Talk:ReactOS/Archive 1

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Contents

The next Linux?

i'm surprised this isn't touted as the next linux. (written by User:165.134.155.123)

I think the two are sufficiently different in stated goals that comparison falls short in many ways. That said, from my lurking on the ReactOS developers list, the ReactOS developers seem a very mature bunch of individuals without any "grudge" against Linux per se (aside from mere personal preference for a windows-like environment than a UNIXish one). The beauty of open source software is that good ideas (and even code, when possible) is freely given and shared between any interested project developers.
--Ryanaxp 17:24, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
I think once it's a little more fully developed, it will appeal to a lot of people - those who want to break out of the microsoft monopoly without totally switching the type of OS that they use. --4.245.4.55 07:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Attention to article

Someone needs to bring more attention to this OS because even they agree that they need more developers. (April 9, 2005, 9:21PM)

Wikipedia's purpose is to be an encyclopedia, it should not attempt to spur extra interest in a particular project, even if it is a good project. - James Foster 17:25, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

10oct2005:lkcl: the project will snowball anyway. the initial stages are the killer stages where you want people to stay the hell away. once networking takes off, once usb takes off, the project will go mad, and will end up suffering exactly the same problems as windows nt: too many cooks :) actually, that's unlikely to happen - this is FLOSS after all :)

Criticism section and reorg

The last paragraph of the "criticism" section (about fulfillment) doesn't really seem to fit there with the rest of the stuff, so I'm gonna try and move it... Blackcats 08:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the first line of the Criticisms section is confusing: "Some critics of the ReactOS project have set forth reasons why they believe ReactOS to be a worthwhile project." ...doesn't the following text suggest the opposite? That some critics have put forth reasons why ReactOS is NOT a worthwhile project? BTW I have no opinion either way, this is just an observation. --Drewnoakes 15:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe you're right. I've edited the sentence. Cristan 22:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

In the source crazycomuters stated that the last two paragraphs don't really feal like critisism, and should be moved. I disagree: they're part of the response of the ReactOS community why they do think it's worth the effort. Cristan 07:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Change of compatibility goal from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000

I have remove all stuff that was releated with NT 4.0 because Reactos-Developers choosed to hunt toward 2000 complatilbty now. --Dr Fred 21:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Something about that change in the developers' focus should probably be added to the article. Maybe a history section?... 4.244.105.121 22:21, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Frankly, many of the edits by 213.54.64.78 seem unsubstantiated at best, and many were retrograde in my opinion. For one thing, my review of the ReactOS developer's mailing list archives did not turn up any evidence of a concrete change of the initial emulation goal from Windows NT 4.0. Rather, although much of the later functionality from Windows 2000, XP and so on are being developed, that is simply because those are sub-projects that various contributors feel important and which do not detract from the previously stated goal of NT 4.0 compatibility for a future "ReactOS 1.0" release.(That is to say, it seems clear that Windows 2000 or XP or somesuch will be a future "official" emulation goal for ReactOS; however, the features of the later versions of Windows are cumulative, so reaching 4.0 compatibility may be achieved while simultaneously implementing 2000 or XP features—the two are not mutually exclusive.)
Furthermore, the other edits were largely broken English and added nothing factual—indeed, they often gutted perfectly intelligible sentences and facts, while substituting dubious facts (for example, can anyone point out support for the assertion that ReactOS is targetting an architecture known as "Xen?"); thus I reverted the article wholesale to the previous version by Blackcats, after scrutinizing the later edits for anything worth keeping (but found none).--Ryanaxp 03:12, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

10oct2005:lkcl: XEN is not an architecture it's a virtualisation technology, similar to vmware. and i specifically said "the tantalising possibility exists".

The title is "[ros-dev] Update reported version to Windows 2000 (Service Pack?)" from Steve Edwarts I could not find it online so I posted it here.

 Most of the dev team seems to be in agreement with bumping the reported version number to Win2k
 but if anyone has any objections speak now or forever maintain a patch. I need Win2k to be
 reported as the version number as many newer applications such as Office 2003 will not install
 unless that is the latest version. If you find any places where a function, resource or anything
 reports a value as NT4 or something ReactOS dependent please change it to match Windows 2000
 behavior. Also I propose we just report Service Pack 4.

Yes, it is only the reported version, if you do still not believe me, I'll ask on IRC, what the compatibly for 1.0 is. But I would say that ReactOs is just not that strictly organized that the 1.0 release plans ever officaly changed. (If they were ever existing)

About Xen: http://wiki.reactos.com/Xen_port

And for the grammatical and spelling errors I'm sorry I was a bit in a hurry yesterday. --Dr Fred 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have rereverted some of my stuff (with a few minor corrections) since they were correct edits in my mind.

I did not rerevert the changes related to Windows 2000, because of the reasons Ryanaxp mentioned. But I do neither agree with the current content, sice it give the impression that ReactOs is based on "stone age software". --Dr Fred 14:27, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I removed a the first part of the history again changed the sentece

 The goal for version 1.0 was articulated as a stable implementation of a subset of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation

to just "Windows Workstation", that is and will be correct in anyway. Everything should still be proper english (since that I just removed things).

It should also be mentioned that Ryanaxp does not really have an objective view on this, because he wrote this part of the history section. I'm sorry for dropping your work but it's out of date. --Dr Fred 17:32, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Whoa, hold on there—despite any quibble we're having regarding this (rather inconsequential) bit of minutiae, there's really no grounds for you to haul off and accuse me of authorship bias. If I were the defensive type, I might get a bit miffed at being slagged off like that—lucky thing I'm the laid-back type, so I'll just ask you for an apology instead.
In any case, I'm not about to get in an edit war with an anonymous user over something like this. Although I still disagree with your assertion, and I haven't quite figured out what the e-mail you pasted above signifies, you've made your feelings known and I'm not inclined to research this any further. --Ryanaxp 18:54, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

ToDo

It would be nice if someone could update/remove update the images, because they are all outdated, except the desktop one which does not fit in "future". Screenshots can be found on http://frik85.reactos.at and the remastered logo on http://wiki.reactos.com/mf --User:213.54.71.145 14:41, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't be hard to do if you've the notion. Remember, Be Bold! --Ryanaxp 19:01, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
I did as ready replace a old with a OO.org one. I could not do it that day because my IP was blocked in Commons. (I did nothing wrong) --213.54.65.95 18:49, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you (User:213.54.71.145) for adding the shot of OO.org. It's great that OpenOffice is working on ReactOS, and great that we now have a picture of that to show people. But I can see no good reason for removing the shot of ReactOS Explorer and Start Menu. You say that it was "old," but we need to keep it until a we have a more up to date screenshot of the same thing.

The explorer and start menu are both integral parts of the modern MS Windows GUI (as they will be in the ReactOS GUI), and who comes here to see what ReactOS is about will want to know that they have developed a working start menu and explorer. This may be old news to us, but most people don't even know that ReactOS exists, let alone that it has that. A shot like that needs to stay in the article unless for some reason the ReactOS development team decided not to have a Start Menu.

But on the bright side, I guess it's a sign that the word has been getting out about ReactOS if there are starting to be edit disputes here at Wikipedia :-) Blackcats 23:46, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I've updated the screenshots to 0.3.0 ones at wikimedia commons, so the screens are up-to-date now :). Cristan 12:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


Official Screenshot page:

http://www.reactos.org/?page=screenshots

Right now it mentions that 0.2.7 added support for some sound cards. Where is the reference for this? It is not in the official changelog. http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/ChangeLog-0.2.7

--> http://www.reactos.org/?page=dev_changelogs

Infobox

I just added an OS info box (modified from the Windows XP one) and moved a couple of the pictures into it. Everything is accurate as far as I know, but feel free to make any neccesary changes... Blackcats 20:55, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia is not for faning the flames of a possibly untrue allegation.

While the accusations might not be true or might be considered fair use, Hartmut still made the accusation. I don't see what reason there is from not showing this.

Also this note is posted on the ros front page showing just how serious the project is taking this accusation:

Accusations have been made by some of ReactOS' own developers about certain parts of ReactOS code. The project is suspending development pending legal council. The project will resume once the issue has been rectified.

Reub2000

According to a new post on the the ros-dev mailing list, the inner circle has decided to go through the code to make sure that it is all clean room implementations. This is part of the history of ReactOS, and wikipedia isn't here to censor this type of information. Reub2000 01:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


Now it is part of the history of ReactOS and as such I won't remove it. At the time I did remove it however it was speculative news, not something that should be on wikipedia.

"Criticisms" section

The criticisms section should contain:

  • ReactOS's flaws, and things it cannot do (an incomplete list is under the heading "Functionality");
  • Discussions on whether or not reverse-engineering software in order to create an unauthorized clone is legal; and
  • whether or not the ReactOS Foundation is violating Microsoft's end-user licenses and patents.

164.106.241.152 16:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

If such criticisms have been published then go ahead and include and cite them.

ReactOS Audit

This is expected to set the project back by a lot as it could take years to complete the audit and rewriting of affected parts of the source code.

They started less then a month ago as I write this, and it seems like they're over halfway done (as the ReactOS website says). Permission to change, cap'n? 68.70.108.247 16:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone tried this?

Has anyone tried this operating system? and does it work with windows drivers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.35.215 (talk • contribs)

I have tried it for a few minutes. What does work seems a bit shaky at the moment, but it's pretty far along in development. But really, a ReactOS mailing list would be a better choice for such questions; this talk page is for the development of the Wikipedia article. --Chris (talk) 06:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Why not try it out yourself? Reub2000 06:47, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The percentage of how much of the audit is complete.

At the Functionality part of the article is the percentage listed. This is updated a little too often for my liking. Sure, it's cool if we update it after every 5% or so, but currently, it is being updated for every 0.1%. And even if it's not updated, the date is updated! This gives the article a huge history of pretty insignificant edits. I realise that now we're past 90%, 5% is a bit much, but I'd advise updating the percentage only if the new one is past another full percent. Oh, and don't forget to update the date as well.

Xen and Microsoft

In light of a recent announcement by Microsoft, the last paragraph under the Criticisms section about ReactOS working with Xen may be irrelevant. It is, at the very least, out of date.

NPOV in the Criticism Section

The criticism section does not seem to fit the bill for Neutral Point of View. Rather strong language is used in the criticism section, which furthermore does not have any citations; this makes it feel like the contributors to the article may have had an agenda in adding this “information” to the article. I have so far not seen anything myself that reflects the criticism that it isn’t a UNIX-like system. Also, see the previous section (Xen and Microsoft) where the issues regarding Xen are discussed—these are also in the criticism section.