from the we-put-a-man-on-the-moon,-but-we-wont-do-that dept.
Microsoft's telemetry features in Windows 10 are a privacy advocate's nightmare. Now that Microsoft is trying to back port these "features" into existing versions of Windows, it seems like many of us have no future upgrade path. Sure there is Linux, but I have some older Windows software that I still want to use. ReactOS is still out there, but does not look like there have been any updates in a while.
Does the Soylent community believe it is possible to get this project going full steam to producing a useable alternative for existing Windows users?
Related Stories
https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0415-released/
We are pleased to announce the release of ReactOS 0.4.15! This release offers Plug and Play fixes, audio fixes, memory management fixes, registry healing, improvements to accessories and system tools including Notepad, Paint, RAPPS, the Input Method Editor, and shell improvements.
We chose to release this version of ReactOS in honor of Eric Kohl's first commit to the ReactOS code base, which dates back to 1999.
[...]
0.4.15 was branched 6 months ago. Since then, many new and exciting features have been worked on in the master branch. UEFI support, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), a new graphical installer, a new NTFS filesystem driver, power management, and newer application support are just a few features being worked on. We are excited to share this journey with you as ReactOS improves and matures.
Previously on SoylentNews:
Watch: Mac OS X 10.4 Running in Windows Alternative ReactOS via PearPC Emulator - 20180510
Alternatives to Win32...Win32 of course! ReactOS still making progress.... - 20160828
Release of ReactOS 0.4 Brings Open Source Windows Closer to Reality - 20160217
Ask Soylent: Can We Turn ReactOS into a Viable Alternative to Windows 10? - 20151021
NTFS Now Supported in ReactOS LiveCD - 20141106
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:17PM
n/t
(Score: 5, Interesting) by massa on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:37AM
I do think that if privacy-minded people invest some (not a lot) of effort in ReactOS, they can make it run all the legacy stuff (that is the really important I-have-to-have-windows installed, IMHO): internal company software developed in VB, Delphi, etc.
The problem I see is that a lot of that kind of software is somewhat MSOffice-tied (where I work, we ditched MSOffice for BrOffice (and now LibreOffice) in 2007 IIRC, so we already invested the work in breaking those ties.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday October 23 2015, @12:35AM
I do think that if privacy-minded people invest some (not a lot) of effort in ReactOS, they can make it run all the legacy stuff
I don't quite agree. Windows was developed by thousands of coders over 20+ years. It has mountains of legacy code. All that code sits there and sometimes gets called by this or that application. It works on Windows. But it would be all but impossible to make it work on a clone of Windows without having access to the Windows sources and to the sources of the application that does not work.
Such a problem is resolved in the industry by cooperation of MS programmers (who have access to their code) and the ISV programmers (who see theirs.) As ReactOS people are neither of them, and as none of the two above mentioned groups is really interested to help them, you simply have to reverse engineer everything. This is extremely laborious. In many instances it would be technically easier and cheaper to rewrite the necessary Windows application from scratch to run it natively on Linux. As that is rarely done, you can imagine that an even larger effort is not going to happen. Most of software development is a long, boring slog, especially if you are coding taxation algorithms for this year for all 57 states and all counties, not forgetting municipalities which have their own rules - and all the source rules change every year.
Sometimes, though, the technical advantage of rewriting, say, Quicken, is not relevant at all because the new software will not have access to the APIs of all major banks. Then you have to use what you have to use. As I mentioned elsewhere, Windows Embedded might be a suitable platform for running single purpose software installs. (It runs well in a VM.) Another option is to develop a special firewall for Windows 10 (a hardware box that is based on some board with two network interfaces) that reliably isolates Windows 10 from the Internet, but allows select traffic if your QuickBooks or SolidWorks require it. The box would have to be pretty smart, and filter DNS and ICMP and everything else in between that could be used to spy on you.
Naturally, the best way to deal with this problem is to apply customer's pressure to the likes of Autodesk and Adobe, so that they produce their software for Linux. For that to happen Windows 10 must become a real disaster. I do not foresee that happening, as most people out there are oblivious to the facts of spying. They will not mount the necessary boycott. Geeks in corporations will not be able to do much either, as the business requires use of software every day and every hour and every minute, and you cannot tell 10,000 workers that their payroll is not coming because you have a dispute with Microsoft. If you do that, the dispute with MS will immediately become one of your least concerns. At best the boss will tell you to airgap the box - which is just as safe as keeping samples of live Ebola virus in a jar on a top shelf in the lab. Any mistake in cabling, and all these boxes will happily dump gigabytes of the accumulated spy logs into MS's servers faster than you can realize what just happened.
(Score: 1) by massa on Saturday October 24 2015, @03:22PM
Naturally, the best way to deal with this problem is to apply customer's pressure to the likes of Autodesk and Adobe,
but those are not the _real_ problem. The real problem is the tonnes of Win32 VB, Delphi, etc programs internally developed. Where I work we do have two hundred different Win32 executables, all developed in-house, with a small (currently 20) and _aging_ team of devs. The only way you rewrite one of the pieces is when technology gets _really_ in the way (we partially rewrote a dozen or so of those executables when we migrated from Office 97 to BrOffice in 2006) and you just don't have the resources to rewrite them all.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday October 24 2015, @04:18PM
The real problem is the tonnes of Win32 VB, Delphi, etc programs internally developed. Where I work we do have two hundred different Win32 executables, all developed in-house
This is only a problem in relatively large companies. In this one we do not have much of in-house developed code. What we have is written by me and can be ported, if necessary. The problem is that there is nothing on Linux that compares to WPF and .NET in convenience for RAD that would make it appealing to developers with new projects. The GTK# is perhaps the best candidate... but it still trails far behind in most aspects, and development with it will cost more money up front. Data binding alone is a huge time saver.
(Score: 1) by massa on Monday October 26 2015, @11:53PM
We are not a really big shop (3000 employees). The next generation of software that is being produced in house are java web applications and js-rich apps with java webservices backends.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday October 27 2015, @12:29AM
Your company is 100 times as large as my company. You can accept somewhat higher costs of Java Web applications, as they are balanced by easier deployment and higher portability - which matters, as you have many users. For us it is more practical for now to write the cheapest applications and just use a few PCs that run them locally.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:18PM
Have you tried running that older Windows software under Wine [winehq.org] yet? It often handles older software the best, because it's not scrambling to play catch-up with the people in Redmond for those APIs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:29PM
What software? When I made the switch to Linux 6 years ago I dreaded losing MS Money, but found alternatives for that and anything else I needed in the repos. ReactOS is like beating a dead horse, just make the switch and be happy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:41PM
What is your MS Money alternative? (genuinely interested in the answer, not trolling here)
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:17PM
AFAIK MS Money doesn't exist at all anymore. That was completely canceled a few years back.
I've personally used Moneydance, but I've found the way it does the accounting to be really annoying. I haven't used it in a few years, but it failed miserably at handling bank transfers. It would insist on duplicating the transaction so that it could remove money and put it on the right day, so you'd either have the money being in the wrong place at the wrong time or you'd have double the amount being transered.
But, it's a nice program if you don't mind having to manually adjust things like that. Hopefully they've fixed that in the mean time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:04PM
in b4 gnucash
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:19PM
I replaced MS Money 99 with kmymoney. It works fine for what I needed it for, which is checking/savings ledger. I back up the database to a flashdrive.
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:29PM
What software?
How about CAD packages, specialized industrial software, ERP, custom application etc.
Here is my example of Windows only software that I need for my job:
PLC programming software for Automationdirect PLC's. Directsoft 5, Click and Productivity3000 controllers all have Windows only software. They don't work under Wine. The only alternative is running Windows in a VM. Using VirtualBox I have had issues with USB-RS232 adapters working through a VM. I get timeouts and missing coms. I haven't tried VMware but why waste the money. Native Windows is my only safe bet in that area.
I love Linux just as much as the next Geek but there are big time caveats for people looking to 100% dump Windows. That is why I have a Linux box and Windows box at home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:24PM
Did you install the VirtualBox Extension Pack to get USB support?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:50PM
USB to RS232 adapters are notoriously problematic. It has been a while since I looked into it, but IIRC it has to do with interrupt timing/processing - like they rely on the driver to poll for data rather than send an interrupt to the host when new data arrives. I'm sure running in a VM exacerbates that. 99% of them are unreliable for anything complicated, the remaining 1% are hard to find, they generally don't advertise as being superior. As a general rule, if you need reliable RS232 you have to go with a dedicated serial port.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:42AM
Not to mention that if you're coding applications that work with serial, you may even have to change your code in specific ways to accommodate USB-serial adapters.
And another note, anybody who thinks that RS-232 is an ancient and obsolete technology has never held any real technical or industrial job. RS-232 is still found everyfuckingwhere in industry.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:44AM
Try this: http://cnc-specialty-store.com/rs232-cables/rs232-usb-to-serial-port-converter-adapter-for-cnc-fully-tested [cnc-specialty-store.com]
There's a fair demand for it for CNC machines. No idea about using it from a VM though.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:04PM
Yes. USB passthrough won't work without the extensions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:26AM
Last I heard, a lot of that expensive specialized industrial software doesn't work under Windows 10, but these machines, when connected to the internet, update to Windows 10 anyway, breaking the industrial software on 6-figure machines. So basically you don't have a choice: you have to use some old version of Windows and that's it, and you have to keep your machine off the network.
The only solution to this is to simply not buy this garbage. If a vendor is so stupid they use Windows for a 6-figure industrial machine, find another vendor that isn't so stupid. Windows simply does not give you the control that Linux does; even the industrial equipment vendor has no control over the OS they're basing their product on.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:28AM
Someone modded you troll. Apparently, they don't work with industrial equpiment. Branson welders discovered the truth of what you're saying. They stopped making Windows controlled welders, and switched off to Linux. None of our capital investment level equipment has ever used Windows. None of our small peripheral equipment has ever used Windows. Only Branson has ever used Windows, and they saw the light. (Their welders fill a middle ground, costing only a small fraction of our plastic injection machines, but substantially more than small punch presses and other peripherals.)
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:27AM
Ah, so Microsoft is actually doing something to secure those industry applications! ;-)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:58AM
My bet is they had a lot of VB5/6 code. Recent security changes like don't foolishly write to the program files directory, UAC, and graphical changes are what cripples them. Though, some simple tweaks can fix most or all of those problems. Though, drivers and real hardware like PCI cards are your achilles heel. I have CNC systems that will not run on any Windows after XP. They used a realtime subsystem from Ardence that was tied to 2k/XP architecture. So those stay XP or 2k and are isolated from the network.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:18PM
Go look up Beckhoff automation. They make Windows PC based automation systems for plants and machinery that can cost millions. Scary stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:05AM
PLC programming software for Automationdirect PLC's. Directsoft 5, Click and Productivity3000 controllers all have Windows only software.
actually, there has been plenty of development to get PLC dev on Linux. check out MatPLC. you may not be able to get your specific hardware to work on Linux but that doesn't mean you can't sell it and get something that does. if you scoff at the idea of having to pay to get hardware that works with Linux, you should realize that you have already paid to tie yourself to Windows.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:26AM
Nice for a small mom-n-pop shop maybe, but I can absolutely guarantee that an automotive manufacturer or aerospace company is not going to scrap millions of dollars of installed systems to let a guerrilla controls engineer retrofit their latest raspberry pi or arduino concoction into all their production machinery. The real world has a sensible inertia all its own.
I just run VMware on Debian and be done with it. Plays well with all the big boys (Siemens, Rockwell, Fanuc, Delta V, etc.)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:49AM
I certainly have been looking at alternatives. One of them is an industrial strength Arduino based PLC. I'm proficient with C and there are ladder to C compilers/IDE's for Arduino and other C applications. But how long will they be making these? Can I still buy a replacement CPU in 5/10/15/20 years? Doubtful. Companies like Automationdirect, Allen Bradley, and Siemens have been around for decades and aren't going anywhere.
At my other job, we have Automationdirect DL440 PLC's that were in stalled sometimes around 1995. I can still buy every part for them and AD told me they have no plans of cancelling the series yet. 20 years later and I can still get parts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:32AM
I can confirm the issue with USB-RS232 converters (FTDI cables and virtualbox in my case). The delay between characters is much longer and irregular, amongst other subtleties. Difference is I have a Windows host and linux guest. Anyway what I did to solve this once and for all is use socat in the guest and a python script on the host (found somewhere on internet) so that serial traffic is redirected over TCP between host and guest. I've checked with the oscilloscope and it looks exactly like direct traffic this way.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:01PM
Thanks for that tip. I'll look into it.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:11PM
You can also get dedicated hardware serial to ethernet converter boxes. I used these to replace a rats-nest of serial cables in the office of a manufacturing plant and they seemed to work quite well, at least for printers and dumb terminals and that sort of thing.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:45PM
That could work straight from the VM to the serial port. Though, powering it up in the field might be a problem unless it could be powered from USB.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:45AM
I find that Siemens Step7/TIA, Rockwell Studio 5000, and Mitsubishi GX Developer (roughly 90% of the PLC's in the world) all run very nicely under VMware on a Debian box. Yeah, it's a pain having multiple vm's to support client version and native OS requirements, but it works just fine. Same goes for AutoCAD and ProE, although the overhead necessitates a pretty powerful workstation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:09AM
Get a PC with a real serial port and you can use the COM port in a VM without hassles. All it takes is a serial card in a desktop, really.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:34AM
Most of that work is field work. So laptops for me. Though, my older Lenovo has an Express card port.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:50AM
If it's a PCI connectivity ExpressCard (not USB -- expresscards can have PCI and USB data lines), that should work fine. Hopefully someone's made a PCI serial expresscard to get around USB RS232 issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:24PM
It may handle software, but are there Linux drivers for the hardware? I have an older MOMO Steering wheel that Logitech made, but I don't know that all of the functions would be supported by Linux, let alone it working with a game installed in WINE. If ReactOS could use the existing Windows drivers, that would be awesome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:23PM
Even under PS2 emulators.
Force feedback has worked on linux for a number of years, including via emulators.
(Score: 1) by Bodger on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:52PM
I tried running wine a few years back but most of the newer Windows apps are .Net and I did not have much luck in running them.
Has that improved?
Thanx
Bodger
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:11PM
It isnt that the windows applications are now .NET, they have been for a while. They are just a newer version of .NET.
Wine works well with older programs, think two years. New stuff makes calls on dlls that haven't been made to work with wine yet. NO matter what you will never have all of the new applications work well in Wine. It will always take a while for it to catch up.
TLDR: Wine works better with applications that have been out for a while.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:19PM
but I have some older Windows software that I still want to use.
Only slightly off topic, don't forget the hardware with your "solution".
I have an old win-xp only eprom programmer that runs under wine but wine doesn't USB pass thru well enough, or fast enough, or at all, such that I can run a XP image with the burner software. To say eprom programming is sensitive to timing would be an understatement. It would probably be easier to run a CNC controller LOL.
My wife tossed out a fairly nice dedicated film negative scanner because of no mac drivers and no modern windows drivers. A pity. Of course she scanned all her film so no major loss, but ...
Fancied up enough virtualization might be good enough for software problems too.
I really don't care if XP, or even 95, is vulnerable if you surf random websites... all I want to do is burn this eprom image on that piece of silicon, I promise to never even start up MSIE. Just one app I wanna use, just that one app...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jimshatt on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:28PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:33AM
We believed that to be true at one time. For that reason, programs were developed to slipstream updates and drivers into the installation media, and to strip out unwanted portions of the OS.
http://www.nliteos.com/ [nliteos.com]
Remove IE from the installation media, and it can never start up once it's installed.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:29AM
Have you tried to contact other folks who use that app?
Perhaps the lot of you could form a cooperative/user group.
Once organized, you might contact the WINE|ReactOS developers and mention to them that you've put a bounty [google.com] on getting that app running without any MICROS~1 code.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:24PM
Lets look to the history books for similar projects.
DOSEmu finally shipped a 1.0 in exactly one RedHat Linux (Pre RHEL/Fedora) release before being dropped as obsolete.
WINE can run a few games but few more serious applications reliably after about two decades of effort.
ReactOS leverages Wine for much of the top of their stack so they can concentrate on the kernel and low level issues. Meaning they will be less complete than Wine by definition.
If there were a major push to flee Windows and a few deep pocketed corporations put some of their money into it ReactOS could probably entirely replace Windows XP in three years, WIndows 7 in five... by which time both would be out of support and of no interest. Only a committed effort would ever hope to chase Microsoft's taillights and would always be years behind.
No, you want to end this madness you have two options.
1. Stop playing their game. Embrace the penguin.
2. A broad swath of Industry, Government and a few universities could come together and standardize a Windows conpatible API/ABI and demand all purchases be compliance tested against that standard instead of whatever Microsoft ships. That would freeze a target long enough to catch it and make it worth catching.
There is no third option. So pick one or shut up and obey.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:27PM
A broad swath of Industry, Government and a few universities could come together and standardize a Windows conpatible API/ABI and demand all purchases be compliance tested against that standard instead of whatever Microsoft ships. That would freeze a target long enough to catch it and make it worth catching.
Ha! That's a good one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:14PM
I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
(Score: 3, Informative) by unzombied on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:20PM
If by few you mean lots (13 000 or so [winehq.org]), then yes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:40PM
And those are only the ones where people cared enough to get an account, log in, and fill out their form. There are at least 20 apps I've used just fine with WINE, but could not be bothered to fill that in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:36AM
Self-deprecating? Yes.
Slothful and willing to admit it? Yes?
Informative about the incompleteness of the database? Yes.
Flamebait? I don't get it.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Informative) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:00AM
Of which nearly a 1/3 have a "garbage" rating. And nearly half of all apps fall into the lowest two ratings.
(Score: 2) by unzombied on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:54AM
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:01AM
No, go count how many are Gold with -no- notes. You can get rated gold and still have showstopper bugs like no printing, broken networking, can't use required hardware, etc. By the time you really get down to the real world usability of non-trivial applications the number is low. And you just write off from the beginning -all- of the applications that are brought up in the first breath when you suggest just migrating to Linux. Internet Explorer (i.e. ActiveX plugins for internal use), Office, Photoshop, etc. None of those work.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:55AM
That's weird. How come my g/f's been using MS Office in Wine (Crossover Office's version) for nearly a decade. Every day. As $DAYJOB, in fact. OK, she's running an old version of Office, but she works in fields where the documents *are* the product (academia, legislative, media/press, etc.), and in those fields *noone* likes the modern gimicky versions of Office, and they're actively avoided. (Not true about all academia, as of course the youngsters come in and all they know is the latest lamest version of the suite. However, the journals themselves actively favour the continuity of using the older versions.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:42PM
yeah, those dumbass companies deserve what they have coming.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:45AM
You falsely assume those 6000 apps work flawlessly. That isn't even remotely the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:20PM
Why do you hold Wine to the standard that the programs have to work flawlessly when a lot of them don't work flawlessly in Windows proper?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:27AM
Working flawlessly in WINE should really be interpreted as working as well as it does in Windows.
(Score: 1) by Zappy on Thursday October 22 2015, @08:04AM
If you select Platinum rating and limit it to the last few versions of wine you get 115 applications of which 85 are in the Games category.
So while I applaud the effort, and having ran some applications with some level of success in Wine myself it is nowhere near a universal solution for running Windows applications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:13PM
If you don't restrict to the last few versions of Wine, then you get 4051 Platinum ratings.
Now this could mean that newer versions of Wine broke thousands of applications. But much more likely is that for most of those it's just that nobody bothered to explicitly enter into the database that those applications actually continue to work on newer versions.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:32PM
If you don't restrict to the last few versions of Wine, then you get 4051 Platinum ratings.
Which isn't really meaningful. You're including versions of wine that haven't been actively maintained or in use for years and you're also including in development versions which major distros like Debian and Ubuntu are not shipping. On the other hand, Debian testing [debian.org] and Ubuntu 15.10 [ubuntu.com] use Wine 1.6.2 (latest stable) which has only 153 platinum apps or not even 2% of all applications in that DB.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:37PM
And of those, 92 are games. So that leaves us only 61 non-games that have a platinum rating in the stable version of Wine. Of which only 11 are productivity apps, none of which are major applications like Microsoft Office or Photoshop.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:08PM
While I agree that the recent versions of MS Office and Photoshop aren't at platinum level. Photoshop 7 and Microsoft Office 2002 (XP) do have Platinum ratings. Microsoft Office 2002 (XP) is noted as tested using the "most recent stable" version of Wine v1.6.1.
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) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:54PM
1.6.2 is the recent stable. That's why it's what is shipped in Debian and Ubuntu 15.10. And, neither of those are listed as platinum in 1.6.2.
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true [winehq.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:16AM
Just because it's in that list doesn't mean it actually runs or runs well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:55AM
Nothing I've ever ran through wine in the past 5 years worked properly out of the box except for really barebones self written programs, those things that do work will suffer from various anomalies that wont manifest themselves immediately.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:29AM
2. A broad swath of Industry, Government and a few universities could come together and standardize a Windows conpatible API/ABI and demand all purchases be compliance tested against that standard instead of whatever Microsoft ships. That would freeze a target long enough to catch it and make it worth catching.
You've got to be kidding. You can't even easily prevent Microsoft from forcibly "upgrading" your computer to Windows 10 any more. Having a standardized Win32 API/ABI isn't going to solve anything, because your system will just get "upgraded" to the newest Windows (which breaks the standard) whether you like it or not.
The only way to deal with a hostile OS vendor is to simply not use that vendor's products.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:50AM
You missed the point. If all purchasing is based on a Win32 Standard that Microsoft's product is only one compliant implementation of, you no longer have to run 'Windows applications' on Microsoft Windows. Whether you actually move all OS installs to a competing product doesn't change that reality, the option to do so forces Microsoft to change the way they behave. It also redefines the relationship between Microsoft and ISVs since they no longer chase Microsoft's ever shifting APIs and instead implement to a Standards document and reference implementation and test suite. Microsoft becomes a dominant but not sole supplier of 'Win32' OS software. Hopefully with tighter standards than the POSIX fiasco where even source level compatibility between supposedly compliant implementations could get into a mass if conditional compilation. Why do you think the UNIX world needed GNU Autoconf?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:37PM
Won't work. They tried this with OOXML, and it's still impossible for anyone to implement a completely compatible alternative to MS's Office. As long as MS is dominant, customers will consider their implementation "the standard" and if yours doesn't work, it's not MS's fault, it's you. MS is not going to change their behavior as long as people keep pouring money into their coffers.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:58PM
OOXML was a scam. I'm talking about an actual Standard with a real published set of complete ABI/API documentation and a test suite to judge conformance against. In that sort of scenario Microsoft Office in it's current form would probably be ruled non-conforming and off the approved purchase list. I'm proposing nothing short of seizing the power to define what is and isn't conforming from Microsoft's control, that it is the whole point. OOXML did none of that, you can't even implement a conforming implementation from the so called standard and there is no conformance test suite other than 'does MS Office load/save it?'
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 23 2015, @02:18AM
No, OOXML was an actual standard with a real published set of complete documentation too: the ISO even says so. The fact that MS screwed with the ISO's process is beside the point.
You really think MS wouldn't do the exact same thing with a Win32 standardization effort? That's seriously naive.
Or do you think they should just get a neutral standards organization to make up the standard? Like, oh, ISO?? Oh wait...
I'm proposing nothing short of seizing the power
Seizing it how? You're not going to get the US government to do this (and even if they wanted to, they probably wouldn't be able to legally).
And finally, where are you going to get any alternative OSes to actually implement this standard? It's not like there's a bunch of software companies out there large enough to pull of such a big project, and who have the expertise to make an OS. We already have something sorta-close with WINE (implements Win32 API/ABI on Linux/x86), and it doesn't work half the time because the Win32 "standard" is such a mess.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:50PM
I see code commits that happened only a few hours ago. The group meetings look like they happen quarterly with the last one in September. They look like they are doing okay : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mmcmonster on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:15PM
I think the issue is that 0.4 hasn't been released. The reason it's a concern is that 0.4 was supposed to be a usable OS that you could install as a primary OS and not in a Virtual Machine.
And we've been on the 0.3.x branch for several years now.
I think the author is quite reasonable in thinking that active development has stalled.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:42PM
I wouldn't be surprised if some low level flunky thought an "ask soylent" would be a good way to drum up more attention to get it over whatever block is in place to a 0.4 release.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:42AM
Thanks for the info! That does clear it up a lot.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:12PM
If its so obscure you can't even post a link to it in TFS, then, NO.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:27PM
I thought I had an 'a href=' to the ReactOS web site in the original submission, but it does not appear to have taken. Not a 'flunkie' for their project, either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by buswolley on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:17PM
Mostly what keeps people on Windows are games and Office.
The industry wants to move toward streaming games over internet, and Steam is pushing game compatibility. with **nix.
MS is pushing online MSOfgice tools as a complete replacement of local Office software.
Virtualization and more powerful hardware means running these softwares on a Linux host is not a hassle or a drag.
Windows OS is not needed.
Windows 10 will be the last MS 'success'
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Disagree) by moondoctor on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:25PM
High-end software plays a big role too. CAD is a good example. In general, if you want to do 'real' work windows is your only option.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:55PM
Sure. But that is a small minority, especially since most of that category (professional software tools belong to Linux powered workstations). I suppose I should include Photoshop though for a MS win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:27PM
Photoshop works fine on wine for me, it's an older version though. And, I haven't even used it in years because gimp does what I need.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Francis on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:14AM
I haven't used Photoshop in years, but if you need something that's compatible with Photoshop saves and runs on Linux, you might take a look at http://www.thebloomapp.com/features/ [thebloomapp.com] . It's still in development, but it's already rather impressive.
But, that being said, professionals that need to interoperate with work by other professionals are pretty much stuck using PS as it's the only way to guarantee complete compatibility.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:33AM
Wow, seriously, they're handing out mod points to retards now, apparently.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:17PM
You mean, you got mod points?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:56AM
Indeed. I have 20 years of experience driving Mastercam. That $20k seat of software determines the OS and hardware requirements, and it only runs on Windows.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:55PM
This is not true. I regularly use an expensive commercial package for modeling and simulating scientific and engineering problems called COMSOL. Its linux version is not bad, and actually (depends a bit on your setup) more powerful under linux (better memory management and clustering options). My demands for CAD are fairly simple so I just use the limited features in COMSOL one of the free programs. But Siemens NX, VariCAD, and several others all have linux versions.
Just the fact that your specific CAD software is not available does not mean you can not use linux for serious work. Complain to your vendor, or buy a competing product! (and I say this knowing that your specific workflow may make it impossible to use linux. Its wrong however to think you are the general case).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:28PM
I guess all us professional physicists and astronomers don't do real work. When you write your own code, doing anything on Windows is a major PITA. Even the tools of our trade, Matlab, IDL/ENVI, Mathematica, work much smoother outside of Windows. Where I sit, all the people doing "real work" are doing it on Macs or Linux boxes. We then have to stuff our results into PPT docs because the PHB's gotta have their slide packages.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:27PM
While I could hope that Windows 10 will be the last MS 'success'. I have my serious doubts. People are adverse to change. Apple would be a much bigger player in the desktop market, if they had kept their computers in schools. Computers require Training. You have already lost, if you don't start early. I could be wrong about the last batch of young people coming through, but I still see MS in the labs.
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:01AM
People always bring up Office, games, Adobe or AudoDesk software, but Windows has a software stack that goes into the millions perhaps even billions - and each single of those programs could be a show stopper for somebody wishing to migrate.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:35AM
Those ones get listed because you have to be able to use the save files from one installation on another version. It's the same reason why people keep updating those programs even though the new features may not be necessary. If you don't update, then the files might not be completely compatible with the version that other people are using.
And you'll notice that most of those programs are ones used by businesses and professionals. The more day to day stuff doesn't have as much trouble attracting developers and an audience to support the work. But, for things like AutoCAD, a halfway functioning version isn't going to cut it, it has to be completely compatible otherwise it's worthless. The same can not be said for most other categories of software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:06AM
That's like people have been saying Apple is a bubble stock, bubble company for 10 years. Some wishful thinking in there.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:19PM
I have kept an eye on ReactOS for the better part of a decade. It's an interesting concept, but it's Still Alpha quality. Definition of Alpha: "If it it works, it's a fluke. Please standby while we break it again." There are only a handful of people that are developing ReactOS. They have grown slightly over the years and they are being careful not to contaminate their code with Microsoft Sources. I would be very happy, if they were able to get something stable released. That hope still seems to be fairly distant. Could the project be helped by more people? Sure, that's how every other OS gets quicker updates. More hands makes lighter work. ReactOS isn't being developed like your standard Linux OS. They are trying to create code that is compatible with Windows at the lowest levels. With Linux, you can come up with a great idea and run with it. ReactOS isn't about interesting / creative ideas. It's about poking this feature 2,512 different ways until you come up with something that works. Just because it seems to work, doesn't mean that it's right either. One tiny flaw could screw the entire thing up and you'd have to go back to the drawing board. I just don't see a whole lot of people getting on the ReactOS bus of coding masochism.
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) by moondoctor on Wednesday October 21 2015, @10:32PM
I shudder to think at the amount of work necessary to make an environment that would run After Effects for Windows 10...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:16PM
I shudder to think at the amount of work necessary to make an environment that would run After Effects for Windows 10...
If you feel that way, I suggest you direct your pity in the direction of Redmond. :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:26PM
I just don't see a whole lot of people getting on the ReactOS bus of coding masochism
I wonder if getting up to speed at that kind of masochism could lead to a career anywhere. I would think a programmer who can do that would be able to tackle just about any problem.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:38PM
They currently have someone helping out as part of their PhD. They have also in the past been part of the Google Summer of Code events. They apparently were accepted in 2006 https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2006/ [reactos.org] and 2011 https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2011/ [reactos.org]. I wouldn't be surprised, if working on something like ReactOS would increase your marketability.
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) by NoMaster on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:34PM
Or, put more simply: No.
None of the existing emulators or software (e.g WINE) manage to be completely compatible with even Win16 apps, let alone Win32 or Win64. And any attempts to do so will inevitably come a poor second to Windows, if only because they will always be playing catch-up.
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:50PM
Haven't heard about ReactOS in years, if I were asked I would have said it was dead (and it's only in Alpha). Obviously if it were a viable alternative to Windows it would be a healthy distribution at this point in history. Linux is still going stronger than ever, and even the BSDs have been getting a bit of love recently. That's where people will go when they finally get fed up with Windows/Google. I know I did, and my partner is not far behind.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:10AM
...realistically, no.
It is technically possible to completely reverse-engineer Windows, including all of its quirks, but realistically speaking that would cost millions of dollars and take a large team of people years to do.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by goody on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:13AM
Make it good enough to be a viable alternative to Windows 7, then maybe we can consider Windows 8 or 10. Until then your viable alternative to Windows 10 is OSX, or Linux if you're will to put in the time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ilPapa on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:37AM
It's not an alternative to Windows 10 until ReactOS can run Fallout 4.
Instead, ReactOS looks like something that was running on the computers in Fallout 3.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:51PM
ReactOS is Alpha quality software. They are doing their best, but I would agree with your first statement. They have a long, long way to go. Though, seriously, "the computers" in Fallout 3 were all text based. FreeDOS is a much better comparison.
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: 1) by Francis on Friday October 23 2015, @12:21AM
I hadn't thought about it, but it's kind of funny how the computers in FO3 and FO:NV are mostly what computers were like when the original Wasteland was released. Even though the game itself is based on technology that was well ahead of where computers were in the '80s or even now. They've got resilient robots wandering the desert, but they're still running something that looks like Apple DOS or DOS.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday October 23 2015, @04:54PM
In their defense, the majority of FO3 and FO:NV interactions with computers were for "hacking" purposes. It also provided for an easy and convenient way to add extra bits of story / plot.
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, Interesting) by tftp on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:45AM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:50AM
OS/2 used to run all Windows applications. Some applications ran even better than in Windows. That would be a good place to start.
Buy eComStation (using crowd-funding) and work from there. Update the APIs and add new ones to run Windows applications natively.
I am wishing for too much.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:59AM
OS/2 came with a real version of Windows 3.1, which is why it could run most Windows programs, at least until MS broke it with Win32s by loading some of the DLLs into high memory that OS/2 couldn't access at the time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pixeldyne on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:51AM
If you absolutely must use Windows ,after exhausting all other options as well as remedies to WinTen's issues, maybe Win 2016 would be the answer? I know it reads like a joke but it isn't.
I'd like to try it myself (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview) and see if I can get it to a 'workstation' level, as in: sound, 3d graphics (rendering, raytracing), and directx (games). It's ~ $800 more and software like anti-virus will also be a bit more expensive :( I haven't tried to do it with Win 2012 because 8.1 was good enough (just barely).
I've previously dumped OS X for Win8 after Lion because they've even dumbed down the API/ABI (no more s.m.a.r.t. functionality in libs or headers - I couldn't live without that), but for a while OS X with Parallels Fusion and Codeweavers Wine (great support) was my method of running Windows apps and games.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:58AM
*nixes are a sort of embedded applications. You install them and they work. You are not able however to install random applications, delivered in binary form, that have the same flexibility as on Windows.
Windows itself is a collection of stable and, for the most part, well designed APIs. The kernel itself is an API. This is how you get extensibility and flexibility at runtime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:21PM
If you mean to imply that ReactOS is Unix, no, it isn't. Its goal is to imitate the Windows NT architecture.
https://reactos.org/about-reactos [reactos.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:58AM
For more than 15 years ReactOS team is unable to produce the OS that can be used at least for developing the OS itself. Really astonishing achievement.
Abandon all hope, ReactOS is not even a toy, it's nothing. And it will be nothing for 15*15 years more. Windows coders are unable to code OS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @12:03PM
Same poster -- here's a real PCI RS232 port on ExpressCard. Little over $20. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839328018 [newegg.com]