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For those not following this project it is a FOSS reimplementation of the Win32 interface, which supports a great deal of humanity's historical computational effort. The new ReactOS release has reached 0.42 and the filesystems ext, btrfs are apparently RW, though Reiserfs and UFS are readonly mounts, successful systems have been shown running.
A nice gallery of some successfully run high profile applications is here (e.g. SimCity and PhotoshopCS2 !!), although interesting, not why I am reporting this.
There are an *enormous* number of scientific instruments (not just microscopes, but various scanners, PCR decks , robots) which originally came with a Win32 driver disk, and have since gone out of business or stopped support. There might only be a single run instance on a crusty old i386 (yes, I've seen that!!).
This is an ambitious project and of course depends on the effective WINE project. It deserves some specific credit and visibility, for providing a possible threshold in the future that sufficient OLD applications can be run independent of the new Microsoft "One OS to rule them All", that it may be possible to construct hybrid machines running Linux, and sufficient driver support from ReactOS to manage the old device drivers that WINE may find difficult to reverse engineer.
But in general, more OS choice's are a good thing!
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:22PM
Thanks for your reply; let me first say that you're right, that modern GNU/Linux distributions represent a much better path in a myriad of ways.
I know some of this can be hard to believe, but I've seen things like this over and over. I haven't been a "Windows Person" since the late 90s when I started using Linux, but I vaguely remember having some of the issues that many, many of the Windows people that I run across have.
GUI point of view: yes, many people prefer whatever sort of GUI they learned initially and/or recently regardless of its advantages or drawbacks. The windows 95 thru Windows 2000 (and XP in classic mode) is pretty popular, but just about any "windowsy" gui would probably do. Including most unixy ones.
File system idiosyncrasies: yes, whatever they learned about "the file system" initially and/or recently, whether it be case insensetivity or breaking drives into multiple 2GB partitions, or whatever they learned already.
The odd control panel and microsoft management console: Especially this. Many people who learned to find what they need in this difficult-to-navigate, counterintuitive system seem to genuinely value that knowledge and want to be able to depend on its usefulness.
cmd.exe (and even COMMAND.COM): Even here, I have seen lots of people who learned how to do a few basic, productive things in the command shell that they first/most recently learned, and value that knowledge and want consistency in an arena to employ it.
Windows browsers such as IE: Good question. Outside having to nagivate badly-designed intranets and web interfaces that require IE, I don't see a lot of brand loyalty in this area. Lots of people could use IE or firefox or chromium or almost any other similarly-appearing browser and *not even notice* as long as you have to click on a blue "e" to start it up. (I think that's why microsoft edge has a "blue e" icon not far removed from IE's.)
5GB Printer drivers: Again, I think that a lot of the "windows people" have an affinity for that which is to them familiar, and if that's "when you reload windows, be sure to install that printer CD. When the icons for those ten unrelated programs show up on the desktop, that means the printer is working"-- then yeah, there's a class of people who prefer that as known and safe.
Personally, I want what you'd probably describe as a "Windows-like" gui and so use MATE or LXDE on Debian. Problem solved. But "Windows people" seem to roll with Microsoft's periodic changes in UI--I don't think the UI, within reason, is the biggest problem with being what many of the "Windows people" want, as long as a basic UI works in a windows-ish manner. I think that as an interface, for them, KDE would do just fine. In fact, the ReactOS folks offer KDE for Windows in their software install tool.
I think that with casual users, it might go either way; some, in my experience, don't even *notice* if you replace their computer with a linux machine. A few don't care one way or the other as long as they can pretty quickly figure out their key tasks and get to work or play. But most of the people I've worked with in "Windows counseling" involving OS alternatives have a huge, irrational fear of change, even of change for the better, in the area of technology, and whether Windows is good, bad, or in between, they have already made a place for it in their worldview and are not taking applications for additional residents there.
Then there's the sign shop that has a custom vinyl cutter and does not care a wish in the wind for even the computer itself, much less its OS. The machinist with the lathe and laser cutter connected to the computer with a serial cable. The payday loan shop that still uses Okidata ML-320 printers on parallel cables and some strange vertical market loan calculator and management system. For these folks, the computer-hardware-and-os is just a life support system for the (often crappy) software and the hardware that does their actual work. For these folks, having 99% faster CPU, 99% more CPU cores, or a 99% better operating system would make about zero difference to their tasks and workflow; for them, suggesting improvements to the system--to the hardware or to the OS--seems in my experience to generate a puzzled look, furrowed brows, and an abundance of don't-get-why. Things like "What we have works, we know it, why would we change it for no benefit???"
For you, there is probably no value in doing that thing. For a great many, in fact, there is no value in doing that thing. For the people--they exist, and I'll bet there are more of them than there are of us--who prefer Windows do or die, there's probably value in having a GPL drop-in windows replacement. I'm certainly not going to tell them that their work is pointless, because I can see how a functioning system of this nature could appeal to such a person. Heck, just "GPL windows without the microsoft spyware" sells itself to a certain segment.
I am not going to go running ReactOS on anything, nor Windows either, so I am not in their target demographic. But once ReactOS becomes stable, I can sure see installing it for customers as part of otherwise windows-centric solutions that they want.
You've converted people to Linux, I've converted people to Linux, this is a good thing. But you will find that it is by no means 100%--nor even 50%. Lots of people steadfastly remain unconvinced. If the ReactOS folks at least get people out from under Microsoft, if not out from under the Windows ecosystem itself, then I believe they are doing a good thing and I salute them.
Make sense?