I’m hearing a few mentions about ReactOS recently. What do people mostly use it for? It seems it’s trying to be a Windows XP clone, can it run latest browsers, which do not support old Windows versions?
It isn’t an academic project. Its main problem is that there aren’t nearly enough developers or resources to achieve what they want - bug-to-bug compatibility with Windows.
It’s not a project used by anyone for production, or even testing environments. It’s mostly just for shits and giggles at this point.
The problem is that there weren’t enough developers able to help the project early on, and it’s taken so long to make any kind of progress, that the targets they were trying to hit are long, long past. Even if it could be something that could 100% replicate an XP/Server 2003 system, I’m not sure how much utility that would have at this point, at least in a major production environment. Might be good for enthusiasts who still play older games and can’t get a hold of an older copy of Windows. But even for production legacy systems, I can’t see a business decision where they pick a relatively unknown OS like this to replace an XP stack instead of just modernizing. They might as well just stay on XP. And big enterprises don’t choose projects like this for major deployments. They go with the tried and true solutions, regardless of cost or vendor lock-in. It’s why “Wintel” has been a thing for 30 years, and why Oracle still exists.
I honestly don’t think it will ever be a the drop-in replacement for Windows it aims to be. If it truly got to that point of completion, MS would sue them out of existence. They’d just tie them up in court making them prove it was pure blackbox development until they ran out of money and just folded.
So from the title, you could already tell this wasn’t a project for you. Yet you still felt the need to open this thread just to complain about its existence?
Sounds cool, though I’m a bit confused as to why that is such a big priority given that ReactOS currently aims to replicate Windows NT 5.2 (XP x64 / Server 2003), which did not provide graphical set-up*…
Technically all Windows versions up until, IIRC, Vista had their install process in two stages: a text-based stage where you’d input the most basic info (what filesystem to install onto, what Windows directory to use, etc.) and a graphical stage once the basic files are installed (where you’d be asked what devices the computer has, whether it’s networked, date/time, etc.). From Vista to the present day, the first stage is graphical as well. ReactOS’ latest release uses the pre-Vista model, but the latest blog posts indicate a move to the more modern one.
I’ve actually thought for a while now that a big software company should come out and say they support ReactOS for whatever their product is and advertise it like “Full, Oracle 23c DB support on ReactOS - but without the Microsoft tax.”
Yes, that’s not realistic between Oracle and MS, but it would be such a boon to ReactOS.
I wish I was kidding. It was ran by a single lady in her 70s who couldn’t retire because she was the only one who knew how everything worked. Part of my last project there was modernizing it on a .net stack instead
In the late 80s/early 90s a staff member (self taught in office/access) quickly threw together something at the request of a manager as a stop gap wile a new proper system was specked out.
The person learned as they went and the system grew in functionality and complexity until the term spaghetti code was a massive understatement. It became their job.
The new proper system never arrived and they have been making do for the past 30-40 years.
I ran into the same thing a decade or so ago and it was a nightmare, but it was just an ice cream franchise, not prison related
I was sysadmin for a Bankruptcy and Insolvency Firm for more than a decade and walked into 100s of businesses on the point of failure. Many of them could not be saved simply because their systems were so bad it was better for a buyer to buy their equipment and start with a clean sheet.
The ice cream business was going under because the partner who had been the access self starter had an argument with the others and had walked out 18months ago.
The access system ran the entire business (accounting and wages were on other programs but the db feed them data) and he was the only one who had any idea.
Shit started to go wrong and they had no idea what to do.
I’m grateful that my company is actively improving processes and working on very necessary rewrites but damn some of these systems make me cringe having to work on them. I’m just a dev so I can’t even imagine the rage you must’ve faced at those jobs lol
Even though I occasionally toy with the idea of learning eg. COBOL so I could rake in the $$$ from consulting jobs to add features to some 60 year old codebase for a bank or something like that, I’m not sure that amount of stress would ever be worth it
For companies that have a legacy product depending on the old OS, but unpatched vulnerabilities because said OS is EoL, maybe this may one day be an appealing option.
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