This message was posted in the ReactOS mailing list: “For those of you who haven’t followed the progress with Explorer closely, take a look here. This screenshot was taken with current CVS and Filip’s Wine DLL snapshot here. There are still many stability problems (lots of multi-threading issues), unimplemented and buggy ReactOS features, but all in all we’re much better shape than I had expected to be at this point in time. If we can keep up this pace, 0.2 will be on time (before WineConf) and will rock!” UPDATE: Quake2 running on ReactOS.
Screenshot of full ReactOS desktop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Although theres no chance of me using windows (or something windows-like), this is still very impressive. I never imagined an OSS OS would be able to clone windows to this point. If this thing really catches on and gets large developer interest, it may become very close to compatibility with M$’s product and the chinese government may not feel the same need to go about their clone of it.
When I left ReactOS’s mailing list a few years ago, I thought they’d go nowhere. Glad to see I was wrong.
looks like someone wants to get sued
> looks like someone wants to get sued
… and it’s definitely going to be Microsoft.
> looks like someone wants to get sued
Huh? ReactOS doesn’t look like MacOS.
Glad to see ReactOS improving.
This is quite an important OSS project, as the majority of PCs run outdated Windows versions such as 95, 98, and NT. As Microsoft phases out support for them and even for the 2000 series, there is a fall-back and hopefully ReactOS will go on to solve many of the problems that dogged these versions of Microsoft Windows.
…I hope that they’re planning to find some graphics artist/interface designer down the road.
Nice to hear something from ReactOS… I didn’t think they could get that far in so little time. The last time I had taken a look at it there was only the CLI. And now, a whole desktop!
BTW, have they stopped having AA fonts?
It looks so outdated, I am glad Widnows makes such a good progress over years. 10 Years ago, the win95 under beta back then looked way better than this screen shot.
Here is the quick list of the sticking points
1 ugly font rendition, with uneven strokes, jagged edges
2 out of proportion menu and tool bar items
3 non-transparent icons
4 broken 3D drawing edges
5 clipped start button text
Easy man! the least thing they care for right now are the hundreds of visible graphical glitches!
They still need to get all the underlying system and libraries to work properly first.. after all,
when you make a cake, do you start by the decoration?
Basically, they first need to make it taste well.
Sure it doesn’t look that good now, but remember this is only an alpha version and many of the sticking points you mentioned are just considered as bugs that will be fixed in the upcoming or next releases.
>> It looks so outdated, I am glad Widnows makes such a good
>> progress over years. 10 Years ago, the win95 under beta
>> back then looked way better than this screen shot.
>> Here is the quick list of the sticking points
>> 1 ugly font rendition, with uneven strokes, jagged edges
>> 2 out of proportion menu and tool bar items
>> 3 non-transparent icons
>> 4 broken 3D drawing edges
>> 5 clipped start button text
He he he he he he he he!!!
Only people who don’t really know what are they talking about will criticise or judge a project in early stages because it looks just like it is in development.
Very good!!! very clever!!!
>> It looks so outdated, I am glad Widnows makes such a good
>> progress over years. 10 Years ago, the win95 under beta
>> back then looked way better than this screen shot.
>> Here is the quick list of the sticking points
>> 1 ugly font rendition, with uneven strokes, jagged edges
>> 2 out of proportion menu and tool bar items
>> 3 non-transparent icons
>> 4 broken 3D drawing edges
>> 5 clipped start button text
He he he he he he he he!!!
Only people who don’t really know what are they talking about will criticise or judge a project in early stages because it looks just like it is in development.
Very good!!! very clever!!!
So people really know the inside story have to say “impressive”, I guess 😎
Another emperor’s clothes story
Well, it is way early to start jumping on their ass about trivial (at this stage) details when its at a 0.1 release (yup, zero point one). The kernel still needs work so it would seem, they mention threading issues, and I bet stability needs work too. Icons and gui stuff can wait until the underlaying infrastructure gets finished. You don’t build a car with the body first, do you? Consider the current screen shot a rough draft – ever seen early GNOME screen shots? Yeah, guess not. 😛
Like everyone else has said, this is still the very early (and I mean very early) stages of development. (This isn’t @windows 95 beta’ – indeed it’s no where near a beta. What’s amazing – and very worth noting – is that they have even got as far as a GUI at all. After all, don’t forget what this is, it is an open source clone of Windows. One day it may well rise to knock MS off its dominant spot as the number 1 player in the OS market today. For that and a million other very good reasons, this is a day that should be celebrated.
BD
Excuse me if this is an extremely ignorant question, but I’m curious: is sol.exe the version that comes with all Windows incarnations? The exact version? Because the fact that they can even run it is EXTREMELY impressive.
Yep, it’s the Windows executible. They’ve also got minesweeper running on it.
It is indeed! And that is why this is so great!
They are creating an environment that is a native Windows environment, only it’s not Windows!
I’d almost like to see this succeed more than OpenBeOS!
I don’t, I hope OpenBeOS succeeds more because then instead of settling for an okay architecture, we can have a brilliant desktop architecture.
Yeah, right, BeOS was never Brilliant
I don’t, I hope OpenBeOS succeeds more because then instead of settling for an okay architecture, we can have a brilliant desktop architecture.
Windows isn’t that bad of an architecture, nothing special, but not terrible either. Why do we continue to confuse architecture with implementation? On paper, the Windows NT kernel looks <bleeping> incredible, it’s just taken until Windows 2000/XP to make it work decently.
BeOS is IMHO not all that brilliant of an architecture. Microkernel (yawn), umm, lets see, only QNX, Mach, L4, GNU/HURD, Sun CHORUS, and a couple of other OSes have done that before.
For the record, I’ve tried BeOS, use Windows frequently, but prefer a truly brilliant architecture called UNIX, or more specifically, its clones Linux and the BSDs. Bear in mind that UNIX actually did break ground in OS design and is the basis for many of the important computing concepts that we take for granted every day.
Wouldn’t MS be a tad upset about this, or is it not developed enough for them to be concerned?
They wont care until it takes customers away from them. In any case, win32 is dying, they are moving everyone to WinFX. Remember, Longhorn is Microsofts “end game”, and is its most ambitious anti-competitive lock-in attempt they’ve ever attempted.
WINE has been in development for over 10 years, and it still can’t run much. Longhorn will be 10 years old before ReactOS is a replacement for win2000 (and I mean 99.9% chance of any software designed to run on win2000 will run on ReactOS).
Are there any binary images of this to try it out?
Or do I have to get it via CVS and compile it myself?
On the reactos site there are binary images, and there are binary images of the cvs as well (ask for it on #reactos @ Freenode (see http://reactos.com/content/view/full/67)). Those are not official though.
Please note that the news item quotes a message to a ReactOS mailing list, meant to let people in the ReactOS community know about current progress. Actually, I was a bit surprised to see it show up here. Not that it matter very much, all publicity is welcome.
Our current official release is 0.1.5, which you can download from http://www.reactos.com/content/view/full/62 The screenshots were from the current CVS version. We expect to release a 0.2 version in the first half of January. Ofcourse, when 0.2 is officially released we will post a message to osnews.
See http://www.reactos.com/content/view/full/333/ for our roadmap on further development. With the 0.2 release, we expect to be well on track for the goals stated there for April 2004.
As for the Solitaire you see in the background on the screenshot, yes, that’s the unmodified Win2k executable running. This is the whole purpose of the project, to run applications and drivers designed for Windows NT/2k/XP unmodified on a free, open source OS.
With respect to the e.g.icons being displayed on a white background, well, it seems you can never win. If you focus on functionality over appearance, people will say you’re creating a pre-win95-beta OS. If you focus on the appearance, people will say you’re just creating eye-candy.
I’m installing ReactOS from iso-image onto a bochs disk even as I write.
This is incredible work! Keep it up!
As for the carping voices complaining that it doesn’t look quite as polished as MS WinXP – please remember, MS Windows started in mid-eighties with MS Windows 1.0, and it took up till MS Windows 3.0 before it could be properly considered to be even in alpha. And MS Windows 98 before you could say it had reached Beta. MS Windows NT 3.x was distinctly alpha; NT 4.0 was a tolerable beta; it was only when NT reached the 5.x stage that it became truly Gold.
That I can install ReactOS from an iso image onto a bochs hard disk image, while it is still in alpha, says a lot more for its basic strengths than a mere enumeration of the icing left off, does.
And as for the rest of us, I’m sure the ReactOS team won’t mind a few extra helpers pitching in and giving a hand – to get Windows done right for once!
“WINE has been in development for over 10 years, and it still can’t run much.”
Define “much”? I find it rather runs a lot. Especially relatevely since i’ve been playing with it since ’99.
“Longhorn will be 10 years old before ReactOS is a replacement for win2000 (and I mean 99.9% chance of any software designed to run on win2000 will run on ReactOS).”
10 years? Why not 11? Or 9? Please state your analysis on this matter!
I must too react on your ignorant comment on wine not running anything. I did a vanilla install of Adobe Photoshop 7 under RedHat 9 + Ximian and it works like a charm. So don’t you even start on that matter…
http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/
….haven’t used M$ for loooong time now….
This reminds my of very early days….
very cool indeed.
Have they tried to do things in an OpenBeOS type way? What I mean is, create open source components (like explorer) and then install them into a working MS Windows install.
Looking at the ReactOS explorer link, it looks like that guy (or group or gal or whatever) is trying to do something similar, to write some of the replacement parts from windows, and run them on top of a native windows install.
Do these two projects work together?
Anyway, this is all really cool, and I hope it succeeds.
If it runs sol.exe then that’s all they care about
Full ack.
I’ve just downloaded installed the ReactOS Shell here (winXP)
and it kicks ass. I’ve been waiting for a open source windows shell replacement all my life and this is finally something usable unlike the other do-everything-different-replacements which just look cool but trash half of the standard functionality of many apps (like not providing a place for systray-icons,…) and are thus just plain unusable.
yeah, ok, there are some very annoying bugs and of course it’s not feature complete. But I think most of these bugs are trivial and could be fixed soon.
That might work as a Windwos 95A clone. But it’s not much more. Good work so far, but you’ve got a long way to go. Windows is about looking good to the eye.
For the record, I’ve tried BeOS, use Windows frequently, but prefer a truly brilliant architecture called UNIX, or more specifically, its clones Linux and the BSDs. Bear in mind that UNIX actually did break ground in OS design and is the basis for many of the important computing concepts that we take for granted every day.
Tell me more about why the unix “design” is “brilliant” and “broke ground” in OS design.
there was much more to BeOS than the microkernel.
The API, the client->server architecture, the way EVERYTHING ties in together.
I’m sorry, but NT doesn’t come close to BeOS in my book.
This is nice progress they are making. They were slow to start, and like a few others here I wasn’t entirely sure that they’d go anywhere. I now believe that they may well meet their goal, even if it takes them a few more years. Good stuff!
These guys are wasting their time.
Maybe if they could have coded with X in mind , maybe they would have had something. It wont support your hardware.
ummm.. Well we already support quite a few third party Windows NT 4 Video drivers and are working on adding support for more Windows 2000 and XP drivers everyday. While its true that atm we only support a few network drivers and ship with very few, it is not that hard to go on the net and download any driver that you need and test it with ReactOS.
I’ve not tried out the ReactOS core for a while now but just downloaded and install the ReactOS shell and had it to start up instead of the default xp shell. I must say I’m very impressed with this. Not only does it look great, it’s neat, clean, fast, and probly even more secure. I dun know for sure about the secure part but I’m sure it being not of MS made stuff it has to be somewhat more secure. Does the shell access the net? So far it has not asked me so on Zone Alarm unlike MS expplorer. I’ll check out the ReatOS core in a few and see wut it can do.
–Idoxash
I hope the ReactOS team will choose another way for their desktop:
– http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
– http://cygnome2.sourceforge.net/
– http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/
“Longhorn will be 10 years old before ReactOS is a replacement for win2000 (and I mean 99.9% chance of any software designed to run on win2000 will run on ReactOS). ”
There is one but. It looks like they share a lot of code with the wine project. That means that if a program runs on wine, it will probably also run on ReactOS.
Now you are right that Wine certainly does not run everything, but when Linux gets more market share things might change for the better, because software companies will be interested in delivering a Linux port of their software.
The easiest way to do that is to make use of WineLib, because that allows Windows programs to run on Unix computers with a minimal amount of change to the source code.
And companies that use winelib to port their software to Unix will almost automatically make their software compatible to wine, which will mean it will also run on ReactOS.
ALot of progress here, but I’m wondering if there could be more.
For example, the GUI is a little rough, maybe run allegro full time (like SEAL for DOS) or Open GL? How hard would that be?
The desktop shell could be litestep, instead of explorer, which wold give it a more modern look out of the box.
And what about WineX compatibility? DirectX? Other non-open protocols and tools?
Looks interesting, but wonderign about LT success.
but prefer a truly brilliant architecture called UNIX
Maybe during the 70’s, i would hardly call UNIX brilliant at this point. Beos, NT), hurd and Plan 9 yes, are trully brilliant architectures (well in NT’s case just the kernel architecture)