
ReactOS 0.4.0 Released - ekianjo
https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-040-released
======
mhd
I'm quite impressed that they can load graphics drivers now. Those generally
seem to be arcane as heck, delving deeply into the internals of not just the
applications they support (e.g. games), but the operating system itself.

Although I guess this is a more basic level, i.e. not using Nvidia drivers to
run 3DMark...

~~~
adam12
I've got a bunch of old games that I can no longer run on Windows 8/10\. If
they can get some of those running smoothly, ReactOS will see a surge in new
users.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
With its NTVDM, ReactOS can actually play DOS games out-of-the-box, which is
something modern (64-bit) Windows releases can't do.

~~~
speeder
As a hardcore gamer, gamedev and old games lover, I am finding sadder and
sadder that certain games are getting increasingly forgotten by everyone, and
noone even remember they are in dire need of tools to make them work.

It is the games from Windows 98 and XP era, many used some combination of GDI
and DDraw that doesn't work at all on new Windows versions, DDraw emulation is
mostly broken, and pity you if the game used DDrawEx (it was to mix DDraw with
D3D).

For example I am currently trying to figure a way to play SimCity 4 properly,
the game is too demanding to run in an emulator, so some kind of native
implementation is needed, but it also uses DDrawEx, that is very poorly
supported in all OSes except Windows 98, ME and XP (it doesn't work in XP
contemporary NTs either).

I think this is the kind of games the OP is happy ReactOS maybe will
implement... because for DOS games, DosBox is more than enough already in most
cases (there are some exceptions, like Noctis that is incredibly CPU-intensive
and runs at 3 FPS in DosBox).

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You could try running Windows 98 under VirtualBox.

~~~
sspiff
Those old operating systems are quite a pain in VirtualBox. Qemu does a much
better job, in this case. VirtualBox's emulated hardware is too new for some
systems, and Win98/Win95 flood the CPU during idle time (because that's how
things worked back then), causing the input processing from the VM to lag
significantly.

Regardless though, this would legally require you to acquire a licensed copy
of Windows 98, which will only become harder and harder down the road. Unless
Microsoft decides to "free" all legacy software at some point.

ReactOS and WINE solve this problem in a different way, by providing open
source solutions that everyone can use, copy and archive without cost or
consequence.

------
mmastrac
The longevity of this project is really impressive. I remember seeing it in
the early days of Wine and thinking that it was a monumentally difficult
challenge.

------
exizt88
Please don't hijack scroll on web pages.

~~~
adam12
The scrolling seems fine to me.

~~~
cstrahan
They're using kinetic/smooth scrolling, which is included in theme they're
using from Okler. If you look in the JS, you'll see:

    
    
      Plugin Name: 	smoothScroll for jQuery.
      Written by: 	Okler Themes - (http://www.okler.net)
    

And here's a forum where a customer asks to disable it:

[http://www.okler.net/forums/topic/disable-scrolling-
effect/](http://www.okler.net/forums/topic/disable-scrolling-effect/)

Another offender:

[https://www.astralgameservers.com/](https://www.astralgameservers.com/)

Inertial/kinetic scrolling is _incredibly_ frustrating when implemented in JS.
On my Mac, sure, if I swipe my fingers and let go, I expect the OS to emulate
a free-spinning scroll wheel. But when it's emulated in JS, there's no way for
the code to know whether I lifted my fingers, so it defaults to making the
page skid around uncontrollably, when I intend to quickly swipe - while
keeping my fingers down at the end - to go to a precise offset in the page.

It's visually a cute a effect, but I have no idea how anyone thinks that it
makes for anything other than an utterly infuriating user experience.

------
coltonv
So I've heard the name ReactOS several times on here but never really been
drawn in by the posts about it. Can someone explain why they would use it over
Windows/their preferred Linux distro?

i ask out of curiosity not criticism. it seems like a cool project so I'm
wondering it's benefits over existing OSes.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's free, it's open-source, it's Windows-like, and it can run Windows
applications. It's very lightweight and has a live CD.

~~~
alkonaut
Those are all good of course, but how long before it is _significantly_ better
(faster, more compatible, easier) than e.g. doing the same with Wine? is it
already?

~~~
cookiecaper
It doesn't do the same thing. ReactOS is a full reimplementation, including
the Windows kernel. You can boot your system with it. One of the main goals is
to provide for the loading of Windows drivers. ReactOS and WINE share code for
userspace to the extent possible.

~~~
alkonaut
I see. Is the reason it wants to use Windows drivers that it hopes to get
better performance in comparison to Wine or VMs?

~~~
userulluipeste
The hardware vendors used to pour more effort into the Windows drivers than
into the other ones. (I think it's not about being unfair or against FSF
ideology, it was just that the market so far was still heavily in the Windows'
courtyard, so they were kind of forced to give in and have the other platforms
only on lower priority.)

------
pippy
I've often thought there's a massive market for ReactOS in legacy support.
There's so many platforms (ATMs, flight controllers, banking software) that
use unsupported windows versions. Many of these platforms would pay an arm and
a leg for ongoing support and security updates.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, I'm curious, but for slightly different reasons. Windows can _still_
technically support other architectures than x86; if ReactOS is truly
compatible (which it evidently is!) then I wonder how hard it would be for
them to port the HAL layer to things like SPARC.

~~~
slipstream-
uh, Windows does support other architectures than x86: currently, it supports
x86, x64, ARM and ARM64. (and as Windows Server 2008 R2 is still supported,
the IA64 version is also still suppored)

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, I know. But it will never support SPARC. Or anything other than the
architectures you mention. Windows can still support these other
architectures, I'd love to see it happen. ReactOS might be the way that it's
made to occur.

~~~
chungy
Definitely. Microsoft doesn't see commercial value in supporting, eg, a SPARC
version, especially when it won't run existing x86 apps. It'd be a huge lost
cost in development just to make one.

ReactOS isn't driven by the same market forces. Anybody with enough
determination can port it to SPARC and fly away :)

Windows NT 4 supported x86, MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha. All but one were dropped
with Windows 2000... and it wasn't until XP that non-x86 returned (initially
IA-64, and x86_64 in three more years after initial release).

------
andersonmvd
The project is neat, but they should not be proud of "9,000,000+ lines of code
And growing!". Less is more. A security audit for example would be very slow
already, given the number of lines.

~~~
exadeci
Windows XP had 45 Millions lines of code, the Linux kernel has 20 Millions
lines of code.

So it's pretty small.
[http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Source_lines_of_code#/Example](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Source_lines_of_code#/Example)

------
eatonphil
Does this run internet explorer? This would be interesting for Koreans wanting
something easier than Windows but still needing online payments [0].

On a different topic, does this run any IIS software? Does anyone use this to
run any servers?

[0] [http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-
scrap-...](http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-scrap-
activex-payment-requirement-bad-news-for-internet-explorer/)

------
dingdingdang
Congratulations to the team :). Personally I'm really happy that someone is
doing this work.. although I wish they would aim for baking in a per-app-
sandbox-environment - in short order user empowerment is going to define
successful computing projects (just look at the rise of Qubes OS and I bet
this is still in its pre-viral state - if Apple get compromised by gov and are
vocal about it then it will educate a generation of users about the importance
of storing data safely!)

------
donlzx
Kudos to the ReactOS team. I've tried the 0.3.x release about ten years ago
and was a little disappointed. However, after a decade I've got a new
perspective to appreciate their work.

I've kept several of my used laptops (Toshiba Satellite laptop, IBM Thinkpads,
Lenovo Thinkpads, etc.) mainly for commemorative purpose. However, they can
still boot and works fine with outdated OS's and extinct software. A potential
very good use of them is to open my old archived documents, but I'd rather not
to mess with these fragile machines.

When I checked my old archives, usually only plain texts and JPEG photos files
are fine with current OS's and softwares. Nealy all my old software projects
(mostly with Visual C++) no longer compile or run, or missing dependencies
(DLLs, component libraries, tools, etc.). Even though I've backup most of the
tools I used at that time, most of them would be a huge pain or impossible to
reinstall correctly with right system dependencies.

Therefore I've come to think that the only meaningful archives are data with
executables, i.e, documents with related spec, contemporary software and OS.
In this aspect, a good Internet archive methodology should be like this: 1)
data; 2) Fully installed and working software packages; 3) Running free OS
such as Linux and ReactOS; 4) OS emulator on available hardware such as
Virtualbox and KVM.

The importance of ReactOS here is that we will have a working OS on modern
emulator or hardware for archiving purpose.

I'm omitting the hardware platform here, but it should be the other important
aspect of archiving our knowledges.

------
arturhoo
Genuine question: is there a reason for the downloads to be hosted at source
forge?

~~~
flxn
Two weeks ago the new owner of SourceForge terminated the controversial
"DevShare" program. [https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-
fut...](https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-
plans/)

So it should be safe again.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Nah. Reputation is hard to build, but eeeeasy to destroy; saying "trust us
that you can trust us again" doesn't magically revert it to previous version
(at least a suspicion remains of "...until we have another Wonderful Idea at
an indeterminate point in the future").

------
flz
10 years since the previous release ...

I'd really like to know how many people are actually using ReactOS for another
purpose than testing or developing it.

~~~
xenophonf
Dude, this is _Hacker_ News. Who cares? This is cool!

Also: Their latest release was 0.3.17 in 2014, with the 0.4.0 release
candidates coming out late last year. So it hasn't been 10 years between
releases, but around 1.5 years.

~~~
gedrap
While usually I'd agree with your snarky comment, I am genuinely curious about
this too. It's not some yetanother.js hacked together in a night but years
(decades!) of man hours.

What's pushing them and stopping from giving up?

~~~
stryan
I believe the Russian Government has considered/is giving them support so that
probably helps. Otherwise, a passion for the project and love of the craft
most likely.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's almost all a volunteer effort. They get the odd donation from time to
time, and they had a crowdfunding campaign, but they really don't get that
much money.

------
mixmastamyk
Awesome, I'd love an updated (traditional) Windows 2k/XP GUI with windows and
linux tools in it. :)

Interesting... I appreciate the faithful reproduction, but they've also copied
the outright bad designs like the tiny environment variable window in the
system control panel I always hated. ;)

Noticed they used a source-forge download instead of a torrent. :/

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Yeah, and that tiny environment variable window lasted at least through
Windows 7. You would think with 10s of thousands of developers, they could fix
these kinds of things.

------
rchowe
I wonder if ReactOS could target the same APIs as the upcoming Nano Server [1]
in Windows Server 2016. They'd have to make it entirely 64-bit and implement
some closed Microsoft protocols like WMI and DISM, but it could be a pretty
cool drop-in replacement for any server apps that people decide to target to
Nano Server.

[1]
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/04/08...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/04/08/microsoft-
announces-nano-server-for-modern-apps-and-cloud/)

~~~
userulluipeste
On IRC the developers have mentioned (as wishful thinking) a minimal (i.e. a
stripped-down) version, with only kernel, drivers, and a few other small
miscellaneous parts over which dedicated applications could run. This would be
something for embedded systems and other specialized machines (basically
servers) unlike the all-encomprising common version of ReactOS. That having
been said, it's important to understand that one of the reasons for nano is...
well, OS size, which for a "normal" version got to tens of GBytes! Currently,
ReactOS is (and I think that's a lot --) under 200 MB with all its bells and
whistles.

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an4rchy
I came in thinking this was something related to React Native (i.e open source
OS for Android etc), but was pleasantly surprised to learn about this new OS,
quite an achievement, seeing as they've been going on for 10 years.

------
chris_wot
I really wish they had pointers to the source commits in their bug tracker.
That would be fascinating :-)

------
gosukiwi
Very interesting project. I'll make sure to test it when they release 1.0 :)

~~~
alexandre_m
At this pace it'll be your grandchildren that will test it.

~~~
eloisant
They're having a heated race with GNU Hurd to be the first on your grandson's
desktop!

~~~
wagglycocks
They can enjoy the 1.0 version of Dwarf Fortress while they're at it

------
zackify
scroll hijacking....

------
ericmuyser
Always a little disappointed when I remember ReactOS does not mean React.js
OS.

~~~
chris_wot
ReactOS has been around for a lot longer than React.js.

However... if there was a React.js OS, then I'd love to see ReactOS run on
React.js OS. At that point, I'd love to see this run on ReactOS.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> ReactOS has been around for a lot longer than React.js.

It'll probably still be around long after React.js has faded into obscurity,
too ;)

