Stage alpha or beta

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scottmccarthy945
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by scottmccarthy945 »

I understand how hard it is to write something like this, however, I do agree that this is taking an unreasonable amount of time. The problem is by the time this OS even makes it to beta, the entire architecture is going to change. X86 is quickly dying whether you realize it or not and the entire industry is going to move to ARM soon. Apple has forced this adoption as ARM runs circles around X86 in terms of power consumption and performance. My MacBook Pro M1 kicks the crap out of even my WIndows desktop with dual RX580 GPUs and an AMD Ryzen processor. My super expensive Lenovo Yoga laptop can only run 3 hours max on battery while my Macbook Pro can run 13+ hours even if you push it with video editing, gaming etc. The architecture is so efficient that the battery lasts the same no matter what you throw at it.

My point being that Apple has shown that ARM basically makes X86 look like it's from the dinosaur era. Microsoft will try to hold on as long as they can since there is a lot built around the X86 architecture but it won't hold on for long. When Apple continues to kick the crap out of anything Windows/Intel/AMD throws at it, they will eventually realize they need to move to ARM to compete. The entire industry is going to shift to ARM soon. It's too power efficient and powerful not to. Also, ARM servers are going to be incredibly powerful and save a ton of power within colocation facilities so the power savings alone is going to justify the platform.

So by the time ReactOS gets to beta, the team is going to have to rewrite it to adapt it to ARM in a couple years. X86 is quickly looking like the VHS player of the past. It will take a couple years but Microsoft and partners are already releasing laptops with ARM processors and WIndows versions of ARM. What is really holding it up is the Qualcomm deal. Once Microsoft is out of that exclusive agreement, that's when ARM is going to explode.

Don't believe me? Go watch videos on Youtube about Asahi Linux running on a Mac M1. Watch how fast it boots and runs and then tell me that's not the future. Go watch how incredibly fast Asahi Linux runs on the M1 architecture in BETA with BETA GPU drives not even fully optimized and you will understand where i am coming from.

X86 is dead - alot of people simply don't realize it yet. ReactOS is going to need to re-write the entire architecture to support ARM once this transition takes place which is coming faster that you can imagine.
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EmuandCo
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by EmuandCo »

Just because Apple thinks they can compare apples (RISC) with pears (CISC) does not mean it's correct. Especially when Apple calls out prices others would call usury. Both architectures have a reason to exist and both have perfect situations where they shine.

I don't get why all the MS bashing if you then agree that they made a ARM port of Windows?!

x86 is NOT dying just because a fashion brand like Apple decides that way. And this is GOOD!

Btw, I work for industry and NONE plans to shift anywhere. They have software that MUST run and it was made for x86 and still is. So ARM is completely out of question! Same goes for Linux or Mac as replacement. No one cares. Power savings don't justify anything. Our customers need a running architecture with the software they depend on and that is what they want.

And as last one. YEAH, I don't believe you. My Win11 Surface (amd64 arch) boots in 3 sec, so what are we arguing about here?!

Regardless, YES, we are in need of a ARM port. That is true indeed. But it has way less priority compared to a working w32 subsystem and stable kernel or the shift to NT6.
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.

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dark
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by dark »

scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 am I understand how hard it is to write something like this, however, I do agree that this is taking an unreasonable amount of time. The problem is by the time this OS even makes it to beta, the entire architecture is going to change. X86 is quickly dying whether you realize it or not and the entire industry is going to move to ARM soon. Apple has forced this adoption as ARM runs circles around X86 in terms of power consumption and performance. My MacBook Pro M1 kicks the crap out of even my WIndows desktop with dual RX580 GPUs and an AMD Ryzen processor. My super expensive Lenovo Yoga laptop can only run 3 hours max on battery while my Macbook Pro can run 13+ hours even if you push it with video editing, gaming etc. The architecture is so efficient that the battery lasts the same no matter what you throw at it.

My point being that Apple has shown that ARM basically makes X86 look like it's from the dinosaur era. Microsoft will try to hold on as long as they can since there is a lot built around the X86 architecture but it won't hold on for long. When Apple continues to kick the crap out of anything Windows/Intel/AMD throws at it, they will eventually realize they need to move to ARM to compete. The entire industry is going to shift to ARM soon. It's too power efficient and powerful not to. Also, ARM servers are going to be incredibly powerful and save a ton of power within colocation facilities so the power savings alone is going to justify the platform.

So by the time ReactOS gets to beta, the team is going to have to rewrite it to adapt it to ARM in a couple years. X86 is quickly looking like the VHS player of the past. It will take a couple years but Microsoft and partners are already releasing laptops with ARM processors and WIndows versions of ARM. What is really holding it up is the Qualcomm deal. Once Microsoft is out of that exclusive agreement, that's when ARM is going to explode.

Don't believe me? Go watch videos on Youtube about Asahi Linux running on a Mac M1. Watch how fast it boots and runs and then tell me that's not the future. Go watch how incredibly fast Asahi Linux runs on the M1 architecture in BETA with BETA GPU drives not even fully optimized and you will understand where i am coming from.

X86 is dead - alot of people simply don't realize it yet. ReactOS is going to need to re-write the entire architecture to support ARM once this transition takes place which is coming faster that you can imagine.
And yet Apple has yet to release a new "Mac Pro" desktop, most likely because they simply can't make ARM compete in the high end performance sector that it's always been bad at. Then you must consider how Apple initially compared the M1 with year old Intel chips when Ryzen laptop chips were beating them. Now I see articles about people returning their Macbook because a $500 cheaper Acer is a little faster at video editing, and the only downside being that it has 9 hours of battery life instead of 15 hours. As always, Apple pretends they've made giant leaps, or their products are somehow going to usher in a new era, but the reality is they are only marginal improvements, and it's unlikely they'll be able to keep updating their ARM chips to be competitive. Especially now that it's harder for them to monopolize early access to the smallest chip fab processes. As a side note, have you been computer shopping lately? Intel is making 10, 12, even 14 core laptops the norm, hence why people are finding better performance from PCs.
PeterLinuxer
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by PeterLinuxer »

I think ARM, RISC-V and maybe other CPUs (perhaps from Chinese mobile phones) are coming. And x86 is bloated because of the backward compatibility to 16 and 32 bit modes. But both facts don't mean x86 is dead. Perhaps in the near future x86 VMs become important, but x86 dead? No.

And about the development taking long time: Where's the problem? The ROS devs are not MS or Apple so they won't get into market trouble because it takes some time. Windows architecture is huge (so it _must_ take some time) and creating an open source OS compatible to Windows is a worthy goal (so it's worth waiting for).
ReactOS is in early development phase! And ReactOS is not Linux.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by dizt3mp3r »

ReactOS is required for certain people in certain circumstances but for the moment we have an alternative - Windows!

ReactOS primary achievements at the moment are: training Windows o/s developers, understanding through reverse engineering and re-implementing and documenting through code how Windows does what it does.

Whenever I see one of these posts, I think - here is another person who wants something now... My suggestion? Just sit back and lower your expectations. ReactOS will be usable to some sooner than you imagine, it just may not be ready for you.
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Aeneas
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by Aeneas »

I do see ARM coming, too, regardless of the eventual fate of x86 this or that way:

1. "Performance matters less": the majority of devices nowadays are mobiles, and so, in order to reach customers, you must make things "so they run on mobiles, too", sort of. This really is how Flash died: the iPhone did not support it.

2. "Speed matters less": these are not the 1990s; between speed and battery life, people more and more pick battery life — or, in servers, low energy consumption (i.e. cheaper services).

3. There may be "reasons" for the unreasonable development time, but that does not change the fact. It's like you try to re-create the Titanic out of paper-clips — "yeah but it's a huge ship": well, we know, but we can't say it's a great approach (and one asks oneself, isn't there a way to "cut corners" here and there). So they are free to make it slowly, and others are free to make note of this. And... of course... the traditional answer here is, "if YOU would help weld paper-clips, the Titanic would get done faster", which is as factually correct as it is practically pointless. In your case, the Titanic starts to sink ere it is built — because you start to be bound to more antique apps (particularly in the browser sphere), making the end result "more advanced" but also "less practically useful".

(Since the 80486, the RISC/CISC division has been pretty blurred, by the way.)
PeterLinuxer
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by PeterLinuxer »

So this is a hopeless project in your opinion and contributing is hopeless, too. What is your point then?
ReactOS is in early development phase! And ReactOS is not Linux.
middings
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by middings »

scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 am I understand how hard it is to write something like this, however, I do agree that this is taking an unreasonable amount of time.
Scott, you are not the first person to state the that ReactOS is taking a lot of time to get to beta. What are you trying to accomplish by doing that?

Let's suppose all your claims about x86 becoming obsolete are correct. So what? ReactOS enthusiasts will continue to work on ReactOS.

Scott you are free to contribute to the ReactOS ARM port. All your contributions of working, tested, and documented ARM code are welcome.
scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 amSo by the time ReactOS gets to beta, the team is going to have to rewrite it to adapt it to ARM in a couple years.
There's a saying among rocket scientists, "To make a big rocket that flies, start from a small rocket that flies. Starting by trying to build a big rocket almost always ends with a big rocket that never flies."

With the x86 architecture and NT5.2 target, the ReactOS developers are building a small (yet still quite ambitious) "rocket that flies". Yes, progress has been slow. The task is a one huge problem. But switching to another architecture before ReactOS is finished, polished, and released for general use would saddle the ReactOS developers with two problems.

Scott, you're not the first person to make your observations about the ReactOS project. But I do give you a bit of credit for resisting the temptation to insist that the developers abandon C and C++ and start writing everything in Rust or some other newer, more fashionable language.
scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 amReactOS is going to need to re-write the entire architecture to support ARM once this transition takes place which is coming faster that you can imagine.
Thank you for your advice.
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EmuandCo
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by EmuandCo »

scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 amReactOS is going to need to re-write the entire architecture to support ARM once this transition takes place which is coming faster that you can imagine.
We don't need to rewrite the entire thing btw. User mode stuff builds fine by now and the missing stuff is HAL, bootloader, quite a bit kernel fun and some more nitpicks. Boom, runs!
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.

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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by florian »

Aeneas wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:09 am 3. There may be "reasons" for the unreasonable development time, but that does not change the fact. It's like you try to re-create the Titanic out of paper-clips — "yeah but it's a huge ship": well, we know, but we can't say it's a great approach (and one asks oneself, isn't there a way to "cut corners" here and there). So they are free to make it slowly, and others are free to make note of this. And... of course... the traditional answer here is, "if YOU would help weld paper-clips, the Titanic would get done faster", which is as factually correct as it is practically pointless. In your case, the Titanic starts to sink ere it is built — because you start to be bound to more antique apps (particularly in the browser sphere), making the end result "more advanced" but also "less practically useful".
ReactOS is not trying to recreate the Titanic out of paper clips. Far worse: ReactOS is trying to recreate a "real" Titanic (or in terms of binary-compatibility a "sister ship") without a commercial shipyard with thousands of paid workers behind it. That's the challenge. And our core developers are probably not wasting their time developing a fourth or sixth open source calculator.

As in any debate on this topic, a traditional ReactOS statement is that the scale and complexity of developing a binary-compatible kernel is anything but trivial.

That's why I agree and a disagree with
scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 am I understand how hard it is to write something like this, however, I do agree that this is taking an unreasonable amount of time.
(But, yes: A beta release would be great! Please developers, excuse my impatience...)
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by MadWolf »

scottmccarthy945 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:37 am I understand how hard it is to write something like this, however, I do agree that this is taking an unreasonable amount of time. The problem is by the time this OS even makes it to beta, the entire architecture is going to change. X86 is quickly dying whether you realize it or not
hmm is it now are there any good gaming computers running windows on ARM?
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I tend to take any performance numbers from apple with a pinch of salt

Aeneas wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:09 am 1. "Performance matters less": the majority of devices nowadays are mobiles, and so, in order to reach customers, you must make things "so they run on mobiles, too", sort of. This really is how Flash died: the iPhone did not support it.
no Flash died because it was just an insecure buggy mess that got replaced by HTML 5 for video and other newer web technologies
middings
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by middings »

MadWolf wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:47 am...Flash died because it was just an insecure buggy mess that got replaced by HTML 5 for video and other newer web technologies.
Agreed. Flash was already deprecated and being eased out of use when the iPhone appeared. iPhone wasn't an arrow to Flash's heart, it was but one of the nails on its coffin lid.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by dizt3mp3r »

MadWolf wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:47 am no Flash died because it was just an insecure buggy mess that got replaced by HTML 5 for video and other newer web technologies
Flash was an extremely good tool, especially on the desktop. Several major-use apps were built on Flash technology.
Flash on the web was overused and required a lot of maintenance and policing to prevent abuse. Reason it died - Apple didn't like it.
It died on the web as a result but persisted on the desktop for quite a while longer.
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PeterLinuxer
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by PeterLinuxer »

But if it only didn't work in Safari (because Apple didn't like it) but worked on the Non-Apple web, why did the Flash creator (Macromedia?) pull the plug and did withdraw it?

Edit: What about a Kickstarter campaign to speed up ReactOS development? I mean if everybody who wrote here that ROS dev is too slow gives 5 bucks...
ReactOS is in early development phase! And ReactOS is not Linux.
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Re: Stage alpha or beta

Post by MadWolf »

PeterLinuxer wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:00 pm But if it only didn't work in Safari (because Apple didn't like it) but worked on the Non-Apple web, why did the Flash creator (Macromedia?) pull the plug and did withdraw it?

Edit: What about a Kickstarter campaign to speed up ReactOS development? I mean if everybody who wrote here that ROS dev is too slow gives 5 bucks...
the ReactOS team has tried that
https://reactos.org/blogs/anonymous-spr ... ckstarter/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/th ... ud-desktop
Funding Unsuccessful
The project's funding goal was not reached on Fri, February 21 2014 6:36 AM UTC +00:00
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