ROS should take-over the missing Win32/Win9x flatform

[zydon]

Microsoft and Hardware vendors has fooled themselves by hanging on NT based Operating System. While they want more secure computing, they've bloated the OS with more burden and losing it's stabilities.

Lets looks at Nvidia that supporting WinXP/Vista faltform with all of their hearts, still can't even developed a stable drivers for their own GPU chips. In the end, users feel cheated with what they've paid for a stable and secure personal computing. While their Win9x based driver was the best and more stable. So, what give?

I would only assumed, everything started when MS changed Win95 GDI code to escape the leaking problem. They've not fixed it. Instead, they create a new problems and these code inherited in WinXP/Vista with the DX8/9/10.

Win9x platform seem very linear and fast too if the hardware permitted. Of course, most of thes complaint was security and stability. But, it's much more easier to fix than NT based OS. These factors has made Win9x (WinME excluded) OS is popular even to games vendors. And not to forget, hackers and Virus makers simply because the OS was too popular, user-friendly and forgiving.

Since MS dropped Win9x supported and followed by hardware vendors, everywhere we hear all nothing but cries for helps because old and new games doesn't works properly on WinXP and Vista. There are millions of problems has yet being solved by them since they do not know how to answer to the end users.


So, here is where and open source project like ROS could get it's strength by making the OS is compatible with Win9x and added value with capability could also do what WinXP or Vista feature had. The real situations is Win9x cannot go further becuase the supports had been dropped. Otherwise, Win9x were much better OS than bloated and resource hungry WinXP and Vista.

ROS should make the OS stay with FAT12/16/32 and 32bit processing as it's main strength features and use a 'plug-in' a-like for supporting NTFS or 64bits hardware and environments until 64bits devices era coming for real.

Another things is to make DirectX and COM as internal built-in features to avoid version dependencies like what has happened now in Windows worlds. So, any version of DirectX applications could run in ROS as long as the components GUID existed in ROS registry. May be, to solve the latest feature of DX capabilities, ROS could do by adding a plug-in script interpreter to it.

Generally, ROS would becoming a script-able OS and 100% compatible with Win9x and Win32 flatform

Sorry that my English not very good. I hope you could understands most of what I've said above.

[oiaohm]

zydon sections of Ros graphical system are based on 2000 design due to it being solid. 2000 did fix the leaking problems. Note stabitly of Nvidia on WinXP/Vista is not all Nvidia problem. Ms removed some safe guards in XP that did cause problem.

Windows 9x has major design problems. Ros team has already explored.

[Haos]

We cannot compete with Win9x for one important reason: no 16bit support...

[Z98]

All of the developers here are believers in the NT platform. And they all dislike the DOS platform because the architecture itself is insecure by nature. Most of the incompatibilities are due to sloppy programming or trying to use hw directly, which should not be permitted. There is only so much that can be done to accommodate such programs, but no security should be sacrificed. We can only do so much to fix other people's screwups.

[EmuandCo]

NT arch is way more stable than ANY 9x OS ever was. A simple batch file was able to fully hang Windows 9x by overwriting parts of the memory where system/kernel stuff is located. This is THE DEVIL, not stability or security!

[Carlo Bramix]

Hello.
The apparent "bug" with 16 bits DOS applications can be solved quite easily.
You just need to use dosbox and you can already overcome this little limitation.
Next, if one day we will see a better thing, like it has been done with dosemu under linux, I think you can forget Win9x without regrets, at least for this topic...
Since I normally use Win9x on my PC, I can tell you that the true advantage of this old OS is not in the 16 bit compatibility.
If you really want to regret something, look to the system requirements.
Win95 runs on a 4 MB machine, Win98 needs at least 8 MB because Microsoft engineers had the "brillant" idea to integrate IE4 into the shell.
If you want to get the same performance with XP you need at least 256(!) MB of ram.
In the past I tried to install and use XP or NT2000 with "only" 64 MB of ram, and I don't recommend to repeat my experience.

Sincerely,

Carlo Bramini.

[Haos]

As brilliant piece of software as dosbox is, still its only an emulator with all its limitations.

As for Windows NT or 2000 it works more than well with 128 MB ram. With 64 meg - it depends on CPU, ram speed and HDD throughput.

XP - you should try the legacy version, it has less mem requirements.

[zydon]

What I admired most for Win9x platform is their performances, openness and linear. These allowed new learners, gamers, hobbyist, artist and many more types of people that require for less securities and stabilities environment get going with their computing needs.

It's understandable there is a need for a tight security and stability for certain area of applications. But to go to a complete 'paranoia' OS environment and ask users to 'jailed' themselves will only limiting their capabilities. These type of environment doesn't need an interactive interfaces or users friendliness input because want to reduce or eliminates completely the security risks.

This is where an open environment OS such as Win9x is much needed to exists concurrently within the current security oriented OS (NT/XP, *Nix or Mac).

I don't see majority of Win9x users push to get WinXP delivered to them. Instead, they've been being forced to accept NT based platform with many empty promises such compatibility with their previous successful application on Win9x.

The other option I can think of is to create a 'blend' Win XP/9x. If security needed, log-in into a 'safe-mode' aka NT/XP and nothing from 9x could not access this sector. But anything on Win9x sector can be write-off from escure environment.

When an entertainments or else log-off the 'safe-mode' and log-in into the open environment of Win9x. Users can break or build anything on it or have some funs with gaming or anything related.

May be the nature of human, when the smart people get older, they want to make everything that simple get too complicated and painful to others...

[oiaohm]

I am sorry to say the time of security flawed OS's like Win9x are ending.

Note Ros started off as a Windows 9x clone attempt under a different name. There is less documentation how Windows 9x works than NT. As well as its stability problems.

I find it strange you are quoting the same stuff that has left Windows NT platforms and large section of net virus ridden.

Due to lack of thread safe guards in Win9x a single run away thread could bring OS to death for sure. Windows 9x vs Windows NT performance does not have to be any different.

Windows 9x compatibility problems is differences in drivers types more than anything else. Sorry to say Windows 9x driver system is not cleanly documented.

Windows 9x and Windows 3.11 before it breached 20 years of how to build stable plaforms.

9x is not what you call open.

PS Most of Linux secuirty is invissable to user. But its still secuired against rouge apps.

[Haos]

I was in past a fan of 9x myself and it took me quite a long time to switch over. I`m an old dog, and its hard for me to learn new tricks.

I dumped 98 SE, when i bought a new mobo, in 2003. It was a monstrous A7N8X Dlx combo - two NIC, 6 USB ports, Firewire, SATA, Dolby hw codec apart from usual stuff (serial/parallel ports, irda, gameport etc).

Trying to make it work under 9x was a horror - no real APIC, so you had only 0F interrupts for well over 20 devices. Even with disabling almost everything in BIOS you would still get two or three hw conflicts (two PCI cards had their IRQ assigned statically).

So i dumped it and got Win2000. I dont have to say that all issues just disappeared and all of the devices could work at the same time, automagically. From that time, 9x was a sorrow past for me.

[GreatLord]

win9x is dead and that is good
it is hell, no rule how to write a drv and how drv should comucated it was free choice, thx to this cause win9x instable

About DirectX it exists two completed diffent version NT and Win9x
how directx comucated and how directx api actis are diffent.
here we can not do anything against it. we follow nt directx 1 to 10 support
how it is desgin and how api are acting. u can take a dx8 example from ms dxsdk 8.0 that is for win9x and it will not work on nt dx8 thanks to they work diffnet. and acting diffent on same api.

this is well documented. in msdn

[cppm]

win 9x and NT are fundamentally different things. The statement, ROS should take-over the missing Win32/Win9x flatform" (it's platform by the way) makes naive assumptions about the aims and technical capabilities of the project.

Your argument that security restricted OS's get in the way of a user trying to get down to what they want to do shows a misunderstanding of what the security is there for. Largely the security is there to stop malicious code from executing and screwing up the system, or, more likely, stealing personal information, blackmailing the user etc, and on top of this, setting up a botnet for stealing more personal information.

I'm sorry but there is real money to be made and has been made in this area of illicitly taking control of peoples computers.

Besides, if the application isn't doing anything stupid, then security won't be a problem. If the application isn't doing anything to fundamentally change the system, again there shouldn't be a problem, and such administrative functions shouldn't have to be done regularly, and when done, handled gracefully (prompt for password, check with group access protocols etc). If your text editor or image editor, or even game can't be run under a restricted account in a well designed operating system then it's poor app design, and it's doing things that are inherently unsound.

There are several things which may be influencing your view in this respect, the poorness of design of many win 9x apps, and the poorness of design of windows XP - the first major NT version to be used on the home desktop. Both of these are in some ways MS's fault.

Many win 9x programs did things which were allowed under 9x, but couldn't be realistically allowed to continue in the NT paradigm due to the security risk they presented. It's MS's fault that these were even allowed in the first place. generally the by product of 9x being built up in a sort of rickshaw hillbilly armour way where new features were tacked on with programmatical spit and gaffa tape.

Win XP was still poorly designed in this respect since it came with a shedload of api's and inbuilt tools that required administrative access in some way (I found i couldn't use a jpeg as a background under a restricted account!) no group handling, and no user freindly mechanism to control applications that required admin rights meant that there was no incentive to make proper desktop apps.

poor app base + poor OS implementation = mess = a challenge for ROS != an excuse to just go back to the mess that started it all!

Note that Vista implements accounts much better, it's the application base that is causing the problems, we know this since in the linux/unix community it's been done this way since time immemorial, and there's no issues for "new learners, gamers, hobbyist, artist and many more types of people"

Finally what you say about a "scripted OS" is a non issue, since NT can be scripted just as well as 9x could. It's just not made at all easy under the MS implementation since there are hardly any command line tools available. Again, look to linux for an example of how it should have been done.

Ultimately an extended DOS platform is interesting, lookup freeDOS32 on the internet. But 9x was not the system that the simple and effective DOS platform wanted to become, and this is one frankensteins monster we don't want to ressurect.

[zydon]

You can't imagine how frustrated I am since migrated to WinNT based OS (2K/XP/Vista). A lots of things thats I used to get done with no time under Win9x, now getting complicated, buggy and undone. It's like being forced to degrading my computing productivity and performances with these current so-called secure OS.

May be, I'm too naive to know it all what inside the Windows based OS. I used do multiple things one after another include photo-editing, gaming, 3d modeling and writing small no nags application to get some jobs done. But now, it's to many quirks holding or restricting those task to be completed.

After having these discussions, I foreseen what I wanted was an OS the could give me similar freedom while I'm using Win9x mostly on graphical performances. When I need to upgrade to better hardware, so I could be more productive, there is no more supports for Win9x drivers and I've no choice but to accept the new OS. After a while, I begin to see the graphical performance and computation on Win NT/XP was too slow and it's like lying to my face with some kind emulations to show how fast it is at certain part of the same application. Imagine that DX 8/9/10 cannot do better than DX 7 on it's graphical performances. Yes, DX 7 was said buggy. But D8/9/10 seems like has 3 times of woes than DX 7 and below.

Then I'm looking for option like Linux or Virtual PC that could supporting my older softwares and games. Linux will cost me much more head ache and longer time for migration. While Virtual PC or a-like only supporting very primitive hardware level that way more lower than the last Win9x machine I had.

So, the last option was an OS like ReactOS. When it's used NT platform as it's backbone, I'm assuming almost very sure that the graphical performance will produce the same result as WinXP and Vista.

I don't know, may be ROS could be better on this with a plus side of the security and stability. Unless, ROS could out-performed backward compatibility of WinXP/Vista and Win9x graphical performance, then it's may be what I've looking for.

Or may be, I just need to look for more to find any project that trying to tackle lack of Win9x driver support for latest hardware. I doesn't matter if I will stay for more 20 to 30 years using Win9x as long as I could get the jobs done as usual with no time at all.

Thanks for all participating in this discussion and I found it very educative and informative that give me some ideas to look for in my quest for the solution I had right now.

I might come back to follow the ROS project progress with an interest on the section that related to my computing needs.

[GreatLord]

It did exists a project call Moblius they are not longer devloping, they quit, it was only win9x core base os that was opensource.

It have exists alot diffent os group trying doing a windows os, almost all group have give up. only one is left is ReactOS, wine, EOS/LX
EOS/LX is base on linux + wine + reactos + and one more project that is dead.

ReactOS will aim on NT desgin how things works.
Win9X is dead.

The speed betwin them you talk about graphic speed.
let see why.

windows 9x
1. does not need todo context swtich
2. does not using seh
3. does not loading service and secure stuff.

if u add context swtich, seh, secure kernel stuff a os will always lose some speed against no secure os.

the perfoment of graphic if we compare reactos with windows xp with no hardware graphic driver. ReactOS win here in graphic prefoment
for drawing bitmaps, so on, we are slower on font drawing. But
try ros on real hw u will see how fast it is.

[oiaohm]

You do release making Win9x drivers need a special linker and it is its own format.

Windows NT drivers are just pe format files just needing to be signed.

zydon please look closer. Lots of applications that fail one moved to NT have copy protection 9x drivers.

Bad news DX 8 9 on XP can and is faster than 7 on Win9x due to more video card support. MS removed most of the safe guards in XP reason why its Direct X is unstable like 9x Direct X. To get matching performance you need to nlite XP. Background services are eating up the CPU time causing what appears to be lower performance. Note background services 9x did not have.

Sorry to say 9x timeframe software is basically dead. Only some works in Wine that does not work in XP.

Graphical performance of Ros in Direct X due to having more protection at this time looks like it will be slightly slower than Windows XP. But the difference can be made up with the lighter overall system load. So on balance it should beat XP normal installs. Might loss to XP nlite installs.

Note Vista is that bad that wine converting direct X calls to opengl can beat it on performance. So if ROS performance is as bad as Vista I will be out for someones hide.

zydon you seam to be showing lack of experience with NT based OSs. Because you would never put Windows XP and Vista as the same performance they are not even close. Note even Windows 2000 and NT 4 graphical performance is faster than Vista.

The protected path stuff crapped Vista performance.