

Thorium Core Cloud Desktop - JIghtuse
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thorium/thorium-core-cloud-desktop
Thorium Core is a commercial distribution of ReactOS, the Open Source Windows compatible operating system, targeted for cloud computing.
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mdmarra
This is silly. It's an XP-era clone. The only people that are hanging on to XP
are people that are trapped in an echo chamber of folks that don't want to
upgrade, or are encumbered by some legacy LOB application.

There's no way that a shop looking for funding via kickstarter can match the
feature development of Microsoft. If you want to disrupt Microsoft, it's sure
as shit not going to come from a clone of their 11 year old OS which is 4
versions back now.

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clarry
I don't think the point is to disrupt Microsoft. There are people who think XP
was a fine OS, and are building a new OS that takes its good parts, and likely
adds other good parts that did not exist in the original.

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brianbreslin
I was totally hoping someone was using kickstarter to launch home nuclear
power generation using thorium. That I would have funded immediately...

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asteli
OK, sure, a Thorium reactor project would be worth funding, surely. But a
/home/ thorium reactor? That's not exactly an HOA friendly endeavour, is it?

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brianbreslin
Fine, fine, kill my dream of powering my neighborhood and giving FPL the boot.
However, if you lived in the woods, why not... ?

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clarry
I didn't pay too much attention but it isn't clear to me whether they're
planning to go their own ways or develop in such a manner that they can
cooperate with & contribute back to ReactOS. I'd like to see ReactOS grow.

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wila
Exactly, the ReactOS project itself needs more funding, not sure if this
helps.

At least it appears that the 2 people at the kickstarter project are part of
the ReactOS team
([http://www.reactos.org/wiki/People_of_ReactOS](http://www.reactos.org/wiki/People_of_ReactOS)
) but the page at the kickstarter project appears to be written in a hurry.
Wording like "Thorium core is an _attempt_ to build" doesn't exactly garner a
lot of trust in getting the work done.

I am not seeing the use case. Access to ReactOS from the cloud? Sorry, but
that's very vague, they are going to copy remote desktop as well? It would
help if ReactOS itself was stable already. It's a great piece of engineering.
Amazing what they have done so far, but -at least during my limited testing-
when playing with it in a virtual machine it never survived a stable session
longer as a few hours. Bringing that to the cloud just means another layer of
complexity and thus possible failure.

It is also not clear to me if the kickstarter project is actually connected to
the ReactOS project and what the other contributors think about it. I would at
least have expected a page at the ReactOS project about this if it was part of
the rest. So far I have not seen a page on the ReactOS site about this and
that would help for building trust in the kickstarter project.

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AlexanderDhoore
I don't see how this is connected to "cloud computing" in ANY way.

People just throw in the "cloud" word anywhere, don't they?

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guiambros
It's a remote Windows desktop, running on a remote server and provided as
SaaS.

While I agree that _cloud_ is overused in general, it seems appropriate in
this case.

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rtpg
I get that a lot of companies still rely on Windows, but aren't we slowly
edging away from really needing it? Especially when more and more software is
being written in platform-agnostic languages like Java?

I feel like a company willing to migrate to something like ReactOS could just
as easily migrate over to some *nix variant. The only Windows-only thing that
I can think of being essential would be Office (that might be the big one
though).

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clarry
> I get that a lot of companies still rely on Windows, but aren't we slowly
> edging away from really needing it?

But it's not Windows. It's a new OS that borrows a lot from an older version
of Windows as far as design goes, and hopefully brings something new to the
table.

And I don't really see how "needing it" or not matters. People use an OS they
like, or an OS that has the features they enjoy, or an OS that is compatible
with the software they use, or whatever.

> Especially when more and more software is being written in platform-agnostic
> languages like Java?

Really? Software has always been written in a variety of platform-agnostic
languages. C and C++, to name a couple. But I see a recent trend of ignoring
and dismissing portability beyond a select few favorite platforms.

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jamescun
There are several problems I see with this.

Firstly, from their literature I am guessing they want to be grabbing on to
people who want to continue using XP style services after Microsoft cuts
support for XP next year, however I feel they will most definitely miss the
boat with this one, 4 months is not a big migration window let-alone for
development of the product.

Secondly, their core offering is support. A lot can be said about Microsoft's
customer service, however I will never fault the support contracts they offer
to businesses. I honestly cannot see how they intend to match that.

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marcosdumay
I've never seen MS a support contract add anything valuable for anybody. It
may be diffrent at the US, but at Brazil they are worse than worthless.

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turrini
I second that.

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Robby2012
I think this is the worst Kickstarter project I've ever seen

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C1D
I was expecting some new type of physical server powered by Thorium :(.

ReactOS is still in alpha stages and I can't see a difference between the
ReactOS I first saw in 2006 and the current one, it still is extremely limited
when it comes to running advanced windows applications.

Also Windows cloud computers aren't that expensive, a Windows cloud on EC2
costs only a few cents more than a Linux one plus you can also use Azure.

It seems pointless to me.

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al2o3cr
Save yourself some trouble, just mail your Kickstarter contribution directly
to Microsoft's lawyers. :(

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pocketstar
I was hoping for some sort of Thorium reactor on kickstarter...sigh maybe next
christmas.

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snambi
why do we need a windows clone?

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jeditobe
Because Linux is stil crap, Windows 8 became crap, and NSA backdors were
found!

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aosmith
Windows only? How deep in bed with the NSA are these guys?

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clarry
How does wanting to make a Windows-like OS have anything at all to do with the
NSA?

