[ros-dev] some ROS 0.27RC1 LiveCD feedback

[Bernd Blaauw]

Hi ReactOS project, I've tried your 0.27RC1 LiveCD in VMware Workstation 
4.5.2 for Windows, and it's great to have a win32 compatible LiveCD.

things I noticed.
*CTRL-ALT-DEL (eh..INS for VMware) doesn't bring up Taskmgr,
  but rightclicking on start menu, then selecting taskmgr, does,
  as well as running START/RUN/TASKMGR.EXE does.
*In VMware, the third tab (with graphs) looks strange
*bootCD doesn't start LiveCD automatically when no bootable
  harddisk is present. It still prompts for 'press a key to start CD'.
  MS Win2000/XP cdrom behave different depending on if an active bootable
  primary partition is present (press a key to boot cdrom), or not
  (automatically boot into cdrom)
*LiveCD gets assigned drive C:. I hope you're able to change this into
  'start with D: or higher'
  Reason: partition from a ROS LiveCD, at least a primary partition with
          driveletter C: should be able to be created.
*Rightclick on Start, then Settings. The window show up too low
  (tab page Desktop shows top 8 items, not all 11).
  Also the checkbox doesn't have any noticeable effect,
  I expected some version number to be displayed on the desktop,
  like in beta Windows builds.
*Shutdown EXPLORER causes reboot (why not just fallback into TASKMGR
  which can start programs, or in CMD.EXE ?)
*Logoff causes reboot
*Shutdown option is followed by a dialogue, in which answering YES
  doesn't shut duwn the computer
*Where is the cdrom bootsector as a file?
  Copying all files from cdrom to a directory on harddisk followed by
  running MKISOFS should be possible, but to create a bootable cdrom
  you'd also need the bootsector as a 2KB file.
  I'd really dislike needing some 'extract bootsector from (Live)CD'
  program, or needing to download additional files just to
  compile/extract a bootsector.
  Can the target file which the bootsector should load be configured at
  boottime? Enough space for '\12345678.ABC\12345678.ABC' ?
  The Windows bootsector usually is limited (in binary form ofcourse) to
  'i386\somefile.ext' (4 characters for directory).
  Would be cool if a modified ROS cdrom bootsector could boot Win2000/XP
  setup as the cdrom bootsector for these operating systems might be
  copyrighted officially (and no public license for distribution of it).

Despite these comments, I'm VERY impressed by the current progress since 
0.24/0.25 ! 0.35 or so might have a moderately usable system working 
(OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, Winrar/7Zip, WinAMP perhaps)

Bernd

PS: normal ROS cd: ICON.ICO still in root of cdrom, which is not 
necessary and pollutes your DVD if you add ROS to a multi-OS compilation 
( WinPE + Win2000 setup + FreeDOS + ReactOS setup + Knoppix + ... )

Bernd