Submitted by ReactOS 0.4.3 has been released.
Notable in this release is the switching to a new winsock library that had been started several years ago by Alex Ionescu and imported into trunk by Ged Murphy. Even after it was brought in however significant work remained to be done before it could replace the old winsock library, work which Peter Hater and Andreas Maier undertook. Their effort has now reached a point wherein the team feels it is ready to supplant the original library and 0.4.3 serves as the first release to incorporate it. As the winsock library underpins effectively all network operations in user mode applications, and its improvement should be a significant boon for ReactOS’ compatibility with such programs as the Good old Games (GoG) client and newer versions of the Python runtime.
The changelog offers all the details, and you can download it from their website.
Keep doing the good work, as usual!
I just took it for a quick spin in a virtual machine, as I do with each release.
What they have accomplished is impressive. It can run real applications, and I like the fact that they have an app repository to make it very convenient. The up-to-date VirtualBox Guest Additions installed fine, and shared folders seem to work.
It does seem to have some stability issues (mainly high CPU usage, in my quick testing), but that’s to be expected.
My one suggestion would probably be for them to put a little extra work into cleaning up the Explorer desktop, because that’s the first thing the user sees, and first impressions matter. It mainly works well, but has some minor problems like icon refreshing and settings that don’t work or don’t take effect until after rebooting.
(Before anyone suggests it – I am going to try to set up a build environment, and take a quick look at the code. But time is in short supply, so I don’t expect to accomplish much.)
It’s not a repository, It’s just a download tool that points to the download URL. Also explorer on Windows is insanely complicated by every task it needs to do, so I don’t mind right clicking and hitting refresh to get icons to appear for now.
I hope my post didn’t take the wrong tone. I completely agree with you. My only point is about first impressions – a smoothly running desktop just makes the whole experience more pleasant, especially for more casual users.
I refuse to upgrade to Windows 10+, so I am itching to switch over to ReactOS for any Windows-specific tasks. (I’ve already migrated most things over to Linux, etc.) I’m willing to put up with some inconvenience, so it might be almost there for me, and like I said in the previous post, I’m willing to take a crack at helping out (time permitting).
The dev team are not interested in making good impressions. If they worked that way they would be driven by user-oriented requests. They just don’t work that way…
They work on the ‘important’ issues defined as being critical items, these fixes tend to come together with the overall effect of making other things such as the GUI operate as they should. So much is structural and cosmetic fixes such as GUI elements simply detract from the work that is required under the bonnet. There is SO much to do to get ReactOS to function as a modern o/s that you simply have to lower your expectations.
Edited 2016-11-18 10:10 UTC