Remember NT4?

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Pharaoh_Atem
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Remember NT4?

Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

I remember waaayyy back in 1995, Microsoft promised us a version of Windows NT that would include the drastic improvements in Windows 95.... In 1996, I bought my second PC, which included Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. I decided to move it to my primary PC, but was worried that I would run out of space! (I had only 200MB left and the preloaded version used up 600MB, and I really did not get much software with it either) :( ... I partitioned the space off and ran the installation.... After I selected a complete installation and was shown the desktop, I was shocked when I opened My Computer to see how much space left on my hard drive! I had 130MB left! The whole installation (OpenGL screensavers, games, animated cursors, PWS (now IIS lite), etc.) took up only 70MB! :shock: When I saw the progress of ReactOS, it reminded me of the very first release of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, which is almost exactly the same position in development you (the devs) are in.... Fast forward 10 years and now the smallest NT installation (Windows XP) takes up 1.592GB! :!: Quite a high increase.... Of course, ReactOS is not the exact same size of NT, it is just at the same point....And NT4 did not have support for DirectX immediately either... You can take advantage of this story and learn from their mistakes....
Sirmatto
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Post by Sirmatto »

Yes, that's one (of the many) strong point of ReactOS over Windows is that it won't have all of that useless garbage that you must install and yet will never use (Netmeeting and Outlook Express amongst others). ReactOS is basically the bare minimum and the user can choose to install what they want.
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Jaix
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ReactOS 0.2.9 is not WinNT4

Post by Jaix »

Hello and thank you for your possitive input, but I feel I have to put the expectaions down a bit. Windows NT4 was not in alpha state when they released it, infact they were in versin 4.0 we havn't even reached 0.4, ReactOS will be a lot bigger then it is today, just not that big that windows is.

I think you can think of it like this: we have reached 0.2.9 and implemented about 29% or the whole thing. This is not the percentage in size but in number of functions, but it tells a bit about size too.

By the way, a thread about size comparison between NT4 and ROS is not to be concidered "Off Topic".
Wierd
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Post by Wierd »

Yes, I remember NT4... Quite fondly in fact. Throw on SP6, and it was quite nice. I just wish it had better directX support.

I was kinda let down by windows 2000, since it seemed more like a perversion from the purity of NT4 in terms of its UI and reduced eyecandy... Like they took all the worthless features out of 9x, shoehorned them into NT, Tacked on PnP and DirectX, and then touted it as "The new NT."

I really long for a streamlined OS, and not one that is a pissing contest about how pretty it can be. (One of the reasons I get a bit irritated by people wanting a different UI... Windows classic can be implemented VERY leanly, and efficiently.. that is why I like it.)

As for the state of ROS-- I am afraid I have to agree with Jaix; ROS is NOT ready for prime time. Several important features are missing still, such as SMB (aka, windows file/printer sharing), a 16-bit VDM (No matter what the devs say, there *IS* a need for one! DosBox is NOT a replacement for one! VDM does MORE than just DOS emulation!), a FUNCTIONAL device manager (Which needs a more fleshed out SetupAPI.dll, some drivers need the cachemanager rewrite branch changes, improvements for system services etc...) Not to mention the many many system API sets that need implementing...

I too anxiously await a functional release of ReactOS, but I expect it to be several years away still--- But that doesnt make me any less excited.
Pharaoh_Atem
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Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

Wierd wrote:Yes, I remember NT4... Quite fondly in fact. Throw on SP6, and it was quite nice. I just wish it had better directX support.

I was kinda let down by windows 2000, since it seemed more like a perversion from the purity of NT4 in terms of its UI and reduced eyecandy... Like they took all the worthless features out of 9x, shoehorned them into NT, Tacked on PnP and DirectX, and then touted it as "The new NT."

I really long for a streamlined OS, and not one that is a pissing contest about how pretty it can be. (One of the reasons I get a bit irritated by people wanting a different UI... Windows classic can be implemented VERY leanly, and efficiently.. that is why I like it.)

As for the state of ROS-- I am afraid I have to agree with Jaix; ROS is NOT ready for prime time. Several important features are missing still, such as SMB (aka, windows file/printer sharing), a 16-bit VDM (No matter what the devs say, there *IS* a need for one! DosBox is NOT a replacement for one! VDM does MORE than just DOS emulation!), a FUNCTIONAL device manager (Which needs a more fleshed out SetupAPI.dll, some drivers need the cachemanager rewrite branch changes, improvements for system services etc...) Not to mention the many many system API sets that need implementing...

I too anxiously await a functional release of ReactOS, but I expect it to be several years away still--- But that doesnt make me any less excited.
I know that, it is just that the level of development capabilities were the same.... This is something that is difficult to get across.... NT4 did have more, but ROS has more future than NT4.... This is a difficult point to get across.... But, WOW32 should definitely be implemented in ROS... The day when ROS 1.0 comes out is the day I shall say the same thing I said when I got NT4.... And I will not say it till ROS1 comes out.... The level of functionality is not the same at all, but with such great opensource projects such as WINE, we may get there quicker than you think...
Floyd
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Post by Floyd »

Wierd wrote:Yes, I remember NT4... Quite fondly in fact. Throw on SP6, and it was quite nice. I just wish it had better directX support.

I was kinda let down by windows 2000, since it seemed more like a perversion from the purity of NT4 in terms of its UI and reduced eyecandy... Like they took all the worthless features out of 9x, shoehorned them into NT, Tacked on PnP and DirectX, and then touted it as "The new NT."
2000 is awesome. it has a similar look and feel of 98 but it's NT all the way. and besides, if you want the classic shell, just turn on the classic shell policy, it's not that hard. besides, what's wrong with having a nice interface? it is a graphical interface and some effort should be made to making it pleasing to the eye.

2000's plug and play is not tacked on. it's very solid in fact.
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Pharaoh_Atem
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Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

Floyd wrote:
Wierd wrote:Yes, I remember NT4... Quite fondly in fact. Throw on SP6, and it was quite nice. I just wish it had better directX support.

I was kinda let down by windows 2000, since it seemed more like a perversion from the purity of NT4 in terms of its UI and reduced eyecandy... Like they took all the worthless features out of 9x, shoehorned them into NT, Tacked on PnP and DirectX, and then touted it as "The new NT."
2000 is awesome. it has a similar look and feel of 98 but it's NT all the way. and besides, if you want the classic shell, just turn on the classic shell policy, it's not that hard. besides, what's wrong with having a nice interface? it is a graphical interface and some effort should be made to making it pleasing to the eye.

2000's plug and play is not tacked on. it's very solid in fact.
Windows 2000 loses key security in one field, Internet Explorer.... IE5 is included in Windows 2000, wheras Windows NT 4.0 came with IE2/IE3 depending on whether your NT came with a service pack slipstreamed or not... IE5 is integrated into the Windows core, so that makes it a giant security hole....
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Jaix
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Post by Jaix »

Floyd wrote:2000 is awesome. it has a similar look and feel of 98 but it's NT all the way. and besides, if you want the classic shell, just turn on the classic shell policy, it's not that hard. besides, what's wrong with having a nice interface? it is a graphical interface and some effort should be made to making it pleasing to the eye.

2000's plug and play is not tacked on. it's very solid in fact.
I totally agree, I think w2k is a masterpiece. It is fairly small but yet powerful and pleasant for the eyes. XP needs a lot more resources. I have an old Thinkpad 600 233MHz 512M 20G It runs nicely with w2k but really bad with wxp.
Stead
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Post by Stead »

just to add, i personally thing windows 2000 was one of the best window's os's, however there are little touches in xp which make me use it, but i feel everything in xp could of been added to 2000 in a sp, which gets to me, i don't see the reason for a new os when xp came along, infact when it was first out did it have any advantages?

p.s. you can use nlite to remove ie from 2000, which makes it somewhat faster :O

i wish they kept one thing from 2000, it was the preview function in explorer, i like the way you had the preview pane on the left, which would work for all media files provided you had a wmp plugin.. never understood why they didn't take that to xp?
Pharaoh_Atem
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Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

Stead wrote:just to add, i personally thing windows 2000 was one of the best window's os's, however there are little touches in xp which make me use it, but i feel everything in xp could of been added to 2000 in a sp, which gets to me, i don't see the reason for a new os when xp came along, infact when it was first out did it have any advantages?

p.s. you can use nlite to remove ie from 2000, which makes it somewhat faster :O

i wish they kept one thing from 2000, it was the preview function in explorer, i like the way you had the preview pane on the left, which would work for all media files provided you had a wmp plugin.. never understood why they didn't take that to xp?
There were a lot of reported crashes of explorer shell from that pane when using 3rdparty codecs... So, Microsoft developed the filmstrip and thumbnail views to replace it, and the implementation is codebased, not plugin based, so it interfaces in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer as well as Windows Media Player, so the bugs were reduced dramatically... However, the side effect was that the system requirements had to be upped quite a bit... Microsoft's 9x implementation, although bare, works pretty well and would require a rewrite of the Win32 api interfacing, which was one of the major reasons XP was introduced as XP instead of as a Service Pack...
Wierd
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Post by Wierd »

Floyd wrote:
Wierd wrote:Yes, I remember NT4... Quite fondly in fact. Throw on SP6, and it was quite nice. I just wish it had better directX support.

I was kinda let down by windows 2000, since it seemed more like a perversion from the purity of NT4 in terms of its UI and reduced eyecandy... Like they took all the worthless features out of 9x, shoehorned them into NT, Tacked on PnP and DirectX, and then touted it as "The new NT."
2000 is awesome. it has a similar look and feel of 98 but it's NT all the way. and besides, if you want the classic shell, just turn on the classic shell policy, it's not that hard. besides, what's wrong with having a nice interface? it is a graphical interface and some effort should be made to making it pleasing to the eye.

2000's plug and play is not tacked on. it's very solid in fact.
Don't get me wrong-- I run win2k regularly. I just dont like how they added so much eye candy. I use my operating system in a utilitarian manner. I dont even use wallpaper. Since my current choices for OS are "win2k" or "winXP" for the win32 world, I choose 2K, because of its reduced eyecandy.

Personally, I use my computer to do other things than marvel at icons and UI elements. My attention span is larger than that. I understand the marketing direction of making the OS "Pretty" and "Attractive to users"-- But then I have to consider that most users find shiny objects fascinating. Personally, I find such efforts distracting and wasteful. I would rather my CPU be processing my DVD encoding thread than drawing worthless eyecandy on my screen. Maybe that is just me....

As for the statement about PnP being 'tacked on', I realize that the ms developers did a very nice job, and that PnP required extensive architectural changes-- I meant it in the respect that win2k wasn't boasting PnP as its new features, or its other technical improvements---- Rather, they tried to shoehorn in pretty bells and colorful ribbons and streamers to make it look pretty to people attracted to shiny objects, giving it the feeling of being 'tacked on'.

If MS were to market an OS that had (among its features) 1) Reduced eyecandy 2)minimal default system services (but options for the usual ones to be turned on, if actually NEEDED) and 3) kept good support with other products (Eg, Go ahead and have a UXTHEME.DLL and such, just the OS itself doesnt use it) and drivers for its flagship OS--- I would probably use it.

<rant Topic="Vista">
Will I ever switch to XP? Not unless I am seriously forced to....

Will I ever switch to Vista? NEVER. I would use MacOS before that-- and that is saying something, because I HATE MacOS.

I want my computer to do the things *I* want it to, not what I am told I need or should want it to. I dont need eyecandy, and I sure as hell dont need Trusted Computing/Digital Rights Management.
</rant>

I really dont see the need for your OS to entertain you. Its an operating system-- It helps you do things; It ISNT a video game to amuse you. People shouldnt expect such things.
MadRat
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Post by MadRat »

You act as if you never heard of XP's "classic view" for the desktop. Clears the polished turd clutter.
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Matthias
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Post by Matthias »

Pharaoh_Atem wrote:IE5 is integrated into the Windows core, so that makes it a giant security hole....
Sorry, but this is just not right. IE5 runs in user mode, so if it get's compromised, it can't do any more damage to your system than, say, Firefox could. The only way IE is integrated into Windows is that it's used to display some things in windows explorer.
Pharaoh_Atem
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Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

Matthias wrote:
Pharaoh_Atem wrote:IE5 is integrated into the Windows core, so that makes it a giant security hole....
Sorry, but this is just not right. IE5 runs in user mode, so if it get's compromised, it can't do any more damage to your system than, say, Firefox could. The only way IE is integrated into Windows is that it's used to display some things in windows explorer.
not quite... If you look at certain hidden processes that are running, you will notice that explorer.exe runs as SYSTEM, then spawns a explorer process for the user, making IE have the power of a system user.... Many malware programs overload IE process and force the system process to do its bidding, which is why it is a security hole... Microsoft denies it, but I have seen it...
Matthias
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Post by Matthias »

Pharaoh_Atem wrote:not quite... If you look at certain hidden processes that are running, you will notice that explorer.exe runs as SYSTEM, then spawns a explorer process for the user, making IE have the power of a system user....
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