>Words cannot express how much of an impact this OS would have had if the amount of time and resources dedicated to Linux, which is yet another UNIX clone in an age where 4-year CS majors do UNIX clones as assignments[1], were dedicated to ReactOS.

The difference is that UNIX was designed by AT&T Bell Labs and largely standardized with POSIX. Whereas Windows was designed by the people who brought you kernel mode printer drivers and the Blue Screen of Death and a working implementation requires such gems as having to intentionally reproduce undocumented historical bugs because legacy applications rely on them.

WINE makes sense because it's transitional. It allows you to switch to a better operating system without having to abandon all vestiges of legacy software at once. It's software you like to exist but you still hope to never have to use.

Which is why a full Windows clone is silly. It's not transitional. Windows was designed by a committee in a hurry. There are plenty of good reasons not to want it completely regardless of the license it's distributed under.

talk about FUD! where to start

> the people who brought you kernel mode printer drivers and the Blue Screen of Death

the scenarios that result in errors are totally different from the error scenarios in linux. most of the crashes in windows systems are the results of non-MSFT developers who wanted to insert code into the kernel. these kinds of errors happen on linux too, if you use binary nvidia drivers and/or vmware.

> requires such gems as having to intentionally reproduce undocumented historical bugs because legacy applications rely on them.

the "compatibility layer" is actually far more nuanced than this, and only turns on the old and bad behavior if it recognizes that it's being used by an application that requires the old and bad behavior.

> Windows was designed by a committee in a hurry.

NT was designed by the team that did VMS in a 3-month retreat to Hawaii. the design they created has lasted with very minor modifications for the last twenty years. can linux say the same?

> NT was designed by the team that did VMS in a 3-month retreat to Hawaii. the design they created has lasted with very minor modifications for the last twenty years. can linux say the same?

It's not necessarily a good design just because it has lasted for 20 years. It might just be that it's too expensive to change any of it. Although I should probably say that I'm not informed enough to judge

>the scenarios that result in errors are totally different from the error scenarios in linux.

Not really. It's more like the Windows problems are a superset of the Linux problems. Most kernel panics are a result of bugs in drivers which happens just the same on Windows. Then you have all the ones based on Microsoft laziness, like getting the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD instead of the OS trying to load some more drivers if your disk controller died and you replaced it with a different model. And then you have the fallout of Microsoft's attempts to fix legacy software rampaging through kernel memory, which means all the legacy code that used to do that (including the ones that did something useful instead of causing a BSOD) will now just crash the application and break the legacy software, because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to get it right the first time.

> most of the crashes in windows systems are the results of non-MSFT developers who wanted to insert code into the kernel.

The difference is that Unix-like operating systems have always discouraged that behavior so it happens a lot less often (and is a lot more suspicious), and if you have something that legitimately needs to go into the Linux kernel then it generally gets merged into the main tree. But not until you fix what problems the kernel maintainers identify, and then it gets maintained by the people who know what they're doing.

> the "compatibility layer" is actually far more nuanced than this

Sounds unnecessarily complicated and undesirable.

> NT was designed by the team that did VMS in a 3-month retreat to Hawaii.

NT was never the problem. That's like saying ReactOS will be good because it's designed by smart people. The "design" is already cribbed by what came before it and the box it now has to live in, which was set out by DOS and Windows 95. Microsoft now has to live with that legacy, why should the rest of us?

> NT was designed by the team that did VMS in a 3-month retreat to Hawaii. the design they created has lasted with very minor modifications for the last twenty years. can linux say the same?

How long does it take to design an OS, once you've already done one, and there are others to use as reference?

I don't think there was ever a similar moment in the history of Linux, because Linus copped the design of UNIX, and he states this freely and matter-of-factly.

> Words cannot express how much of an impact this OS would have had if the amount of time and resources dedicated to Linux, which is yet another UNIX clone in an age where 4-year CS majors do UNIX clones as assignments[1], were dedicated to ReactOS. Where might Microsoft be now if that had happened?

MS does offer some of the NT kernel source under an academic license precisely for this purpose [1]. I'm not sure if it's a response to ReactOS (does anyone know?).

[1] : http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/article...

This project will be very cool if it succeeds.

But the fatal flaw could be its monolithic nature. Linux is just a kernel. Unix, by nature, is more easily broken down into a loose collection of components that can more or less stand on their own. NT was created as a monolith by one company with tremendous resources, and it doesn't easily break down into smaller pieces. It either all works or it all doesn't. So this project seems to have a much bigger scope than Linux; it's more like Linux+GNU+X11+KDE+Wine+... all rolled into one. Unless they've figured out how to drop in chunks of NT itself and have it work. So I wish it luck, but it sounds daunting...

Yes, the project's target is, at least at beginning, a full-fledged Windows binary-compatible OS, a "monolith". Yet, when it will reach a stable version, there isn't really any obstacle, given the fact that it is an open-source project, in forking it. The ReactOS team has to provide everything now, but when others around will start providing better alternatives for the OS' components, the team might retreat in doing only what they do better, which I suppose is the NT core.

If you refereed to the NT kernel to be a monolith, then it actually is a hybrid. Other than kernel-integrated UI, its NT core is micro-kernel by design.

I wasn't referring specifically to the kernel. Monolithic kernels aren't any harder than microkernels, as evidenced by the success of Linux vs Hurd.

The UI kernel integration intrigues me. Apparently it was done for performance reasons. If it improves performance, then that would be a legitimate reason to do it.

I guess the project is aiming to hit some critical mass where it attracts more developers and becomes self-sustaining. But does that point change with each release of Windows?

First yes, monolithic kernels aren't any harder than microkernels, they are actually easier. That was the main reason for Linus' choice when redesigning the Minix microkernel into monolithic Linux.

Second, yes again - UI was integrated due to performance improvement. Earlier versions of NT had microkernel architecture.

Third - well, this is a philosophical question. There are a lot of different people involved in ReactOS and I guess each of them have slightly different reasons for their involvement. "Critical mass" might be unavoidable though, considering the offering. For now Windows 2003 is targeted due to its simpler kernel architecture (NT 5.2) compared to later versions. After that will be achieved, well... we'll see.

> Other than kernel-integrated UI, its NT core is micro-kernel by design.

Care to elaborate on the kernel-integrated UI. That seems like a weird place to break from a micro-kernel design.

There is a referenced piece of info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_kernel

"The emulation subsystem which implements the Windows personality is called the Client/Server Runtime Subsystem (csrss.exe). On versions of NT prior to 4.0, this subsystem process also contained the window manager, graphics device interface and graphics device drivers. For performance reasons, however, in version 4.0 and later, these modules (which are often implemented in user mode even on monolithic systems, especially those designed without internal graphics support) run as a kernel-mode subsystem[1]."

[1] http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc750820.aspx

Thank You! Thank you so much for your support. We shall do what we can, as good as possible.

Aleksey Bragin, ReactOS Project Coordinator

I support the project as well.

But, if it were very popular how would MS respond? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't ignore it.

AFAIK, React OS doesn't use any of Microsoft's trademarks, and they've come out of a pretty long, hard and deep audit to ensure that there wasn't any Windows code in the system.

The only recourse (other than a bullshit groundless lawsuit) that Microsoft has it to produce a better product. And considering that MS are ahead in terms of customers, API users, and paid developers... I'm pretty sure they'll remain on top for quite some times to come...

Ahem. You forgot one of the most potent weapons in Microsoft's IP arsenal: patents. I wish they weren't as powerful as they are, but they can't be ignored.

Microsoft steals ReactOS developers to become Windows kernel developers. The last two editions of Windows Internals list Alex Ionescu as co-author. Alex Ionescu was the lead ReactOS developer before Mark Russinovich stole him.

In E.U., which is where ReactOS is based now, the software patents are not valid.