect to the internet using either the Belkin wireless card or the standard ethernet port.

* Stability was relatively impressive, didn't handle lack of RAM too gracefully though.

As there wasn't an easy way to get any kind of media into the laptop, I gave
up. Getting either of those working well could at least extend the usefulness
to being a great writing machine. Gvim + LaTeX and I'll be fully away.

Half the time I think a person wanting to rip off Windows (I know, I know)
would be better off writing a Windows 95/98 looking X11 window manager and
hacking it to only use Wine. Seemingly for free you would get tonnes of
hardware support and the obvious benefits of Wine. You could even emulate the
"upgrade whilst shutting down" behaviour to update Linux underneath. I think
you could quickly end up with something that would pass at first glance.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> Half the time I think a person wanting to rip off Windows (I know, I know)
> would be better off writing a Windows 95/98 looking X11 window manager and
> hacking it to only use Wine. Seemingly for free you would get tonnes of
> hardware support and the obvious benefits of Wine. You could even emulate
> the "upgrade whilst shutting down" behaviour to update Linux underneath. I
> think you could quickly end up with something that would pass at first
> glance.

This was attempted once with "Lindows" (later renamed to "Linspire" after the
inevitable Microsoft lawsuit). Wikipedia informs me that they're actually
still around in one form or another and owned by Xandros these days.

~~~
jacobush
Lindows was interesting. Windows was much more relevant then, not as much web
stuff going on, no mobile apps. Unfortunately, Wine was not very feature
complete, so it fell on its face quickly.

~~~
bArray
In what sense? I think Wine is pretty good on most applications up to a year
ago as long as they're not games?

~~~
jacobush
Lindows launched in 2001 IIRC. At the time, Wine didn't have regression
testing, so someone hacked up a simple test-runner in C, called it
"winetest.exe", ran the tests on Windows 95, 98, NT 4 and XP, and submitted it
the Wine project.

The idea was to capture how actual Windows works, so Wine could implement how
Windows _actually works_ , not how you'd think it works just from looking at
API docs.

[http://test.winehq.org/data/](http://test.winehq.org/data/)

------
Koshkin
The main point seems to be compatibility with Windows device drivers.
Otherwise, Wine on Linux should suffice. (?)

~~~
sp332
The two projects collaborate a lot, documenting and implementing APIs.

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compsciphd
A thought I just had:

ReactOS would be an intereting concept to "containerize" old windows apps to
enable them to run in a public / private cloud environment.

Basically a way for people to "modernize" (at least the way the apps are
managed if not the apps themselves).

------
orionblastar
The big test would be server mode to take on Windows Server. Samba and WAMP.

~~~
chris_wot
One day it may well run the Linux subsystem.

~~~
mycall
Does WINE work in WSL?

~~~
toomanybeersies
Better still, could WSL work in WINE?

~~~
stuaxo
In the future, who knows... at present there is none of the infrastructure in
Wine to make that happen.

------
JdeBP
What I wrote about CHKDSK at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592182)
still applies. (-:

