Urgent Design Questions

nfadul · Post by **nfadul** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:12 am

Hello,

I'm researching ReactOS and had a few questions about the design of ReactOS, I looked everywhere to find answers to these questions but was unfortunately unsuccessful, so hopefully you guys will have the answers to my questions. Anways here is the list of questions:

-1- What are the major design goals and the main areas of application?

-2- What are the process and memory models used?

-3- What kind of: Scheduling, file system management, security, networking, etc. does ReactOS adopt/provide?

-4- What programming environment is used, including programming languages and tools?

Thanks.

Post by **Haos** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:46 am

1. Our main design goal right now is an open-source operating system, based on NT architecture and binary compatible with NT 5.2 (Windows 2003). Areas of application are the same as with current Windows XP/2003. ROS is to be freely available XP/2003 replacement OS, capable of running Win32 applications and NT model device drivers.

Passing 2 and 3 to someone more knowledgleable.

4. ROS is written mostly in C, with some components in ASM and few pieces of C++. We support building with Ms Visual Studio, but our main building tool is RosBE - GCC/MingW32 based Building Environment, capable of building ROS OOTB on both Windows and *nix systems. As for programming environment, we do not have our own IDE. Some use VS, others KDevelop or even notepad-like apps with syntax highlighting.

Post by **Z98** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:17 am

2 and 3 are implicitly answered by 1.

nfadul · Post by **nfadul** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 11:11 pm

For 2 and 3, are there any major differences/exceptions in design compared to the design and implementation Windows XP?

Post by **Haos** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 11:18 pm

As far as i`m concerned, we are as close to NT model as its possible right now. We want binary compatibility with Windows NT systems, so those components must be alike.

geertvdijk · Post by **geertvdijk** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 11:37 pm

I could imagine (not being a developer, true) that as soon as binary compatibility is fully realised the devteam could look into making a better implementation of the WNT design than Microsoft, without breaking binary compatibility ofcourse. But that's years away.

Post by **Ged** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:10 am

It's difficult, if not impossible to improve on the design of some of the smartest programmers on the planet.
I think people underestimate the skill of the MS core devs, and the brilliance of the NT design.

Post by **elhoir** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 7:19 am

Ged wrote:I think people underestimate [...] the brilliance of the NT design.

I agree completely with you. And not only the NT design, but also the Win GUI. I find neither KDE nor GNOME as fast as Win32 GUI

geertvdijk · Post by **geertvdijk** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:36 am

Ged wrote:It's difficult, if not impossible to improve on the design of some of the smartest programmers on the planet.
I think people underestimate the skill of the MS core devs, and the brilliance of the NT design.

I thought of it not really as improving the core design, but more improving the way it is implemented, after all it is a vision 'ported' to sourcecode, and I could imagine there's different ways of doing just that...

Post by **Ged** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:04 pm

The MS core devs are smarter than the ros devs.

linuxgx · Post by **linuxgx** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:43 pm

The only MS developers that impress me, are my friends who helped make the minwin kernel for Win7.0

geertvdijk · Post by **geertvdijk** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:39 pm

Ged wrote:The MS core devs are smarter than the ros devs.

I can't judge that better than you, and you probably know what you're talking about. But there are some smart people out there that can also help changing ROS as ROS is open source, and we all know Windows isn't

Post by **elhoir** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:35 pm

Ged wrote:The MS core devs are smarter than the ros devs.

Who knows?

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:35 am

While the core devs of Windows may be geniuses, the overall effect after being passed down through the corporate tubes is a product of pure bullshit. The only thing bringing me back to even trying Windows Vista after its complete and total failure is my hopes that the bullshit can be stripped from its vastly improved core. It's almost as if the geniuses hand down the golden code after it's finished, then MS greedily snatches it up and hands it to the "user experience" monkeys and say "HERE YOU GO GUYS, FUCK IT UP!". All that talent wasted... on Aero.

Which is exactly why I hope the ROS guys can actually continue this project. Maybe you'll soon get help from an ex-Microsoft (or maybe even disguised current MS core coder - not that you'd ever find out) coder that's fed up with the way MS fucks up and bastardizes everything of theirs... then we'd see some real progress.

Then on the flip side, maybe some MS lawyer will find some snazzy little patent they would love to shove up ROS's ass and we'll all be screwed. That's the one major thing I'm concerned about at this point. If it does plan on being binary compatible with MS Windows, wouldn't that make it totally illegal?

Post by **Haos** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am

Cant use former or present Ms coders. NDA amongst other things. We also wouldn`t want help from anyone who had access to Win sources. Not healthy for our project.

Rest of your post is totally emotional, not containing anything usefull.

Urgent Design Questions

Urgent Design Questions

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