What do you think of Unix Like systems?

[Vulture]

ReactOS is in the same way a clone as Libre Office is. Compatibility to a format. Same behavior to the world outside. Totally different inside.

Which is not the case of ROS which tries (as far as I know) to follow the Windows design as close as possible. Not only being compatible with the "result" (like being able to manage a file format) but
following every step on the way to reach the result.

What makes ROS interesting is that many ppl would like to see things made different in Windows. Office is quite fine the way it is.

The primary motivation is (imo) not strictly technical but to have a free open source solution. Office is fine (questionable), like Windows is fine (or it was) , but it's not free.

[milon]

ReactOS is in the same way a clone as Libre Office is. Compatibility to a format. Same behavior to the world outside. Totally different inside.

Which is not the case of ROS which tries (as far as I know) to follow the Windows design as close as possible. Not only being compatible with the "result" (like being able to manage a file format) but
following every step on the way to reach the result.

What's your source for that? ReactOS has always been an attempt at an operating system compatible with applications and drivers. There has never been an attempt to have the same inner workings. For that, you'd need to clone the original source code, and extensive effort has gone into ensuring that is NOT the case with ReactOS.
http://www.reactos.org/forum/search.php ... code+audit

[Z98]

Be careful with how you refer to the project. There's a legal distinction between a 'clone' and an alternate implementation. Being regarded as a clone is considerably more irritating to the project from a legal perspective and we'll be fairly insistent in coming down on those that try to label the project as such.

[Vulture]

What's your source for that? ReactOS has always been an attempt at an operating system compatible with applications and drivers. There has never been an attempt to have the same inner workings. For that, you'd need to clone the original source code, and extensive effort has gone into ensuring that is NOT the case with ReactOS.

That is not what I've meant. To be binary compatible ROS has to provide all the infrastructure a program expect to be there to work, there's not freedom on choosing how to do things (it has to "clone" the original behaviour). Restrictions that do not apply implementing a file format. Just that. I'm not saying source code has been copied.

[PurpleGurl]

ROS tries to be as compatible to Windows applications and drivers as much as possible. Nothing is copied. Now, it does try to talk to things internally the way Windows does. So each module should have the same input and output, even though all the modules should have vastly different code from Windows. Sure, prologue and epilogue has to be the same in most cases, as it is the only way it really can be done without breaking compatibility with something. There is a lot of stuff that uses undocumented calls or accesses things in nonstandard ways. So we do have to borrow some of the "bugs." Reading the logs, I've noticed that several problems were because the values Windows actually uses is opposite what the name implies or what the documentation says (0 for 1 or -1, 1 for 0).

[mrugiero]

Be careful with how you refer to the project. There's a legal distinction between a 'clone' and an alternate implementation. Being regarded as a clone is considerably more irritating to the project from a legal perspective and we'll be fairly insistent in coming down on those that try to label the project as such.

In defense of the guy's argument, the guy he's answering to stated LibreOffice is a clone, and it's not, by the same standards ReactOS is not a clone. In fact, it's even less a clone, as it's not supposed to even work in a similar way, but just to provide an alternate office suite which happens to be supported in platforms where Microsoft's solution is not.

That is not what I've meant. To be binary compatible ROS has to provide all the infrastructure a program expect to be there to work, there's not freedom on choosing how to do things (it has to "clone" the original behaviour). Restrictions that do not apply implementing a file format. Just that. I'm not saying source code has been copied.

To some extent, such restrictions exist for implementing a file format, since it has to be binary compatible with that. You don't need to expose a particular API, but you need to make sure it complies to the same behavior in the reading and writing of files with such a format, result-wise. You need to come to the same end product from the same prime matter.

[fred02]

Eh, guys, while this discussion is interesting, it has less and less to do with the Unix systems. Shouldn't it be split in a separate thread?

[EmuandCo]

Wont halp at all. This was about to happen if someone ask this in a ROS forum. I wont split just to make room for new off topic stuff.

[mrugiero]

This is already the off topic forum, anyway

[SomeGuy]

My gripe with *nix based systems is that they have many archaisms that just won't go away. Such as case sensitivity, or exposing the entire /dev folder to users.

And while command lines are useful to advanced users, I see all to often - even on MacOS X - programs where an end user is expected to open a terminal and type some junk in Greek.

The "everything as a file" always boggled my mind. I remember when early Linuxes handled sound by piping sound files to /dev/dsp! So how do you synchronize a sound to play at the exact same time as an animation? How do you help ensure the buffers are kept full? Oh, you don't!

[mrugiero]

And while command lines are useful to advanced users, I see all to often - even on MacOS X - programs where an end user is expected to open a terminal and type some junk in Greek.

You are right about the other two points, but you can't blame the OS family of things third parties choose to do. There are a lot of others that acknowledge GUIs are more user friendly, and try to avoid making the CLI mandatory. CLI has its use for advanced things, specially for administration and repetitive tasks (being able to make a short script and let it do the work is great, and it's also useful on Windows and people leverage that on Windows, too), but for common things, they should use GUIs, and a lot of programs do handle things that way. I personally can't think of anything I can't do through GUIs on Xubuntu, aside from using ffmpeg to transcode things. I think there are GUIs for it, but they don't allow me to customize the settings as much. And well, git, but AFAIK there is a GUI, I'm just comfortable with the CLI tool.

[Dave3434]

ubuntu isn't for old computers anymore neither is xubuntu or lubuntu i really believe there not going in the right direction beside unity is a joke.

[mrugiero]

ubuntu isn't for old computers anymore neither is xubuntu or lubuntu i really believe there going in the right direction beside unity is a joke.

Is this an answer for me? I haven't implied the opposite. I just said it's not true that A) mandating CLI is typical in *nix systems as a whole (it's true that some programmers still do their apps CLI only) nor B) that the fact some programmers have such a preferences has anything to do with the OS itself.
I agree that offering GUIs is a good thing. In some cases, for sysadmin the CLI is (and will be) more useful than GUIs, but that's a specific case for a specific kind of user, but the common case should be GUIs.
Anyway, CLIs and being "for old computers" are completely different things.

[Dave3434]

i'm just saying ubuntu these days is more of a joke then a real OS gnome 2 was alot better then gnome 3 and unity. thankfully we have mate.

[mrugiero]

i'm just saying ubuntu these days is more of a joke then a real OS gnome 2 was alot better then gnome 3 and unity. thankfully we have mate.

I agree, then. I use XFCE instead of Mate, though.