Porting ReactOS to different Hardware...

[Delfi]

don't bother reactos with vierd platforms with low support,
go for the one that has the biggest audience, poll speaks for itself.

the most standing-out are ATM these that got over 10%:

Power Mac (RISC)
PocketPC/ WindowsCE hardware
AMD 64bit

amd64 has even 65%, so it seems most logical choice.

[counting_pine]

Can someone explain to me why you might want to run ReactOS on a RISC computer?

[Mammlouk]

Can someone explain to me why you might want to run ReactOS on a RISC computer?

Simple... First imagine a Win compatible OS for a MAC. I know most MAC users love OSX and whatnot, but how about the lack of commercial games faced by OSX. You could possibly run OSX for general purpose and dual boot ROS for win games. This also opens up avenues of porting for RISC based console gaming systems like Gamecube (obviously not the best standalone, but could make a great workstation)

The goal would be to accomplish things have never been done. That's why ROS is here. The more we can do that Billy Boy can't, the brighter the future.

[counting_pine]

Wouldn't any win32 programs have to either be recompiled or run on a computationally-expensive emulation layer?

[Jaix]

counting_pine wrote:

Wouldn't any win32 programs have to either be recompiled or run on a computationally-expensive emulation layer?

You are right, these are the possibilities, but all GPL software could be compiled for the harware platform so it can be run natively.

I also think as computers gets faster perhaps the emulation will still be bearable for most applications. Or a recompilation may work to transform a i386-win32 software to for example RISC-win32 for a faster run.

[Wierd]

I am no expert, but I think that the win32 API is pretty high-level, and that nearly all hardware access and such is handled by the kernel infrastructure; So long as the application image can be loaded into memory, and interpereted, it can be executed.

I could be mistaken however.

[uniQ]

NT4 was posted to RISC I think, so if ROS is ported also then it can easily capture that entire audience (Well, the ones that are still around and haven't jumped ship to Linux etc). The same for MIPS and Alpha.

-Q

[Jaix]

PlayStation2 has an ability to run Linux, why not port ReactOS to PS2, that would be soo cool! 8)

[ma-games.de]

why not port ReactOS to PS2, that would be soo cool! 8)

Yes, that would be cool. But I think this is less important than improofing ReactOS on the main target system.

[Arion]

I'm not sure how portable the ReactOS codebase is, but if the kernel, and main DLL's can be ported to a few different archectures, then I don't think application binary compatability will present too much of a problem.

I think that with .NET Microsoft is preparing to abandon the x86 archecture, or at least reduce its dependence on it. With it's WORA(write once run anywhere) style apps that are replacing win32 binaries, I reckon that a good .NET framework is what will test the viability of porting to different arch's.

[Jaix]

ma-games.de wrote:

Yes, that would be cool. But I think this is less important than improofing ReactOS on the main target system.

Yes you are right, just dreaming...
...but the project will reach 1.0 sooner or later, then perhaps the foundation for porting to various platforms is laid.
And as GvG said about the Xbox port: He needs something fun to work on ones in a while so he started to work on that port.
I guess, as this project matures more programmers will join and some of them whant to see ReactOS on a different hardware platform (just for fun or deadly seriously) and et viola! another build was made...
I think this will be very interesting!

[p0tapnik]

Actually, I am not programmer, but I saw project Darwine (http://darwine.opendarwin.org/) and its main goal is porting Wine to run on Mac OSX and especially to run unmodified win32 binaries there. I don't know wheather they had some success, but their page doesn't seem to be dead.

[avryhof]

I can't really see porting ReactOS to run on older platforms like 68K. Alpha maybe, but not a priority, but definately PPC. For those who have been reading tech news lately; the PPC is not going away anytime soon, and IBM is even improving it with CPU partitioning and other such features.

Moreover, there was a version of Windows NT for the PPC, so if ROS is going to clone NT, might as well go all the way. Besides, old Beige G3 Macs are pretty cheap on eBay right now.

[Arion]

I can't really see porting ReactOS to run on older platforms like 68K. Alpha maybe, but not a priority, but definately PPC. For those who have been reading tech news lately; the PPC is not going away anytime soon, and IBM is even improving it with CPU partitioning and other such features.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if someone ported reactOS to a pdp11 just to prove that unix wasn't the only system that could run on that hardware, but yeah, PPC is almost inevitable.

Moreover, there was a version of Windows NT for the PPC, so if ROS is going to clone NT, might as well go all the way.

Was there? I thought that WinNT only ran on x86 and Alpha. I never heard of it running on PPC without an emulator.

[avryhof]

I wouldn't necissarily call it an authorative article, but check out The Wikipedia Article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

There are also other sources if you google for it, but the wiki was the first source I found that described it.[/url]