ReactOS Forum

Val it wasn't frustrating, it was annoying - but it wasn't you. You should be happy with that. Maybe a first!

ROCKNROLLKID wrote:LibreOffice usually maintains a still branch and usually receives several updates to it before they actually discontinue it. For example, 5.2.x branch received 7 updates before it finally went EOL.

After two betas and three release candidates, 5.4.0 was released on July 28. LibreOffice tends to release an update every 2 months. Sometimes releases are more frequent immediately after a new version (x.x.0) is released.

EmuandCo wrote:(W)e cannot stop the death of NT5.X and the only way to make things stay alive is supporting NT6.X applications. That is a known fact (among) the ROS developers already...

I look forward to seeing how the ReactOS devs choose to add support for NT6.x APIs to ReactOS. That is a matter worthy of its own topic so I won't say more about it here.

It is sad that Libre Office ends XP support but I have to say that WPS Office is really great for me too
It is free port of MS Office for Linux/Windows and GUI of WPS Office is almost same as in MS product

mario995 wrote:It is sad that Libre Office ends XP support but I have to say that WPS Office is really great for me too
It is free port of MS Office for Linux/Windows and GUI of WPS Office is almost same as in MS product

But WPS Office isn't open-source </3

As jimtabor mentioned, the underlying issue is not actually Office. The underlying issue is that ReactOS shall not turn into FreeDOS. That is, an "antique / memorial OS for dead software".

Fully 2nded. And this won't happen

EmuandCo wrote:Lets face the truth, we cannot stop the death of NT5.X and the only way to make things stay alive is supporting NT6.X applications. That is a known fact amongside the ROS developers already and the first step will most likely be using the app compatibility feature for doing so. But this still needs quite some work, because right now this feature does not hook in early enough to do so due to it behaving like the XP one. This needs some work to make it behave sort of the way the compatibility features in newer Windows versions behave. This variant can realize such tasks.

As I understand, ROS is expected to have better backward compatibility than MS Windows, probably "forward" compatibility, as well. What I mean is that eventually ROS should provide application execution environment for all versions of MS Windows, starting from Win 2000 (or eralier) to whatever the latest MS creation would be. Such functionality may be implemented as single compatibility layer or as a set of variants per MS OS version. Same can be done for drivers. Such approach means applications (and drivers) would not directly depend on the functionality and features of the ROS kernel, but successfully run in specific execution environment provided by compatibility layer. It's also possible to make specific environments for spplications/drivers with some "special" demands, which are unreasonable to support in "standard" compatibility layers.
Though it all that sounds as a lot of additional work, it would pay for itself. It's much simpler to resolve incompatibility in the layer than make changes in the kernel. Later, these changes can be moved to the kernel or just left alone.
As a bonus, with per-application compatibility layers it would become easier to provide application portability, i.e. get rid of "installations".