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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday November 06 2014, @01:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the native-support dept.

From the WinBeta subforum of reboot.pro:

I'm Pierre Schweitzer, one of the ReactOS developers. This is a free operating system that aims to re-implement Windows, but this time with an open source license.

ReactOS now supports reading files from NTFS volume. This was a long awaited feature people were asking for. And here it is.

You can see what I'm talking about on the three pictures [included in the fine article].

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  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:00PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:00PM (#113515) Journal

    I thought we could read/write from NTFS anyway within Linux.? Read certainly.
    What's so special about this then.?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:25PM (#113520)

      Things... things and stuff

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:42PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:42PM (#113528) Journal

        Stuff... stuff and nonsense

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by MozeeToby on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:38PM

      by MozeeToby (1118) on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:38PM (#113527)

      It's not Linux is the obvious answer. ReactOs implements the windows API in open source. In theory, you can run any windows application natively with no worries of comparability because the OS implements the exact same functions Windows does, including the APIs that aren't fully (or at all) documented by MS. That being said, I have no idea how well it works; not having used it myself.

      • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:47PM

        by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:47PM (#113530) Journal

        Ah, thanks.
        +1 Informative

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:48PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:48PM (#113569)

        ReactOS doesn't actually implement the windows API, it relies on wine for that. It just implements the windows kernel.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:25PM (#113574)

        It's not Linux is the obvious answer.

        But I guess the Linux NTFS driver is Open Source, right? And the algorithms to read and write NTFS should not be OS dependent. Of course you cannot simply take the Linux driver as is, but why can't they take just the algorithm part from there, change Linux calls for disk I/O to corresponding ReactOS calls, and only write the API layer of the driver anew? Or if they do that, what's so complicated about it that it takes so long?

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:44PM

          by arashi no garou (2796) on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:44PM (#113585)

          I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that there are two factors at play here. One, NTFS support on any non-Microsoft OS is partial, not full. Even as good as GNU/Linux support via FUSE can be, it's still dangerous to rely on for important data. Two, ReactOS is attempting to provide a Windows-compatible OS that is fully open source. Therefore, any attempt at read/write access to NTFS volumes must be reverse-engineered, since Microsoft won't release the source to NTFS. Given that NTFS has been the standard file system in use by consumer Microsoft OS releases since 2002, the ReactOS team want to achieve full compatibility, so they are being extremely careful in approaching that goal.

          In other words, you don't want to try to use ReactOS on NTFS and suddenly have your data disappear because they just "borrowed" GNU/Linux's NTFS support. So they are attempting to implement their own ntfs.sys instead.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:25PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:25PM (#113659)

            I'm no expert

            Hmmm.

            NTFS support on any non-Microsoft OS is partial, not full

            Linux has had stable read and write support for NTFS since early 2007. [google.com]
            What do you perceive as missing?
            ...besides, y'know, proper file permissions--which MICROS~1 has never had.

            dangerous to rely on for important data

            ...same as when using NTFS under a MICROS~1 OS--because NTFS is MICROS~1's homebrew technology.
            There are no surprises in your statement.
            ...and, if M$ would document their 4th-rate protocols fully, it would be duck soup to reimplement them.
            ...but that would break M$'s business model of obfuscation.

            .
            Regarding the AC above: [soylentnews.org]
            ReactOS [...] relies on wine

            ReactOS did do a major rewrite back in early 2010. [google.com]
            At that time, there was a serious cross-pollination between the 2 projects.

            -- gewg_

            • (Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday November 07 2014, @02:06PM

              by arashi no garou (2796) on Friday November 07 2014, @02:06PM (#113799)

              Linux has had stable read and write support for NTFS since early 2007.
              What do you perceive as missing?

              I've had issues with corrupted NTFS volumes after extensive read/write sessions under GNU/Linux (specifically Slackware with NTFS-3G and FUSE) for several years now. These days, I'll only write to an NTFS volume over a network share; I don't dare mount the volume natively in GNU/Linux. Maybe it's just Slackware; maybe it's just my hardware. But I've learned my lesson the hard way.

              The rest of your reply is blatantly biased against Microsoft (MICROS~1? Really? Grow up!) but I stand by what I wrote about the ReactOS team wanting to reverse-engineer NTFS instead of relying on NTFS-3G/FUSE, as I got it directly from their website. You can claim otherwise if you want, but you'd be calling them liars, not me.

            • (Score: 2) by monster on Friday November 07 2014, @05:44PM

              by monster (1260) on Friday November 07 2014, @05:44PM (#113884) Journal

              What do you perceive as missing?

              Some of the most egregious fuckups in the filesystem would land you in "Run chkdsk from Windows on this volume" (aka "I won't touch this shit even with a ten feet pole") territory.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:47PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:47PM (#113529)

      I thought we could read/write from NTFS anyway within Linux.?

      Last I checked, you could reliably:
      - read files
      - overwrite files up to the size of the file you were overwriting

      NTFS uses proprietary magic when allocating space to either create a new file or expand an existing file. There are at least experimental implementations of full NTFS read/write support, but Microsoft isn't exactly forthcoming when it comes to documenting it.

      I would imagine that what ReactOS is doing is cross-fertilizing with Wine as well, since Wine has also largely implemented the Windows API, but running on top of a Linux platform. My guess is that ReactOS, if successful, would be a bigger threat to Windows than Linux/Wine, because a lot of businesses would be able to transition to it and get off of the Microsoft upgrade treadmill without really having to change anything they're doing. I have no idea how close they are to achieving that, though.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:22PM

        by fnj (1654) on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:22PM (#113538)

        Sounds like FUD. NTFS-3G has had full read-write support for years. Files of ANY size can be created, modified, renamed, moved, or deleted. Hard links and symbolic links are supported.

        • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:15PM

          by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:15PM (#113561)

          Oh, right, I was thinking kernel support rather than a userspace tool, and the last time I built the kernel it still had those kinds of warnings about it.

          I don't play close attention to these kinds of things, since I barely use Windows.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
          • (Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:53PM

            by fnj (1654) on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:53PM (#113606)

            Understood. The kernel NTFS support is nothing more than a joke. But NTFS-3G using FUSE is not a kind of stunt of questionable value like ZFS-FUSE is. NTFS-3G is a fully performant first class file system.

            If you want a read-write FS to share between linux-BSD-OSX-Windows (i.e., removable media) - even any two of those really, NTFS is pretty much the only choice except for the abomination of FAT.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:05PM

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:05PM (#113611) Journal

              except for the abomination of FAT

              FAT is a great file system for 360kB floppy disks. Which is what it was designed for. It wasn't designed for disks of several hundred gigabytes.

              Calling it an abomination does not do justice to the file system.

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:22PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:22PM (#113539)

        Well, they've been working on it since 2004 (and even that was based on a previous abandoned project apparently) and they're still in alpha, so it'll be awhile.

        Plus, I can only assume Microsoft will sue the living bejeezus out of them the instant it looks like they're actually going to publish a usable product. (What's that, APIs aren't patentable? Here, let me find a different judge who disagrees.)

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:20PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:20PM (#113563)
          The only way they will get anywhere fast is if someone with big pockets and more resources helps out.

          Like say the Chinese Gov or similar...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:41PM (#113546)

      I'm sure the System D geniuses have already figured out how to integrate NTFS filesystem kernel modules at boot time, probably figuring out a way to couple it tightly with GRUB -- this way we could boot Linux off an NTFS partition as all the necessary I/O modules would be loaded at the earliest possible point in the boot cycle.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:25PM (#113565)

        Why are you in such a hurry to give the System D crowd, new ideas?

        If you don't like the or what they are doing, then shut the fsck up and quit helping them think.

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:55PM

      by Freeman (732) on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:55PM (#113570) Journal

      ReactOS is an open-source implementation of the NT Architecture. I.E. Native Windows Support. They work/share with the Wine community, because they are working on some of the same kinds of things. Wine runs in the Linux OS. ReactOS is the OS.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:13PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:13PM (#113533) Journal

    As worthless as Win 3.11 FW. For those that do not know this project started out as FreeWin95, that's right, a FOSS version of Windows 95. Now here we are, NINETEEN YEARS LATER and the damned thing still doesn't have the functionality or stability of Windows 2K which has been dead half a decade. Oh don't get me wrong the IDEA was a nice one but its obvious that is all its ever gonna be, an idea, because they are trying to hit an ever moving target with extremely limited resources while being so far behind they would require MSFT settle on a single release for at least a decade just for them to catch up. As we have seen with 7-8-8.1-10 the days of even 1 release every 5 years are truly over with MSFT going back to the kind of quick releases we saw with Win9X. Hell if the rumors are true that MSFT is going to a cheap or even free pricing model one of the biggest selling points for ReactOS, being an attractive upgrade for older hardware, will be lost leaving only "free as in freedom" as its selling point and I'm sorry but time and time again we have seen that if the GNU model of freedom is your ONLY selling point? You are doomed to failure.

    Not meaning to rain on their parade, simply facing reality and reality is stick a fork they be done. Hell even the Amiga guys have been able to ship an OS that is actually usable day to day with Haiku, trying the recent releases in a VM (which is already giving it a hell of an advantage since VMs use a very limited amount of well known virtual hardware) I'd say you'd be hard pressed to call it even beta quality, its buggy as hell and really isn't useful for any kind of real tasks. at their current rate they'll be up to being a functional XP knockoff around 2035. Its a damned shame as we really could have used it during the Vista era and being able to use Windows drivers might have solved the ever present Linux driver issues but they were waaaaay behind before, Windows going to a 2 year release cycle means they have no chance in hell of even being 1 release behind, much less ever catching up.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:31PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:31PM (#113542)

      Well, since even Microsoft is breaking backwards-compatibility with 8, ReactOS may eventually be more compatible with old Windows code than Windows itself is. Assuming the project ever gets to beta, I'd say aim for 7 compatibility and just stop there.

      Hell if the rumors are true that MSFT is going to a cheap or even free pricing model

      Don't remember if it was you or somebody else who brought this up before...do you have any actual citations for that claim? I did a quick googling and all I could find were articles saying they weren't aware of any substance to the rumor.

      leaving only "free as in freedom" as its selling point and I'm sorry but time and time again we have seen that if the GNU model of freedom is your ONLY selling point? You are doomed to failure.

      I'm betting a selling point will also be "we don't plan to fuck over the interface you've been using for the last 20 years."

      In other news, programming is hard. Programming really complicated things is really hard. But apparently official Microsoft products are the only ones for you.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:57PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:57PM (#113681) Journal

        Go look up Mary Jo Foley's articles, she has the inside track at Redmond and the skinny appears to be the new CEO is really sick of all the XP/7 holdouts and figures he has a winner so the talks are that 1.- It'll be free for everybody or 2.- it'l be free for 8/8.1 and $30 for everybody else, ala Apple. It makes good business sense as the consumer side has never been MSFT's bread and butter and with Chromebooks hitting the low end hard this would let 'em get everybody on Windows 10, used to the UI AND kill of most if not all the Windows piracy in the west while still letting them upsell with pro and ultimate so honestly this move really wouldn't be that big a shocker as some make it out to be.

        And I'm guessing you haven't used Windows 10 yet have you? its EXACTLY WHAT THE USERS WANTED Windows 8 to be, its Windows 7 with the OPTION of using the Metro UI if you have a convertible or just like the Metro look. So I would argue that if anything its Windows users that have shown the power of voting with their wallets works, they got exactly what they asked for, a faster Windows 7. i have it running right now on a circa 2009 AMD netbook (figuring if it'll run good there it'll run good anywhere) and even though every single driver is in compatibility mode its STILL faster and more responsive...ohh and I even have full hardware acceleration both in and out the browser, try THAT with 5 year old Linux drivers and see how far you get!

        Windows 10 frankly is gonna drive any real momentum these guys had (if they had any) right out as its the same UI everybody is used to, only faster, if the rumors are true its gonna be dirt cheap, and as far as compatibility goes? I have yet to find anything that won't run. Oh sure some of it will only run in compatibility mode (which now even works on startup items, sweet!) but even that has been made hassle free, you just install and run it and Windows does the shims automatically without prompting, hell my dad could use this without assistance!

        But lets take Win 10 out of the equation, okay? Even if Windows 10 didn't exist that don't change the fact its been NINETEEN YEARS and they STILL haven't shipped something that is actually useful for anything. Like I said even Haiku has an OS that you can install on actual hardware and do actual tasks on, this thing has less functionality and is more buggy than that Silverlight OS in a browser demo that's floating around the web because at least that is able to surf websites and play card games and the like without crashing! Its been nineteen years man, they have gone from Win9X to XP to Windows 7 as a target and STILL can't get something that you can just install and actually use! I'm sorry but at the current rate they won't have code you can actually use day to day until 2025...in today's breakneck OS release cycle? That might as well be centuries.

        It was a nice idea but mark my words it'll just limp along for several more years until it ends up another abandoned project in some source repo somewhere, they are just too far behind with too few resources trying to hit an ever faster moving target. Seriously if Win 10 turns out to be a hit how long do you think being compatible with Windows 7 will be usable? There are already programs that won't run on XP and its plug was pulled this year, hell some are already dropping Vista support, by the time they release usable code they might as well have kept it FreeWin95 as 7 will be about as compatible with modern software as Win9X.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @01:43AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @01:43AM (#113714)

          My thoughts regarding Windows 10:

          I've been playing with the beta, and to be completely honest I can wrap it up in a single sentence:

          Imagine Windows 8 but with a start menu and the ability to run "apps" in actual windows, almost as if an OS called "Windows" could do that.

          Done. That's it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there is no real improvement from 7. There. Speed improvements introduced in Windows 8? Negligible. Apps? Why the hell would anyone even bother on a desktop? UI? Still a hideous flat mess. At least bring back the classic theme so that my eyes don't have to bleed whenever I decide to slum it for the day instead of booting to Mint. New start menu? Less usable than the Windows 7 one since each element in the list view takes up about 2x as much space.

          I should at least post a disclaimer saying that Microsoft will probably at least pretend to listen to user feedback this time around, so the final version will likely offer something.

          And to be fair, I should also point out my personal biases here:
          1. I personally dislike tabletified flat UIs more than just about anything else. Wasted whitespace just makes me sad.
          2. I consider Windows to be a toy OS for games.
          3. I didn't try it on a tablet/touchscreen.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 07 2014, @04:18PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Friday November 07 2014, @04:18PM (#113855)

          kill of most if not all the Windows piracy in the west

          Because Unbreakable Security, sure. Let me know how that goes.

          its EXACTLY WHAT THE USERS WANTED Windows 8 to be, its Windows 7 with the OPTION of using the Metro UI if you have a convertible or just like the Metro look.

          Technically I think the users didn't really want Metro on the desktop at all, but okay; at least that would be an improvement.

          i have it running right now on a circa 2009 AMD netbook (figuring if it'll run good there it'll run good anywhere) and even though every single driver is in compatibility mode its STILL faster and more responsive...ohh and I even have full hardware acceleration both in and out the browser, try THAT with 5 year old Linux drivers and see how far you get!

          Blah blah blah Linux sucks rah rah Microsoft

          and as far as compatibility goes? I have yet to find anything that won't run.

          Oh, so they added the ability to run 16-bit executables under 64-bit back in?* Because last I heard, WinNext was going to be 64-only and 8 doesn't support 16 (as in, even have a compatibility mode for it). And before you ask, I do have an example: Civilization II. And yes, I still play it (most of the good games came out 1990-2000 anyway).

          Even if Windows 10 didn't exist that don't change the fact its been NINETEEN YEARS and they STILL haven't shipped something that is actually useful for anything.

          Yeah, I may like the idea of the project but I don't realistically expect that they'll actually deliver the product. At this point it would be like Duke Nukem Forever or HURD getting published...hmm.**

          Like I said even Haiku has an OS that you can install on actual hardware and do actual tasks on, this thing has less functionality and is more buggy than that Silverlight OS in a browser demo that's floating around the web because at least that is able to surf websites and play card games and the like without crashing!

          I thought they've had a physical installation disc for awhile now? And it can run Firefox 1.5 at least. How's that for damning with faint praise eh.

          It was a nice idea but mark my words it'll just limp along for several more years until it ends up another abandoned project in some source repo somewhere, they are just too far behind with too few resources trying to hit an ever faster moving target.

          Well, they've been working on it this long...programmers can be tenacious sometimes. I'm not sure what to predict.

          *I'll admit that this is a bit ridiculous use case, but your statement was ridiculous to begin with, so hey. And Microsoft kind of bases their entire OS on the premise.

          **Admittedly many years late, of crap-to-middling quality, and irrelevant by then.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday November 07 2014, @05:23PM

            by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday November 07 2014, @05:23PM (#113877) Journal

            Uhhh...riddle me this WHY WOULD YOU STEAL SOMETHING THAT IS FREE? Seriously DaFuq? You are just trolling and looking for a reason to argue, good day.

            --
            ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 07 2014, @05:39PM

              by tangomargarine (667) on Friday November 07 2014, @05:39PM (#113882)

              Speaking of DaFuq...what??

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:19PM

              by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:19PM (#114122)

              Oh, you're saying if Microsoft makes Windows free, people can't steal it anymore?* Technically true I suppose...like I said, I'll believe "free Windows" when I see it. Maybe Microsoft could make their money off of the platform lock-in via their Office yearly subscriptions (barf) and other software. You'll have to excuse me if I don't anticipate radical about-faces from companies who've been following more or less the same business model for the last 30 years.
              ---
              I was musing on the perspectives of success in the shower this morning...I suspect that many SD/SN FLOSSy-type posters would call "success" in the software world technically impressive products (a clever idea, or implemented in a particularly exciting way). The original hacker mentality (if you read any of that Stallman biography I linked you a little while ago) was all about eager programmers getting their hands on interesting-looking code and then tinkering around with it.
              .
              In contrast, the measure of "success" for a probably much larger portion of the world is: How well does it sell? If you look at computing history, many of the best-selling products were NOT the best choice technically speaking. x86 was cheaper, so it won. DOS wasn't entangled in lawsuits like BSD (although maybe it should have been), and cheap at the time (cf. commercial Unix), so it won long enough to bootstrap Windows. Hell, Unix itself most people would probably say is better technically speaking than Linux, but Linux was free and available.
              .
              So the hacker definition of "success" is directly at odds with the ~mainstream one, which is why there's so much frothing at the mouth, I think, in these arguments. And I, at least, get rather annoyed when people like you imply that Windows is the only "right" viewpoint and anyone who disagrees with you is a fool. I'll agree that Windows has its place; I will not, however, agree that it fills all places.
              ---
              *There's the observation that "stealing" software is a bit of a misleading term to begin with, since you're not depriving the original owner of anything, but I don't expect that argument to have any impact on you other than making you angrier.

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 07 2014, @05:45PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Friday November 07 2014, @05:45PM (#113885) Journal

        Well, since even Microsoft is breaking backwards-compatibility with 8, ReactOS may eventually be more compatible with old Windows code than Windows itself is. Assuming the project ever gets to beta, I'd say aim for 7 compatibility and just stop there.

        In my experience, Wine is already more compatible than old Windows code than Windows is -- and that's been true since Windows XP. "Compatibility mode" is a joke. There was once a time (back when I actually used Windows) when I installed Wine on Windows XP to get some Windows 9x software working...

    • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:30PM

      by CRCulver (4390) on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:30PM (#113577) Homepage
      Hey, don't knock ReactOS. FreeDOS is getting long in the tooth now, maybe ReactOS can serve a niche as the preinstalled operating system that no one wants anyway and will immediately wipe in favour of a pirated Windows installation.
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by petecox on Friday November 07 2014, @12:29AM

        by petecox (3228) on Friday November 07 2014, @12:29AM (#113699)

        Even if it never reaches stability for every day use, it could be a valuable testing tool. You don't always have the same exact OS configuration handy that the customer does.

        On more than one occasion I've been able to track down a bug by running an application in wine. e.g. when work desktops ran XP and a client were deploying Windows 7.

        Being able to do UI tests in a lightweight virtualization container as part of an automated build system would be neat.

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:07PM

      by Bot (3902) on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:07PM (#113634) Journal

      > the damned thing still doesn't have the functionality or stability of Windows 2K

      You mean a closed source product with heaps of unofficial APIs and bugs and strategic incompatibilities made by a mom and pop shop called Microsoft Corp.?

      They are David against Goliath, only this time Goliath is in a f*cking tank. I admire them.

      --
      Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:30PM (#113660)

      It's the MSFT business model. [google.com]
      Want a continuous trail of brokenness?
      Just commit your ecosystem to M$'s junk and M$'s business model.

      Expecting someone else to perfectly duplicate that ongoing brokenness is folly.
      Reimplementing M$ technologies is strictly for LEGACY apps from which folks can't seem to free themselves.

      All the really interesting stuff is happening in the land of FOSS anyway.
      Everyone with the slightest bit of sense has realized that having a M$ ecosystem with those wide-open backdoors is playing Russian Roulette with all the cylinders loaded.
      Cryptome Reveals How MSFT Gives the FBI & NSA Back Doors to Crack Encryption [soylentnews.org]

      -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1) by jmorris on Friday November 07 2014, @12:09AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Friday November 07 2014, @12:09AM (#113696)

      Um, you claim to have booted Haiku and you think it is an Amiga OS clone? Guess you never actually saw an Amiga, right? Haiku is a clone of Be OS.

      Now onto the subject of ReactOS. Their problem is that they have been at it for a very long time and still have NOTHING to show for it. They can't really point to a single instance of a non-trivial Windows application running on an actual PC hosting ReactOS and say, "This is what you can do with our product!" I don't expect them to have Windows 8 or even 7 full compatibility. But how about Win9x? OR WfW? Something? Some subset that can do something useful for somebody? Anything?

      Within a year of Linus making his big announcement people were doing useful work with real machines running it. Most of the credit of course should go to the GNU Project for supplying the userland, MIT for X, etc. but it could do things. And ReactOS has Wine to contribute a lot of code that also actually does things... although Wine also has a lot of gaps in coverage considering how many years of effort it has invested.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kaganar on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:39PM

    by kaganar (605) on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:39PM (#113567)

    I don't have a use for ReactOS, and I may never. However, I do have to admire the project for the cool factor. Some extremely hardcore programmers (i.e. The Nightwatch [microsoft.com]) are waging an impossible battle. This is the equivalent of 300 -- but with programmers. And the tickets are free!

    I'm seeing comments whining about the lack of parity with current Windows, like they've been done a disservice because ReactOS doesn't do what they need, or as if the ReactOS team should give up. WTH? This is real nerd news -- this is awesome. If you're only interested in polished products, then you're just another end user. Otherwise, kick on some experimental kernel features and join the party. ;-)

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:22PM

    by pTamok (3042) on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:22PM (#113572)

    This sounds like a good milestone. I'd hope ReactOS can shorten development by looking at the ntfs-3g sourcecode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G [wikipedia.org]

    It's a pity ReactOS doesn't get more support. I think a large number of people would be happy to have a WindowsXP replacement available that doesn't require an activation key and buying installation media from eBay. So many companies assume you have access to a 'Windows PC' when providing software, it would be nice to have an OS that is Windows API compliant, but didn't require sending money to Microsoft.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:54PM (#113653)

      IIRC they can't work from ms source even of it's freely available. The project goes to great lengths to reverse engineer the functionality in a manner that limits the chance of legal action.

      • (Score: 2) by caseih on Friday November 07 2014, @03:03AM

        by caseih (2744) on Friday November 07 2014, @03:03AM (#113725)

        Does ntfs 3g have Microsoft code in it? I have never heard that before.

      • (Score: 1) by In hydraulis on Friday November 07 2014, @03:09AM

        by In hydraulis (386) on Friday November 07 2014, @03:09AM (#113728)

        You misunderstand, no big deal.

        NTFS-3G is not MS source. Admittedly, it isn't unequivocally capital-F Free software, but MS has no claim to it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @06:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @06:43AM (#113753)

    couple of things: does this mean ReactOS is starting on their implementation of the HAL?
    If so, they will soon have compatibility with third party drivers... And since MSFT doesn't really provide any of the difficult ones, this could mean they go quickly from a curiosity that requires a VM, to a very usable - and unlike the original, Robust! Drop in replacement for microsoft's OS.

    Crowing about it being "a moving target" misses the point : it's been the ReactOS guy who has been giving MSFT employees training about their OS, not the other way around!
    And anyway: True Version 1.x of windows ran out of legs with the version they called "Millenium Edition", everything they've done since has truly only been "the second system design". Regardless of whatever paintjob it had had.

    Let's just cut to the chase: it is "the C++ OS" more than anything else.
    This is why linux code won't be used, it's fundamentally not compatible with the UNIX "C OS" philosophy.

    So, it's probably never going to threaten Unix for sheer robustness, but it'd be nice to have an engineered, open source OS to run games on, with good performance, and most notably with MSFT. You'd think NVIDIA would be all over this: they're the specialists at optimisation for that. Think what they could achieve without MSFT getting in the way!