When will it ever be stable?

[maddog39]

Hey all,

Well I just found ReactOS a few days ago peeking around at some different linux distro's and ended up finding some screenshots somewhere (forget now). So anyway, I have been messing with 0.3.0 and 0.2.9 in VMWare on linux. I think the idea is incredible however the software on any version is so unstable it would be impossible to use for everyday use. I've been looking for a Windows replacement for ages and I finally found the perfect one and I get BSOD every 2-5 minutes in an emulator and even the live cd. Which in my mind doesnt give me a very promising picture. This is just a darkening reminder of the days of Win. ME, oh boy, that was nasty! lol. So I've used 0.3.0 and when I realized I couldn't do mearly anything in it because it crashed 2 billion times, over small tasks, I decided to get an older version hoping it would be more stable.

So I search on the ReactOS website for a while and finally find a place to DL the 0.2.9 version. Okay. Now I got the VMWare image and i boot it up in linux (Ubuntu 6.10 btw) and it seems to work alot better than 0.3.0, a ton less bugs and crashes. But here I am again, trying to do simple things like download files and im getting Blue Screen of Death, over and over again?? So now one of my questions is, does ReactOS run better when physically installed on disk because of some virtual memory issue in the emulators? Then my other question is, if not, when will ReactOS be as stable as Windows is right now, or atleast stable enough for day-to-day use?

I was actually kind of surprised that this project has reached 10 years old and it hasnt matured into a well-developed product yet. When I first found it, my first impression was, "Oh! Sweet! A perfect way to get out of my Windows licensing bull crap im sick of dealing with and a perfect solution for all my stability problems," then I was sort of disapointed with all of my bad experiences with it so far. Also guys, keep in mind my computer is pretty powerfull so I dont think it was a CPU/RAM issue or something else with my hardware, everything works properly in linux and VMWare just uses your linux drivers as far as I know. My comp has a Pentium D 3.0GHz (Dual Core) and 1GB (2x 512MB) sicks of RAM. So thats kind of what lead me to believe it was definetly a software problem. Well whatever, I really dont know but maybe some of you guys could help me out here.

Thanks!
-maddog39

[Tachikoma_Pilot]

Im fairly new to ReactOs too - but i believe it says "alpha" on the box

[geertvdijk]

I was actually kind of surprised that this project has reached 10 years old and it hasnt matured into a well-developed product yet. When I first found it, my first impression was, "Oh! Sweet! A perfect way to get out of my Windows licensing bull crap im sick of dealing with and a perfect solution for all my stability problems," then I was sort of disapointed with all of my bad experiences with it so far. Also guys, keep in mind my computer is pretty powerfull so I dont think it was a CPU/RAM issue or something else with my hardware, everything works properly in linux and VMWare just uses your linux drivers as far as I know. My comp has a Pentium D 3.0GHz (Dual Core) and 1GB (2x 512MB) sicks of RAM. So thats kind of what lead me to believe it was definetly a software problem. Well whatever, I really dont know but maybe some of you guys could help me out here.

Thanks!
-maddog39

Well, first of all, you may be surprised that it hasn't matured in these 10 years, but what you are forgetting here, is that it had to use it's own kernel, and that there were and are few kernel developers up to the task of rewriting a kernel that is compatible with windows. That takes time...
And indeed, it still is alpha software, not recommended for daily use, nor is it 'stamped' stable...

[GreatLord]

Hi
To write a kernel take very long time if u base it on NT. and it does not exists many people known how to write one. To start with pure kernel devlopering (no GUI) it took more that 7 year todo. To getting a GUI and runing GUI apps at all so good we doing it took us 3 year.

And we are not many devlopers in ReactOS that is active same time. around 5-10 devloper constantly writing code each week to ReactOS.

At moment we are trying stable ReactOS and fixing allot thing. But this year have been more bugfixing year. Removing old bad code, fixing broken api. fixing better ntoskrnl. Now our Project leader aming stable ReactOS seen 3 month back. Rember it os allot of diffent api in windows and it is not a easy work to create windows NT like OS.

year 2005 we went from pre-alpha to alpha

it is huge project and we are not many coders that is active same time.

[Ged]

I have been messing with 0.3.0 and 0.2.9 ...

the answer is in the question ...

[maddog39]

Okay, well I saw that it noted it was alpha-ware and I understand you guys made a custom everything to run windows binaries and what not. Well it looks good so far but needs the bug fixes and it would be ready to go I think. But im still curious when you plan to have a stable version out, or do you not have one yet? or you just dont know?

Also, I am doing alot of C++ and GTKMM work recently but not totally skilled yet although I can make alot of basic applications, I could probably contribute.

[florian]

Within our ReactOS-Roadmap no date is given for the next important step of 0.4 not to mention a stable version.

What you can do is filing Bugs in our Bugzilla, to improve our compability database of drivers and software or to help writing stuff in the Wiki.

Furthermore you can of course translating ReactOS and related things as the Wiki in your language or help developing.

In such a case read the Wiki carefully and get your informations in the developer chat because many developers are not regularly reading the Forum. And by the way - without restarting the C or C++ flamewar - C is AFAIK prefered in the source.

Additionally you should be aware of a still ongoing process of audit which is slowering the development of ReactOS by binding lots of skilled ressources.

Well, welcome in the world of ReactOS.

[maddog39]

Okay, well, im from America (United States) so I speak native english, not much I can do in the translating department although im learning german atm. I am going to read some of the development stuff probably. I have tried both C and C++ and I just prefer C++ because I think its a little easier. But whatever, if I need to go back and relearn C, I will.

[bastetfurry]

As said, there is a big "alpha" stamp on the package.
I am watching ROS since 0.1.6 and it has come a long road for a spare time project.
If anyone with 'some' more money than Joe Average would hire some programmers that then could work fulltime then 1.0.0 would happen alot faster

[maddog39]

Well i think if the team made it a little easier to let people contribute code I think more programmers would help/join because I'm still standing here confused on what to do. I would like to develop applications.

[Z98]

Developing ReactOS involves more lower level work, such as on DLLs, the kernel, and subsystems, etc. As to what needs to be done, that can range from drivers to the shell. The only real way to see what needs to be done is to look at the code yourself, or get onto the IRC channel (the users one) to ask the devs on there. C is preferred because of the problems the developers have with the GCC's C++ compiler.

Thus I'm not really sure what you mean by "applications." ReactOS is the operating system. If you're referring to things like Explorer or other utilities, then yes those would be applications. However, since ReactOS is still incomplete, development in that area is limited to what the developers have implemented.

[maddog39]

Okay, yes that is what I mean by applications. The problem is PHP is actually my primary programming language however I recently read through 2 books on C++, one on the basics and doing everything in the actual language (all the command line stuff) then another to learn how to write GUI's in GTK+2.x. So I'm not exactly that advanced yet and I have made some small programs that do stuff with GUI's in C++ for fun and think that ReactOS would be fun to work on and it would be a great learning experience.

Well anyway, I am on the IRC channel now but it seems no one is really active, meaning actively talking or paying attention to whats going on. I tried saying hi and stuff but no one responded.

P.S. Posted this message on 0.3.0 VMWare Image. Finally got it to run properly.

[Z98]

IRC has bursts of activity. It's somewhat random when a massive conversation on nothing might happen.

Anyways, I suggest you take a look at Win32 programming. The GTK library is not used by the developers since it's not part of the NT framework. I personally don't care too much for it either, but my reasons are more on personal taste than technical reasons. But anyways, if you're thinking of trying to do work on Explorer, you could try your hand at hacking the default internet browser on ReactOS. I don't know where that is in the SVN, but the developers can point you to it. You could try the developer mailing list as well. While activity there is slow, it is at least guaranteed.

[bastetfurry]

Direct GDI code is evil
But as, AFAIK, GTK for Win32 just wraps to GDI it should be fine to use.
I dont mind it when GTK is shipped with ReactOS.
Any opinions from the devs?

[maddog39]

Alright, well the reason I use GTK+ is because I primarily develop applications for linux (GNOME desktop enviornment of course) although I have compiled some stuff in Visual C++. Also, someone pointed me to the SVN repos. and I downloaded the source so I'll try and mess with explorer.