Even if we get ReactOS running, you won't be able tu run Windows x86 applications on it, because the architecture is different.

It's very important that everyone understands this: the problem isn't that we lack a Windows OS; we have Wine, ReactOS, and the real Windows XP if we need them, but as long as we can't emulate the x86 architecture with high efficiency, it doesn't matter which operating systems or APIs are available.
 
Yes, but you are forgetting one major problem.

ReactOS needs to be ported to each different arch because the binary is dependant on whatever its been compiled for. This part is simple as the source code is available.

All programs which run under ReactOS also need to be ported to each different arch, and unless we have the source code for them, this is much more difficult. If we did have the source code, it would be more efficient to port the code directly to the native OS.

If you used emulation, you can fix the later, but then you are throwing away ReactOS and replacing it with something like Bochs or DOSBox.

Now I'm going to move this thread into general.
 
they've already got it to run on ARM. they're working on a user mode emulation for executing x86 windows apps
 
If it hits 1/5th the rated clock speed of the Pandora (about 120mhz) (cue people arguing that you can't compare clock speed ;) ) then I'll eat my hat.
Well, I'll buy a hat, and then eat it.
 
Letalis Sonus said:
they've already got it to run on ARM. they're working on a user mode emulation for executing x86 windows apps
Hmm, this could turn out to be promising. Their layer is basically Wine but without the weight of the Linux kernel since their system uses Win32/NT4 all the way down. Dunno if this is faster than QEmu + Wine, but that remains to be seen.
 
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dflemstr said:
Letalis Sonus said:
they've already got it to run on ARM. they're working on a user mode emulation for executing x86 windows apps
Hmm, this could turn out to be promising. Their layer is basically Wine but without the weight of the Linux kernel since their system uses Win32/NT4 all the way down. Dunno if this is faster than QEmu + Wine, but that remains to be seen.

You'd have to do a Windows user mode emulator instead of a Linux user mode emulator, which would IMO be a lot harder. But I might only be saying this because I'm a lot more familiar with how Linux works than how Windows works.
 
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I think this OS is kinda funny.

The geek inside me thinks it's pretty cool but...

What can they offer that windows can't?
 
HackModford said:
I think this OS is kinda funny.

The geek inside me thinks it's pretty cool but...

What can they offer that windows can't?

If you pirate ReactOS, it won't bitch at you and change your wallpaper every day.
 
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Also, ReactOS will probably be a LOT faster than Windows because it has a community that can trim the Kernel.

How often does Microsoft release kernel updates? Eh? And how fast is MS Windows compared to Linux? :p
 
Of course, Linux has over 9000 people looking at and fixing the kernel, whereas ReactOS is somewhat less popular.
Oh, ReactOS also doesn't have IE bundled with it, and it will never ask you to take a tour of itself, or whine that your desktop has unused icons.
 
dflemstr said:
Also, ReactOS will probably be a LOT faster than Windows because it has a community that can trim the Kernel.

How often does Microsoft release kernel updates? Eh? And how fast is MS Windows compared to Linux? :p

What the crap are you people talking about when you start mentioning OS speed? An OS won't have appreciable overhead just running. If you're talking about video/audio, then I wouldn't say I completely lack confidence in DirectX's speed (with good drivers present, of course)
 
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lulzfish said:
Oh, ReactOS also doesn't have IE bundled with it, and it will never ask you to take a tour of itself, or whine that your desktop has unused icons.

Coz those features (especially the tour, which I'm sure is damned handy for new users) are so difficult to turn off if you really don't want them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Windows fan (I'm not a Linux fan either), but the things people find to bash Windows for gets just comical sometimes.

dflemstr said:
Also, ReactOS will probably be a LOT faster than Windows because it has a community that can trim the Kernel.

How much smaller is the ReactOS kernel compared to the Windows XP one?
 
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Exophase said:
dflemstr said:
Also, ReactOS will probably be a LOT faster than Windows because it has a community that can trim the Kernel.

How often does Microsoft release kernel updates? Eh? And how fast is MS Windows compared to Linux? :p

What the crap are you people talking about when you start mentioning OS speed? An OS won't have appreciable overhead just running. If you're talking about video/audio, then I wouldn't say I completely lack confidence in DirectX's speed (with good drivers present, of course)
Well, there's a lot that the MS kernel probably doesn't have that the ReactOS kernel could have. I'm talking about better process scheduling, preemptive and realtime stuff, and also the fact that ReactOS uses gcc (at least for the version I have), which should give a significant performance improvement by itself just because of the extra optimizations. Or am I completely wrong about this?
 
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GCC giving performance improvements over the Intel compiler? Am I missing something?
 
Kramy said:
GCC giving performance improvements over the Intel compiler? Am I missing something?
My experience is that gcc is faster than icc as often as the other way around.

And I bet Windows uses MSVC and not icc :)
 
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dflemstr said:
Well, there's a lot that the MS kernel probably doesn't have that the ReactOS kernel could have. I'm talking about better process scheduling, preemptive and realtime stuff, and also the fact that ReactOS uses gcc (at least for the version I have), which should give a significant performance improvement by itself just because of the extra optimizations. Or am I completely wrong about this?

I don't know if you're right or wrong, but intuitively I don't think your arguments make a lot of sense.

Microsoft is one of the world's richest companies and Windows is its flagship product. It has far more resources at its disposal than the development for a barely used replacement OS like ReactOS does. There's also no reason to believe that gcc would perform better on average, much less significantly better than either Visual Studio or ICC, which again have a ton of resources behind them and a major incentive to generate fast code.

Even if the scheduling is better (again, no evidence) is that really important when in a scenario like this you wouldn't want to have a lot of active processes running? Realtime features are also generally irrelevant to time performance and can actually hinder it.

People like to assume that non-Windows is automatically better no matter what, which I find rather strange. Especially since ever since I moved to Linux (Ubuntu) I've had performance problems left and right that I never had on Windows XP. It doesn't take a lot for Firefox or even Pidgin to start chugging, gvim starts hiccuping if I have multiple tabs open, in general more than 20-30% CPU is being used.. and this is with a 1.8GHz Core 2, not some old CPU. It's actually a better system (better CPU, more RAM) than I was using in Windows.
 
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