I think ReactOS would be more popular if it could be instable on a USB Stick, like some GNU/Linux distributions like kubuntu . i wonder if the ReactOS development group are thinking on this posibility.
PD: I talk spanish, so sorry if i made some mistakes.
Last edited by LinoSP on Sun Feb 24, 2008 7:20 pm, edited 4 times in total.
ReactOS will be bootable from USB in time, but as oiaohm said the USB stack needs to be working before we can even think about booting from it. First there will be support for Mouse and Keyboards, but then USBsticks and drives will probably follow.
Last edited by Jaix on Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
sorry i was wrong ,I thought nt4 has different disk drivers that use BIOS calls and ReactOS too ,
but reactos uses direct IDE/(S)ATA port access.
I remembered that unlike NTLDR Freeldr could be loaded with any multiboot compatible loader like GRUB and had the idea of
booting from USB ->GRUB->Freeldr->ntoskrnl.exe.
One of the most annoying things about Windows (pre-Vista) has been the need for separate text-mode drivers for the initial stage of the setup procedure.
For automated deployments (RIS or WDM in compatibility mode) you'd have to dump the drivers for textmode setup in the both i386 folder and the $OEM folder (NIC and storage drivers). The one in the i386 folder often caused conflicts with the MS default drivers leading to ugly inf file edits....
I was really hoping ReactOS would be different. Ideally combine the ISO images for LiveCD and Setup CD, and being able to run the setup from the Live session; basically run a partition manager, plonk a bootable image onto the HD (...or usb stick in future), and configure the storage driver and bootup. Then when booting the first time, run pnp detection and the text-mode setup just like with a sysprepped windows (ideally with the option to use unattend.txt) I remember frim some other thread in the forum that this is not on the agenda however.