Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003)

Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by npteljes on Monday September 20, 2021 @01:16PM (#28596182)

I found this same hacker spirit in the FOSS world. Windows just struggles so much to be independent from its user, that I realized that I have to give up. I hope that many did the same and now nurture their talent where at least they don't have to swim dead against the current.

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by userbinator on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:34PM (#28599300)

I found this same hacker spirit in the FOSS world.

Unfortunately that "hacker spirit" seems to end at "must have the source code"; the same can't be said of those customising Windows and such, who definitely didn't have the source but succeeded nonetheless.

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by npteljes on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:58PM (#28599553)

How do you mean? Not enough hacker spirit in the FOSS world?

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by userbinator on Monday September 20, 2021 @06:25PM (#28599832)

I meant that they seem lost without source[1], while the Windows hackers don't need source.

[1] I remember someone being very surprised that I patched the binary of a FOSS application, instead of changing the source and compiling it --- the former took a few minutes, the latter would've taken far more time (to get all the dependencies, build system, etc.) and possibly introduced other unwanted changes.

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by ohazi on Monday September 20, 2021 @08:21PM (#28600676)

I think most people just don't want to see their effort lost to time.

Patching a binary is impressive, sure, but it's the polar opposite of sustainable. You don't have a good way to document your fix, it's dependent on one exact source tree and how the compiler was feeling that morning, and even minor changes from upstream can completely change the way a binary patch would need to work.

It's great for a one-off hack, but part of the appeal of open source for many people is how easy it is for your changes to become part of the "permanent record" of that piece of software.

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by npteljes on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @12:14PM (#28606560)

I like your argument about sustainability. With proper free software, the code itself is part of the product. When you're left to work on a binary, it's not even not guaranteed that your patch won't work with the next version or whatever - often the authors specifically make the life of the modders harder. It's part of the product that you don't get to modify it. It's signed, obfuscated, there's checks for integrity, uglified, ABI modifications for the sake of breaking compatibility. So much of the effort is just fighthing against that, and that's a directly opposing sustainability.

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Re:Nano98: Windows 98 that boots and runs under 5MB (2003) by npteljes on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @12:00PM (#28606435)

I don't think this argument holds much substance. FOSS developers are absolutely not lost without the source - they just share the fruit of their labor under FOSS licenses. In fact there's a good chunk of work being done black-box style: WINE, many of the drivers, game modding, hell here's a random FOSS binary patcher[0]. So FOSS developers don't seem to be lost without the source.

[0] https://github.com/secretsquirrel/the-backdoor-factory

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