Different distros of ReactOS?

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vicmarcal
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by vicmarcal »

Haos wrote:Again, i doubt anyone will take more steps in customizing ReactOS, than changing name strings, themes, fonts/icons, perhaps a new UI, plus bundling apps. There are not so many people that could really change something above that.
+1
wildschwein
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LINUX HAS CANCER !

Post by wildschwein »

If I am asked, I would vote STRICTLY AGAINST distros in Reactos !

Reactos is not Linux, and this is good ! Look at Linux, what a great mess of XServers, WindowsManagers etc.
If you need something urgent, it isn't working. Linux is a "playing OS". A lot of Linux Users, are just "trying to test the new xyz Distro" and you hear comments "great, it looks so great, and xyz is new". But the next week the test the next distro, which is just greater again ! They are "Playing around with an OS", wasting a lot of time of configuring it ! I HAVE NO TIME FOR THIS ! I need "a car that drives", not one I am used to screw all the time.

Do you see what is going on ? LINUX HAS CANCER, because of those many wild mushrooming distros, that prevents Joe Public from using it. Because if there is a problem, that you can only solve on shell level (WLAN for example) Joe Public can't solve it in 99% of all cases.

In my opinion, the fact that Linux has CANCER, is intention ! CANCER is intentionally caused by MS and other organistions that want to keep Linux small. It's practicall easy to achieve this. Organisation only need to spend not to less money to both "sides" for example KDE AND Gnome ! Or for Debian AND Ubuntu.
To make the trenches deaper. It's a trick and it's working very good !

ROS should only has ONE FACE ! Yes, there may be a lot of themes for the desktop, why not ?
It should be easy to make new themes, and share it with others. But the "machine" below ROS should be unique.
wildschwein
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by wildschwein »

I forgot one point.

If ROS is unique and easy to use for Joe Public, and Joe Public is "converting" from Windows to ROS, then Linux will be in the future an OS only for experts that want to be for their own. The mass of users are JOE Publics ! A lot of Users now use Linux because they don't want Windows, but they like the stil of windows more, and they use linux because there is no (third) alternative.

With ROS there will be the THIRD alternative ! (MAC OS is only another linux "distro" in my eyes)

This reminds me to the first book of "Perry Rhodan" called: "The third force"

The breakthrough for ROS is coming ! The first stones are falling out of the wall, perhaps already with 3.10 or 3.11 (hahaha, how funny !), when USB support for mice and keyboard is reliable working. This will be the point for many of friends of reactos, who have always a look to it, to build up a testing computer for reactos - and testing their favourite applications on real hardware !
GoBusto
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by GoBusto »

wildschwein wrote:MAC OS is only another linux "distro" in my eyes
Wait, what?

Linux is similar to BSD and Mac OSX is based on BSD code, but that's about it. Linux systems are all about the GNOME and the KDE and are bastards to get working right, whereas MacOSX is as simple as a particularly simple pie to use and is the very essence of user-friendly.

GNU/Linux and BSD = Tech lovers, systems administrators and Richard Stallman.

MacOSX = Non technical users who just want to use a damn computery thing to browse the interwebs and stuff without needing to know about anti-viruses and so forth. Also, Stephen Fry.

Windows = Everyone else.
Nate
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Nate »

I'm going to have to say that having "different distros of ReactOS" is the best thing that could possibly happen to ROS. The reason being that the goal is to make ROS compatible with Windows programs and what better way to get more people involved (DEVS) in making ROS better than MORE people working on their own distro?! The more people you have involved the more people will get interested in ROS which would make ROS very popular and when you get very popular there will be more people who will be working on ROS to make it more stable and compatible with Windows programs.

I personally think that if you don't want there to be other ROS distros out there it's kind of like saying: "I want ROS to have very slow progress due to the number of people working on it". Microsoft has an ARMY of programmers, Linux has an ARMY of programmers, and because Linux has an army of programmers working on it many people say that Linux is the most stable OS on the planet. Also, to not want other distros to come out is the exact opposite philosophy of what open-source software is all about, open-source software is about freedom :!:
Z98
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Z98 »

The reason Linux distros exist is because of the work needed to get applications to run on Linux. There isn't much of a baseline for application publishers out there to build against, so all the distros end up doing redundant work in order to allow their users to use applications without having to figure out how to build from source themselves. This situation won't exist with ReactOS, or at least it better not, as that would mean we screwed up and failed to make our system fully Windows compatible. Linux by itself does not provide a full OS for people to use, whereas we do. Comparing ROS to Linux is a mistake, and it's more appropriate to compare us to the BSDs. How many BSD "distros" are out there? They are far fewer in number, with the four big ones being Free, Net, Open, and Dragonfly. I'm aware of at least one derivative of FreeBSD, which is just a tweaking of the settings to make it easier to use as a desktop OS, but we're not faced with the hundreds of Linux distros. There may be a few highly customized/specialized derivatives as well, but again, the need does not exist to create tons and tons of BSD distros since the big four are good enough for most uses. I expect there may be one or two derivatives for highly specialized roles, perhaps one that is highly locked/stripped down for security purposes, but otherwise there does not exist a reason for large numbers of ROS distros either.
Nate
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Nate »

I agree with some of the things you said Z98. I think my main point is that Linux was nothing when few people were working on it. I think that if people start making distros this will bring more developers working on ROS, Windows is growing and getting more complicated, ROS has few developers, with more people working on it there may be a better chance to catch up with Windows ongoing amendments to their OS. Competition is what causes progress, Which is what Windows had in the beginning with the almost non existent OS market. I think the most beneficial thing that having more distros would bring is: more developers.

Sometimes people have very different needs, one may focus on making a ROS distro more stable, one may have many devs working on the kernel, one may focus on drivers, one may focus on game compatibility. I truly think that if people ever start making their own ROS distros this will help ROS with the stability and compatibility issues that ROS needs. If you read the goals of the many different Linux distros they usually say that their goal it to work on something unique (more "stable" distro, to have have many devs working on the kernel, drivers, game compatibility and so on). I think that having more distros would be a major benefit to ROS.
Z98
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Z98 »

The majority of work that the distros do involves patching applications and maybe libraries to play nice with each other. The actual development of the kernel and other OS components are done by a handful of major companies such as IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Google. The reason the majority of said development works out that way is because they're the ones with the money to hire the key developers. The actual code contribution by the overall community is nowhere as much as people like to claim it is. Again, do not compare Linux to ReactOS. Our respective environments are very different. The motivations that drive the creation of Linux distros do not apply to ReactOS. We are far more similar to things like the BSDs or Haiku, and those have large concentrations of core developers without heavy fragmentation.

While there may be highly specialized cases where maintaining a ROS distro is warranted, and this means something like a Windows Mobile type or a hardened configuration for security purposes, the mainline ROS version will be good enough for most purposes. We already have an established hardware and software ecosystem that people can take advantage of.
Pisarz
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Pisarz »

Has anyone heard about ReactOS Build Lab? It's something like ReactOS distro generator. I use ReactOS Minimalistic distro, downloaded from ReactOS Build Lab. It's really more stable.

You can download it from here:
http://marcpiulachs.com/reactos/
Nate
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Nate »

Z98, you said; "The majority of work that the distros do involves patching applications and maybe libraries to play nice with each other." And then you said: "The actual development of the kernel and other OS components are done by a handful of major companies such as IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Google.".

I guess this means that you agree with me that the benefit of having distros is there because there are BIG COMPANIES who own distros (or support them) HAVE had a history of putting money into kernel code?

"Again, do not compare Linux to ReactOS. Our respective environments are very different. The motivations that drive the creation of Linux distros do not apply to ReactOS. We are far more similar to things like the BSDs or Haiku, and those have large concentrations of core developers without heavy fragmentation."

You have me all wrong, im not "comparing Linux to ReactOS" at all, i'm only expressing my opinion that it would be beneficial to ROS if a company or companies decide to make their own ROS distro. If you do not believe that having more people working on an offshoot of this project would benefit ROS, or coming closer to having an OS that is compatible With Windows software and drivers, then this is where we disagree.
vicmarcal
Test Team
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by vicmarcal »

As i stated before:

There arent enough people skilled in the NT deep architecture to create Distros. I would bet more for "Skinners" and "StripOffs".Right now there are some communities creating Skins for XP and other Communities Stripping Off the Xp OS (see "XP Wolf Edition"), changing shell,or stripping isnt really difficult nowadays(indeed in the XP closed source).So i would bet some of these communities are going to create nice shells for ReactOS in a near future as they are used to do it in XP and ReactOS is (almost) the same.

I think is positive to have these "Skinners","Stripping" communities since they are "Free advertisement" which can attract NT developers to ReactOS project.
"Distros"?Nah..What can a Developer modify without breaking compatibility?In the better of the cases maybe they can try to create NewApis,(you can add APIs w/o breaking compatibility).

Right now this is the only ReactOS "Distro":
[ external image ]
[ external image ]


And basically it is a skin+bundle apps+new shell.It looks nice but doesnt touch(as my low Italian skills tell me) APIS or any other internal code.It has an updater and other extra apps, which works fantastic.It is really a nice work.
And most of the "Distros"(I prefer to call in this case "Skinners") will follow this line avoiding to modify APIs.
Z98
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Z98 »

No, I don't agree with the notion that distros are the reason companies pump money into the baseline code, since I do not believe that is why they do it. Hell, IBM doesn't maintain a distro at all and they're one of the biggest backers of Linux. Then there's Google, who does have their own Linux distro, but keeps it completely internal and doesn't release the source for it. These companies support Linux for strategic reasons, and their having distros is not the reason for their support.

Two additional points. As I stated before, the conditions that caused the massive fragmentation of the Linux ecosystem do not exist in ReactOS, so whether we'll ever see a massive number of distros is questionable. Second, as I already said, the direct contribution that distros provide to the baseline code is fairly small. There is no reason to believe that if ROS does find itself in a situation similar to Linux, that contributions to the base code will somehow increase in proportion to the number of spinoffs. Companies like Red Hat and Novell are exceptions, not the norm, and even then several of their kernel developers work primarily on the kernel itself, leaving the actual packaging of their company's respective distros to others. This indicates that the creation of a distro is not necessary for providing major contributions.

And as you already said, this is a point we disagree on, but then again, I and several of the ROS developers believe that the current fragmentation of the Linux ecosystem is its greatest weakness. We also don't buy the argument that it's somehow its greatest strength at the same time.
Nate
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by Nate »

Nice post vicmarcal!
cruonit
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by cruonit »

Bu would it make sense to make something like a ASUS EEE/mobile pc distro hmm maybe not a distro but a version that would be lite(as reactos grows) and would focus on the things that asus eee needs like drivers.

ReactOs is really perfect for asus eee 701 it has only 4GB HDD and 512 memory (the windows xp installation takes 1/4 of the disk).
zydon
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Re: Different distros of ReactOS?

Post by zydon »

For Distro makers, please make these:
  1. ReactOS - NT/XP/Vista/Seven compatible OS
    The current distro.
  2. ReactUS - UMPC and older computer OS
    Win9x or Workstation architecture supporting 16 bit and 32 bit gaming applications. Suitable for older PC and Netbook based PC. It's also include switchable Console (ReactDOS) and GUI environment for legacy applications compatibility.
  3. ReactSX - Symbian and connectivity OS
    Portable and mobile devices for on the move professional users.
  4. ReactME - Multimedia and entertainment OS
    Portable multimedia player or vehicle entertainment devices OS (MP3, MP4, MP5, ...).
Then, it's will be more users and developers participate in developing distros that related to them.
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