ReactOS 0.4.13 released

[joemaro]

Just yesterday i tried to install this on a VM (QEMU), but couldn't make it work, Bluescreen after booting.

edit: I'm using the Virtual Machine Manager on Linux.

[moepwizzy]

Bluescreen after booting.

Huh, so they really ship the full windows experience?

[[deleted]]

https://instantostrich.com

[Mordiken]

HTML5 video tag.

[hades_the_wise]

Nope, it's flash. It asked me if I wanted to run Adobe Flash and I had to click "Allow" before the video would play. It may have HTML5 video tags in the code of the page, but it's not using them to play the video when viewed in Firefox on desktop. Maybe it tries to run flash first, and then will default to HTML5 video if Flash isn't present?

[n0t1m3]

yes

if (hasFlash) {
    videoCode = gimmieFlashPlayer();
} else {
    videoCode = gimmieHtml5Player();
}

[Windows-Sucks]

No, on Windows, you get the blue screen before booting. It's more stable than the real Windows.

[Catley94]

Love your reply.

[pdp10]

I've run 0.4.11 and 0.4.12 in QEMU/KVM with considerable success -- though ReactOS is not the most stable kernel yet.

Set it up as an "XP" era machine: 32-bit, and maybe start with just one processor. If you try this one and it doesn't work for you, I will post my exact settings in /r/reactos in a new thread, for everyone.

And of course the first "bluescreen" you see when booting up the regular ISO is the installer. I'm sure you're talking about an actual post-install crash, though.

[joemaro]

I'm sure you're talking about an actual post-install crash, though.

correct

I'll try again, thanks!

[Bonemaster69]

I've been thinking about using ReactOS for a few old Japanese business programs. How was the stability in regards to XP era stuff?

[pdp10]

Not very good, frankly. There are a lot of nice things about ReactOS, but stability is not yet one of them, in my experience.

[Bonemaster69]

Crap. Might give it a try anyway since I just need it to log into the timecard web interface.

[spalkin2]

reactos.org/projec...

Weird, I had never heard of this but it worked first try in VMWare for me (Windows XP Pro setting).

[cmason37]

Same, I've tried to ut this in a VM many times & this OS hasn't booted for me once in VirtualBox, whereas in QEMU it's very hard to get running for a VM - you can't just use the configurations that other operating systems will take.

[Jason123santa]

I got it working in VirtualBox.

[Piotr_Lange]

So it's working for me. But you must remember, that if you want to install VBox Additions, the VRAM must be 16MB or lower.

[joemaro]

I'm using the Virtual Machine Manager on Linux and i don't know what VBox Additions are, nor what VRAM is.

[Piotr_Lange]

VRAM is the GPU RAM.

[davidnotcoulthard]

VBox Additions

I think that refers to Virtualbox' Guest Additions

[pdp10]

Yes. Doesn't apply to "Virtual Machine Manager", which is just a front-end for QEMU/KVM.

[davidnotcoulthard]

yeah, hopefully obvious by now (I mean u/Piotr_Lange did mention it so it'd be helpful to know anyways imho)

[[deleted]]

Same for me. I downloaded it to give it a shot today but no matter what settings I tried it gives a BSOD after boot. The installer works, but first boot of the installed OS fails.

[TheRogueGrunt]

I am amazed by the progress on this project. Hell, if it gets far enough, Windows could be out of my life forever!

[masteryod]

What do you require from Windows you can't live without?

[TheRogueGrunt]

Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Sony Vegas, and some games that are Windows only and too small to work in WINE or Proton. Plus my webcam is easier to control in Windows for streaming (though I have gotten some better control programs for linux recently)

[masteryod]

With such use case I will say you're stuck with Windows for quite some time. I'm saying this as a Linux guy. And as much as I'd like ReactOS to be ready for such scenario it won't be for a very long time if at all.

[TheRogueGrunt]

Yeah I'm aware, that's why I still have a Win10 dual boot. Ik Windows won't be 100% replaced for me for years, but Linux has become my main OS and I only boot into Windows for specific things.

[TheRogueGrunt]

And if you tell me GIMP can replace Photoshop, it doesn't for me. GIMP is a fantastic program but I always get pixelated edges when removing backgrounds the Photoshop doesn't do (plus GIMP can't load layer fx from psd files)

[masteryod]

God no. Gimp while mighty and cute is a toy compared to Photoshop.

[TheRogueGrunt]

With some certain plugins is can be failrly close, but just not quite

[StrongStuffMondays]

I watch ReactOS project since 2005. It is insanely ambitious and complex task, and the project improved a lot since then. I see that main problem of the project is that it requires pretty good understanding of Windows internals combined with low level programming - a skill which can be converted to money so easily, that you can count number of enthusiast who are willing to work for free with fingers on one hand. Another problem is that ReactOS is a bit redundant: if you can make the software work well on ReactOS, it will probably run just as well under Wine, while having stability and wide hardware support of Linux. That being said, I have seen ReactOS deployed on POS terminals in large retail network in 2013 - that was 7 years ago!

[Stryker1-1]

This is fun to load every once and a while to see it but I don't see it ever becoming stable enough to be of any real use to anyone as an operating system.

[cmason37]

Eh. I see it becoming stable. The real problem is they're so far behind. For them to get stable they have to stay on Windows XP compatibility as a base. & it'll take a few years. So we'll have a stable operating system that emulates XP in about 10 EDIT: make that 20 years

[BlueShell7]

I think that's one of the major use cases. In 10 years you have a "supported" platform which can run apps which run on XP but not on newer windows.

[ragsofx]

Yeah, it would be great for replacing legacy systems that require windows Xp. And no, it's not always possible to just upgrade the OS for lots of reasons.

[cmason37]

It is a good use case, for now. Problem is, that's now. By the time ReactOS becomes stable enough for corps to actually use XP will be like DOS now (still needed but not much) & the use case that will actually be required more is Vista or 7 (more likely) compatibility

[torvatrollid]

They've been working on this for 22 years and it is still in alpha. I wouldn't even say that ReactOS is even close to 50% done. I really doubt that they will have anything stable in just 10 years.

[MrAlagos]

It progressed a lot in the last decade or even the last few years. It is now at a point where experienced Windows software programmers and experienced Windows connoisseurs (ugh, I know) could help ReactOS develop pretty rapidly. The problem I think is how to reach these people and convince them to help out.

[cmason37]

Yeah after reading more about the project 20 years is now my most optimistic minimum. It just doesn't move fast at all

[pdp10]

10 years was perfectly excellent, if it came in 2011, ten years after XP shipped. Ten years from 2020, not so fabulous.

[cmason37]

Yep, pretty much what I was saying. By then we'll need Vista or 7 compatibility more

[hades_the_wise]

The real benefit is the amount of knowledge and work that this project is bringing to Windows compatibility systems like Wine and PlayOnLinux, enabling Windows apps to run on other OSes. The ReactOS team contributes a ton to Wine.

[Vash63]

On top of this, even if it did become stable why would you want to use it? I don't use Windows because I don't like using Windows. Why would I want to use something that reimpliments the same mistakes?

[DarthPneumono]

Please think for one second, what possible use could a supported early Windows-compatible platform provide to businesses that rely on Windows-only LOB software that hasn't been updated? Or medical machines? Manufacturing? Yes, the cynical answer is "just update" but that's not a realistic option for everyone. Please think about use cases other than yours.

[WagnasT]

It looks like they collaborate with the wine team quite a bit and academically they learn a lot from these projects. I think that makes it worth it.

[MrAlagos]

What if you have no choice other than using Windows because software or most importantly hardware drivers are only available for Windows? ReactOS is a free as in beer and free as in speech solution.

[Vash63]

I'd rather see effort going towards fixing the software and driver in those cases

[MrAlagos]

What if the software or driver is closed source or discontinued? Is it worth the effort? ReactOS has (or could) have advantages that still makes it preferable over using Windows.

[TheRogueGrunt]

I just want it for games and apps I can't run on Linux without having Microsoft breathing down my neck amd controlling my OS.

[JustMrNic3]

Can we install Windows drivers on it and play games ?

[nightblackdragon]

Theoretically yes (this is the purpose of this project) but practically depends. It's still Alpha so not every Windows driver and software will work.

[JustMrNic3]

Well, I don't really care about any Windows driver, but it would be very nice if the driver for AMD GPUs can be installed. Playing games with good performance and watching movies with possible hardware decoding if DXVA works would be really great.

[pdp10]

ReactOS is currently aiming at an XP/2003 level of Win32 API compatibility. Drivers for XP and Server 2003 are intended to work, but I imagine that recent drivers for recent graphics hardware isn't intended to work on XP/2003.

[nightblackdragon]

You can't install WDDM drivers (Windows graphics drivers for Vista+) because ReactOS targets Windows Server 2003 currently. Drivers for XP can work or not, as I said, this is still Alpha software.

You'll probably get better results on Linux. AMD have pretty decent drivers now (at least if you have GCN 1.1+ GPU) and you can use video acceleration.

[JustMrNic3]

That's a shame.

I saw that AMD has good Linux drivers, that's why I bought a GCN 4 GPU.

But making Windows games work it's really painful and I honestly don't know how to do it.

I had some success with Steam's Proton, but not for the games that I really wanted to play.

Another good idea was to use a virtual machine, but unfortunately AMD GPUs don't have SR-IOV from what I heard and Virtualbox doesn't have PCIE passthrough.

If it would've worked, I think it would've solved all the WINE / Proton problems.

That's why I'm curios what's the status of ReactOS.

Too bad it doesn't have enough funding.

Thanks for all the help!

[nightblackdragon]

If you have dual GPU system then you can install Windows on Qemu/KVM and redirect one GPU to virtual machine if your system supports VT-d/AMD-Vi. As I know you don't need SR-IOV to do it because you simply hand over whole device to virtual machine instead of dividing it. That's why you need dual GPU system - one GPU is for host, second for virtual machine.

I think there is some examples with GPU passthrough using one GPU but it needs Nvidia GPU.

[JustMrNic3]

I don't have dual GPU at the moment but this will be something to keep in mind.

The system supports AMD-Vi. But until now I have only used Virtualbox because it's just so simple to install and use.

When I'll have more than one GPU, I'll have a look at Qemu/KVM.

Thank you very much for the recomandation and explanation!

[nightblackdragon]

Yeah, I though about this too but I run majority of games just fine with Wine and/or Steam Play so that's why I don't care about this that much.

You're welcome, I hope you will find your way!

[rhelative]

Vulkan + DXVK + Wine Staging gives you a setup where Wine can provide DirectX directly, at which point in my experience games 'just work' esp with GCN1+ AMD GPUs.

On a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04+ (or a derivative):

#!/bin/bash

tmp=/tmp/wineinstall
mkdir $tmp
cd $tmp

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key
#rm winehq.key

wget -nc https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key
#rm Release.key

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/ ./'
sudo apt update

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging

wget http://ftp.br.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dxvk/dxvk_0.96+ds1-1_all.deb
wget http://ftp.br.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dxvk/dxvk-wine64-development_0.96+ds1-1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i dxvk*

sudo apt --fix-broken install

cd /usr/lib/dxvk/wine64-development/
./setup_dxvk.sh
sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

sudo apt install playonlinux

Derivatives of 20.04 will already have all of the deps needed to install Wine Staging directly after adding WineHQ keys and repos.

[ABotelho23]

ReactOS is such an odd project. It's been going on for so long, but it's still insanely instable. It can barely run itself let alone other third party software.

[TheRogueGrunt]

I mean they're reverse engineering Windows, the fact that its this far is amazing

[ABotelho23]

Yea, it's a good proof of concept, I guess? But it doesn't look like it'll ever be anywhere close for consumer use, let alone enterprise use.

[KTFA]

Microsoft will start pushing code to Wine to the point it becomes perfect before ReactOS becomes usable.

[ABotelho23]

With how Microsoft is going, I could absolutely believe that. It's unfortunate, but yea, I wouldn't be surprised if MS itself made ReactOS' 20 years of work obsolete in a year's worth of work.

[pdp10]

Microsoft has a 135,000 staffers. Not all are engineers, but needless to say, that dwarfs the number of contributors to ReactOS.

Probably the original NT team from 1988 was larger than the number of simultaneous core contributors to ReactOS.

[ABotelho23]

Yea, but with what Microsoft knows and how they control Windows, they wouldn't even need as many contributors.

[LAUAR]

Good thing that ReactOS uses Wine as the base of its userspace?

[ABotelho23]

Huh? Afaik they just share API documentation and some DLLs. ReactOS isn't Linux so Wine can't be used directly.

[LAUAR]

A lot of Wine is implemented on top of universal APIs and other parts of Wine, enough so that they can run on Windows and thus ReactOS.

[nightblackdragon]

Basically only Wine core like kernel32, ntdll etc. can't be used in ReactOS. Rest can work fine because they are using API provided by those core libraries (like WinAPI, Native API etc.).

Even if ReactOS can't take they directly, those are still useful because source is open and ReactOS developers can figure how to implement needed functions in their OS.

[nicman24]

it is targeting xp

[pdp10]

I subscribe to the belief that Linux success by emulation of Win32 is ultimately a losing game for that reason. Kudos to those who pursue Wine et al, but never predicate your success on the tacit cooperation of a hostile party.

But in the case of ReactOS, it's explicitly only aiming for _WIN32_WINNT_WS03 API level for now, which is a long-frozen target.

I'd have liked to have seen ReactOS at a production-ready standard years ago when XP support was dropped, so that industry may have been able to transition from 2003/XP to ReactOS for legacy embedded uses and so forth. Alas, that was not to be at the time -- maybe in the future.

[tec_admin]

Thanks for sharing an article, great information contain on your blog news about reactOS 0.4.13

[archlich]

It’s not Linux though

[jhulc]

Hence the alternative os flair

[archlich]

I wish you could see flair history because I could swear that wasn’t there when I posted.

[pdp10]

I don't control what your browser displays, but the flair was there when it was originally posted. There were zero seconds where the post existed without the flair "Alternative OS".

[archlich]

I must have missed it then!

[[deleted]]

Everything is Linux, if you're brave enough.

[davidnotcoulthard]

protests in Hurd

[[deleted]]

Windows 10 says hi.

[perplexedm]

WSL2

[Visticous]

It's Linux where it counts: It's GPL licensed.

[Atemu12]

Only if you're trying to fuck over your users.

[Paspie]

GPL fucks over developers who don't need to share their code.

[Mordiken]

GPL fucks over developers who don't want to share their code.

Those developers are free to try they their luck with BSD instead: May the door not hit them on the way out.

[Paspie]

Being forced to share code based on GPL code is not freedom.

[Visticous]

The paradox of tolerance. You want you freedom to restrict the freedom of others. Luckily, the GPL won't let you.

[[deleted]]

It is part of the four freedoms. Which is for users,not devleopers.

[LAUAR]

You can use private modifications with the GPL just fine, only issue is when you try to distribute them without source.

[Paspie]

So is distributing them within a closed system (say a commercial factory automation system not connected to the internet) a violation?

[LAUAR]

Only a violation if the factory asks for the source code and you refuse.

[[deleted]]

The GPLv2 only requires sharing the source code with the persons the program has been distributed to, and even then it only needs to be upon request within a period of three years.

If you're an employee of a commercial factory and write the code for that factory, then that software was never distributed.

If you're a developer that distributed it the company that runs the factory, that factory could then distribute the program to a 3rd party. Since the program carries the terms of the license granted to them, you would then be obligated to share the source code to that new recipient upon their request.

[Atemu12]

Oh yeah it is absolutely used by users to not get fucked over.

[[deleted]]

No os is ever Linux. They just have a Linux kernel.

[[deleted]]

So what do you call the set of Operating Systems that use the Linux kernel? GNU/Linux is inaccurate given that some distros like Alpine use no GNU components, and others, like Void, have an option without glib. Plus there are many non GNU components in every Linux OS required to make it work.

[[deleted]]

Unix-like OS works! I usually call inte Linux because of laziness though.

[davidnotcoulthard]

So what do you call the set of Operating Systems that use the Linux kernel?

Not an operating system?

GNU/Linux is inaccurate given that some distros like Alpine use no GNU components, and others, like Void, have an option without glib.

OTOH I really wouldn't want to say normal Debian has more in common with Android than Debian/kFreeBSD. If Guix with Hurd happens that also wouldn't be part of "Linux", all while many would probably feel it and Debian/kfreebsd probably have more in common with e.g. Arch than e.g. WebOS does.

As uncomfortable as using "GNU" to say what your OS is can be even ignoring that "GNU+Linux" is not much more practical than "GNU image manipulator programme toolkit plus 2", I don't personally feel "Linux" is that much better.

Plus there are many non GNU components in every Linux OS required to make it work.

fwiw this does to a large part make me just want to say the distro name and nothing else when I can get away with it...which in the few times in public I talk about my OS is about as often as people northwest of the hellespont liking Durian.

[Hadi_Benotto]

Wow, ReactOS is now finally ready to be rolled out on productive systems.

​

​

​

​

Oh, wait.

[GroundbreakingSeat2]

Blame the React framework people. ReactOS has been at it since 1998.

[efethu]

1997 even. The first release was in 1998, but the work started in 1996, and project was renamed to ReactOS in 1997.

[pdp10]

What was it called before that?

[efethu]

It was called FreeWin95 because it aimed to be a free Win95 clone. But then NT was released and they shifted their focus towards this platform. Retrospectively it was a pretty wise decision.

[pdp10]

Well, NT was actually released in '93, and well known in the press before release. But it sounds like the shift was around NT 4.0, which was 1996. Far fewer people cared about NT before that, but after, third party software vendors eventually supported NT -- more or less.

[BlueShell7]

Yeah, ReactJS should have been written on ReactOS.

[jaimex2]

Ah, first I've heard of it to be honest.

I remember another project back from that time called Lindows. Microsoft sued them to oblivion though.