[ros-dev] some ROS 0.27RC1 LiveCD feedback

[Alex Ionescu]

Bernd Blaauw wrote:

> Hi ReactOS project, I've tried your 0.27RC1 LiveCD in VMware 
> Workstation 4.5.2 for Windows, and it's great to have a win32 
> compatible LiveCD.

Hi Bernd, thanks for your comments. I will reply below.

>
> things I noticed.
> *CTRL-ALT-DEL (eh..INS for VMware) doesn't bring up Taskmgr,
>  but rightclicking on start menu, then selecting taskmgr, does,
>  as well as running START/RUN/TASKMGR.EXE does.

We are aware of this. We currently don't handle the CAD combination 
since it requires a large amount of architectural security/logon 
functionality that we don't have yet (look for SAS, Winlogon, GINA on 
MSDN if you're interested).

> *In VMware, the third tab (with graphs) looks strange

It looks strange in anything, we still have many issues without 
win32k.sys (Drawing subsystem)

> *bootCD doesn't start LiveCD automatically when no bootable
>  harddisk is present. It still prompts for 'press a key to start CD'.
>  MS Win2000/XP cdrom behave different depending on if an active bootable
>  primary partition is present (press a key to boot cdrom), or not
>  (automatically boot into cdrom)

A long time request by many users... maybe the addittion of your voice 
will make someone implement this.
GvG, feel up to it?

> *LiveCD gets assigned drive C:. I hope you're able to change this into
>  'start with D: or higher'
>  Reason: partition from a ROS LiveCD, at least a primary partition with
>          driveletter C: should be able to be created.

Another good point.

> *Rightclick on Start, then Settings. The window show up too low
>  (tab page Desktop shows top 8 items, not all 11).
>  Also the checkbox doesn't have any noticeable effect,
>  I expected some version number to be displayed on the desktop,
>  like in beta Windows builds.

We used to do this, then we started reading it from registry, but we 
don't read it correctly, so it's always reading it as "FALSE". Another 
long-lasting bug that is just too trivial for anyone to get around to 
fixing :(.

> *Shutdown EXPLORER causes reboot (why not just fallback into TASKMGR
>  which can start programs, or in CMD.EXE ?)

Currently we don't support shutdown, so we use killing explorer.exe as 
an alternate shutdown method. This will eventually be fixed to work 
properly.

> *Logoff causes reboot

See above.

> *Shutdown option is followed by a dialogue, in which answering YES
>  doesn't shut duwn the computer

See above.

> *Where is the cdrom bootsector as a file?
>  Copying all files from cdrom to a directory on harddisk followed by
>  running MKISOFS should be possible, but to create a bootable cdrom
>  you'd also need the bootsector as a 2KB file.
>  I'd really dislike needing some 'extract bootsector from (Live)CD'
>  program, or needing to download additional files just to
>  compile/extract a bootsector.
>  Can the target file which the bootsector should load be configured at
>  boottime? Enough space for '\12345678.ABC\12345678.ABC' ?
>  The Windows bootsector usually is limited (in binary form ofcourse) to
>  'i386\somefile.ext' (4 characters for directory).
>  Would be cool if a modified ROS cdrom bootsector could boot Win2000/XP
>  setup as the cdrom bootsector for these operating systems might be
>  copyrighted officially (and no public license for distribution of it).
>
> Despite these comments, I'm VERY impressed by the current progress 
> since 0.24/0.25 ! 0.35 or so might have a moderately usable system 
> working (OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, Winrar/7Zip, WinAMP perhaps)

OpenOffice, Winrar, 7zip and Winamp already work, although they are 
quite unusable. FireFox and Thunderbird will be our top priority for 0.3.0+

>
> Bernd
>
> PS: normal ROS cd: ICON.ICO still in root of cdrom, which is not 
> necessary and pollutes your DVD if you add ROS to a multi-OS 
> compilation ( WinPE + Win2000 setup + FreeDOS + ReactOS setup + 
> Knoppix + ... )
>
> Bernd

Best regards,
Alex Ionescu