No Welcome board/thread?

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Oddjob64
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No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Oddjob64 »

Well, doesn't matter. I have been following ReactOS for a while, and I think there is a great potential on this (open-source and based on NT? I'm sold). Today I finally decided to register. I hope to be able to partake in talk about ReactOS, and to help development in any way I can. I have the following "talents" which may be useful:

-I'm a good tester. I can find, describe and help diagnose many bugs in software. Though I don't have real hardware suitable for testing ROS. Could you still use another VirtualBox tester?
-I'm also good at coming with interesting ideas for features and problem solving, so if you need ideas for brainstorming I'm in (in fact I just had an idea. What about a thread for brainstorming for ReactOS? Obviously with original ideas (i.e. a system for changing system icons), not things that are planned or come naturally with development (like more file systems, some required NT component, bug fixes, better compatibility, etc).
-Oh, and most importantly, I'm fluent at speaking both English and Spanish (and a tiny bit of French and Portuguese), so if you need help translating ReactOS I can do that too.

I don't know a thing about programming :( (well I know what a compiler, programming language, source code, etc is but I have no idea how to use it), even though I want to learn so bad but I don't know where to being.

And congratulations on reaching 50% of the IndieGoGoGo campaign. Given the circumstances it's pretty good. I'm currently broke, but I can offer you my encouragement and my talents above, and hopefully soon I will actually know to code and maybe contribute some patches! (Believe me I'd really like to check the ROS source, if I could fully understand it...).
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EmuandCo
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by EmuandCo »

Hello,
first, welcome in our forums ^^
Testers are always very appreciated. Communication between testers is realized mostly by IRC Chat, so I suggest you join freenode #reactos. Hardware not suitable should be made suitable, so if you can send some error logs, we would love to get our hands on.
Ideas are nice, too. If you have any ideas, throw them into a Jira Report and/or IRC Chat.
Translation help is important too. Try ROS in your languages and check for bugs. If you find some, feel free to send us some patches.
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.

If my post/reply offends or insults you, be sure that you know what sarcasm is...
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Black_Fox
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Black_Fox »

Oddjob64 wrote:-I'm a good tester. I can find, describe and help diagnose many bugs in software. Though I don't have real hardware suitable for testing ROS. Could you still use another VirtualBox tester?
Hi and welcome to the forums! The testers are always welcome, especially those who give good debug logs, download links and reproduction steps :) As EmuandCo said, you can join the IRC in case you don't know what to test. For example, you will probably have some favorite programs you like to use on Windows - just make sure they run on WinXP (or even better Win2003 if you have it) and then test them on ReactOS. Or you may just throw XP-compatible stuff at ROS and watch if it breaks or not. I'm probably too general while you already have your own ideas, so if you need to know any detail, let us know.
Oddjob64
Posts: 40
Joined: Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:21 am

Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Oddjob64 »

Thank you. The problem is that I cannot wipe the main OS from my laptop :P And it has no serial port. I'll see if I can figure out a way to dual-boot ReactOS though.

I'll be glad to test on VirtualBox (BTW I do have Windows Server 2003 Standard SP1 x86, is that good?). Maybe I'll make a thread about properly installing ReactOS, since VirtualBox is giving me issues too (it gets stuck on Registering Components, full progress bar but no CPU activity, no matter how I configure the VM). Anyway, I'll talk to you later, since it's past midnight already.
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Black_Fox
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Black_Fox »

Oddjob64 wrote:it has no serial port. I'll see if I can figure out a way to dual-boot ReactOS though.
I'd rather not do that yet if that disk contains data you value :-)
Oddjob64 wrote:I do have Windows Server 2003 Standard SP1 x86, is that good?
That's not good, that's excellent! 2k3 SP1 is exactly the version needed.

As for VBox issues, which VBox version, which ROS version? I always use newest VirtualBox and ROS trunk build no more than a few days old and it always worked for me on rev >55000. I use "Win 2003" profile in VBox, 1 GB RAM and have the VirtualBox Extensions installed (not the Guest Additions).
vicmarcal
Test Team
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by vicmarcal »

Oddjob64 wrote:Thank you. The problem is that I cannot wipe the main OS from my laptop :P And it has no serial port. I'll see if I can figure out a way to dual-boot ReactOS though.

I'll be glad to test on VirtualBox (BTW I do have Windows Server 2003 Standard SP1 x86, is that good?). Maybe I'll make a thread about properly installing ReactOS, since VirtualBox is giving me issues too (it gets stuck on Registering Components, full progress bar but no CPU activity, no matter how I configure the VM). Anyway, I'll talk to you later, since it's past midnight already.
Right now you don't need to install it in dual-boot. ´VBOX testers are good enough :) Of course, if you have chances to perform RH testing it would be awesome, but better if you test in a secondary machine to avoid "messing" the boot (just safe than worry).

Come to #reactos , and enjoy joining us :), you will feel your testing skills boosting.
Oddjob64
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Oddjob64 »

I usually try with the Windows XP profile in the latest VBox (4.3.12), and the newest revision from https://www.reactos.org/getbuilds. I will try with the settings you suggested and revision 63534. Meanwhile I'll also setup a IRC client...

P.S. My version of Windows Server 2003 is actually Web Server, is that still good?
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Black_Fox
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Black_Fox »

The VBox profiles just set up some variables like RAM and don't change many things, so XP profile is fine.
The Web server - can you run apps on it just like you would on WinXP? If yes, there's probably not a problem.
Oddjob64
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Joined: Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:21 am

Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Oddjob64 »

Yes - I have the install CD.

And I managed to get past the Registering Components part; It seems changing the keyboard layout to anything other than US makes the setup get stuck.
vicmarcal
Test Team
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by vicmarcal »

Oddjob64 wrote:Yes - I have the install CD.

And I managed to get past the Registering Components part; It seems changing the keyboard layout to anything other than US makes the setup get stuck.
Yup. Known bug.
Webunny
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Joined: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:30 pm

Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Webunny »

vicmarcal wrote:
Oddjob64 wrote:Yes - I have the install CD.

And I managed to get past the Registering Components part; It seems changing the keyboard layout to anything other than US makes the setup get stuck.
Yup. Known bug.
Indeed. A very, very, long-time known bug. One which is pretty annoying. It would be a huge amelioration if there was at least 1 (one) alternative that let you use azerty on there.
Oddjob64
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Oddjob64 »

Maybe you should just gray it out until it works, so people don't change it and then wonder why it doesn't work.
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Black_Fox
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Black_Fox »

Unfortunately, there's currently also a bug which causes disabled controls to still work :D It is being looked at.
Webunny
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Webunny »

Black_Fox wrote:Unfortunately, there's currently also a bug which causes disabled controls to still work :D It is being looked at.
I'm wondering what the problem actually is to get it sorted out? I mean, in principle, if you get a USA qwerty keyboard working, it should be possible to get azerty working too. There isn't something fundamentally different to it, I would suspect.
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Black_Fox
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Re: No Welcome board/thread?

Post by Black_Fox »

The problem isn't changing keyboard layout (or date format or anything). It is caused by the control panel window opening, even if you don't change anything... I'm not sure about details, though. For now it's not a blocker, just inconvenience - there's a sensible default kbd layout for many languages already - you can change it in the beginning of 1st stage setup as well.
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