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Comment Re:Russian Project (Score 3, Informative) 38

by jeditobe (#63642362) Attached to: The ReactOS Project Suddenly Shows Signs of Life

Just be aware that this project is largely built by Russian developers, which in and of itself may not make the project risky, however, I think it is fair to make this clear in-case anyone has any concerns about this. Is the project trustworthy? What are the odds of any back-dooring or Russian government influence in the project?

I don't want to be a fearmonger, and it's quite possible that the project is safe, but in these times it's worth asking these questions.

This statement is more like speculative and slanderous
While several Russian developers took part in the project, their total number cannot be called significant against the background of a total number of developers of 250 people.
Check the names:
https://github.com/reactos/rea...
https://reactos.org/wiki/Peopl...

The project, despite the wide publicity, did not receive any support from the Russian government, which prefers to develop its own forks of Linux distributions
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

For many years now, the project has been managed exclusively by a German foundation, whose board includes mostly people with European citizenship. The Russian body was disolved in 2015.
https://ev.reactos.org/index_e...
https://reactos.org/wiki/React...

Submission + - The ReactOS project suddenly showed signs of life (reactos.org) 1

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: ReactOS is an open-source operating system that aims to replicate Microsoft Windows, and can already run many Windows applications without modification.

ReactOS published a new (infrequent) newsletter to outline recent work. It reveals that progress has slowed down recently, but the project definitely isn’t dead. The newsletter also acknowledges team hasn't put out a new version since the end of 2021 although progress continues. Due to shifting focuses to quality releases, they are no longer on a quarterly release cadence. The date of the next release is not set yet but according to huge list of already implemented changes they aim for it to be a substantial update.

The last update to ReactOS was version 0.4.14, released on December 2021. While developers were previously committed to releasing updates every three months, that has since changed, and updates will now be focused on quality rather than quantity. For the ReactOS team to be confident enough to release something, it needs to have less than 20 known unfixed regressions while adding new features and functions.

Behind the scenes, it looks like things are spinning well. The team specifically highlighted its progress on the x64 port of ReactOS, which went from being a non-booting mess to an operating system that boots up and mostly works. It doesn’t run any x86 programs since it doesn’t have WoW64, but it’s going well

Submission + - ReactOS 0.4.8 released with Windows Vista/7/8/10 API support (osnews.com) 1

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: With software specifically leaving NT5 behind, ReactOS is expanding its target to support NT6+ (Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10) software. Colin, Giannis and Mark are creating the needed logic in NTDLL and LDR for this purpose. Giannis has finished the side-by-side support and the implicit activation context, Colin has changed Kernel32 to accept software made for NT6+, and Mark keeps working on the shim compatibility layer. Although in a really greenish and experimental state, the new additions in 0.4.8 should start helping several software pieces created for Vista and upwards to start working in ReactOS. Microsoft coined the term backwards compatibility, ReactOS the forward compatibility one.
A new tool, a DrWatson32 alike, has been created by Mark and added to 0.4.8, so now any application crashing will create a log file on the desktop. This crash dump details the list of modules and threads loaded, stack traces, hexdumps, and register state.

Submission + - ReactOS 0.4.7 Released (reactos.org)

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: OS News reports that the latest version of ReactOS has been released:
"ReactOS 0.4.7 has been released, and it contains a ton of fixes, improvements, and new features. Judging by the screenshots, ReactOS 0.4.7 can run Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla all at once, which is good news for those among us who want to use ReactOS on a more daily basis. There's also a new application manager which, as the name implies, makes it easier to install and uninstall applications, similar to how package managers on Linux work. On a lower level, ReactOS can now deal with Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, BtrFS, ReiserFS, FFS, and NFS partitions."
General notes, tests, and changelog for the release can be found at their respective links. A less technical community changelog for ReactOS 0.4.7 is also available. ISO images are ready at the ReactOS Download page.

Submission + - ReactOS 0.4.2 Officially Released (with introduced dot.NET 2.0/4.0 support) (reactos.org)

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: Version 0.4.2 of ReactOS, the open-source binary-compatible Windows re-implementation, is now officially available.

What’s more appealing in ReactOS 0.4.2 is it includes the ability to read and write various file systems for Linux/Unix namely ext family and Btrfs and ability to read such file systems as ReiserFS and UFS.

ReactOS 0.4.2 also features Cygwin support, .NET 2.0 (https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-6382) and 4.0 (https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-11266) application support, among other updated packages and revised external dependencies such as Wine and UniATA. The team also worked to improve overall user experience.

ReactOS support has improved to the point that games like Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJTL8srScQI) and Doom 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY) should even be playable on this "open-source Windows" OS along with applications like Thunderbird and 7-Zip.

ReactOS is free. You can boot your desktop or laptop from it. It looks like Windows (a 10-year-old version, anyway), so you already know how to use it. And it'll run some Windows and DOS applications, maybe including DOS games that regular 64-bit Windows can no longer touch.

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