Hello everyone,Aleksey said he wanted to have a look at a 3rd party SATA driver. He also mentioned that our scsiport might need more work. For SCSI support.... don't know.
Aleksey suggested that I discuss this here, on the mailing list.
First and foremost, these are enhancements to do for later, much later (what I would want for the next release is support for RAID / SCSI controllers). But I know that a developer doesn't actually keep something in his plans unless he's figured out a way to do it.
We only target compatibility for Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Win 3.x/9x are a completely different architecture. They are based on DOS. To be compatible to those versions of windows, we would need WOW (Wndows On Windows) / NTVDM (NT Virtual Dos Machine). Wich we don't have (or only stubbed). If you want DOS/Win 3.x/9x support, you are welcome to implement all the needed stuff. ;-)1. Compatibility with every version of Windows, from Vista until Windows 3.1 / 3.11
That means applications written for 3.1 should work flawlessly on ReactOS, just like apps written for any other Windows. This is probably not hard, as at least XP does the same thing.
I don't think it's worth the efford of developing something like that. If you really have hardware, that does not have a driver for NT/2000/XP, you better buy new hardware. Honestly, if you take every current and future Windows and ReactOS user and sum up all the money they would have to spend to buy new hardware, because there are no NT drivers for it.... you could probably hardly convince anyone writing the needed code if he got all that money.However, drivers for Windows 3.1 most probably do not work. If the user actually has hardware that was left unsupported since 3.1, he should be able to use it.
The same goes for the combination Vista-only driver / old Windows '95 or Windows 3.1 application.
oiaohm said it's not really possible because VxD drivers are not well documented. So, maybe in the distant future, maybe when Linux devs will have reversed VxD's on their own. Just don't forget this.
The same way it should be done for Descent. There's no point in adding extra stuff into ROS, to make an old DOS game fancier.My own thing about Descent, quickly: the game tries to access file " 1.midi" but ReactOS plays "1.mp3". I have all the mp3's and will provide them whenever needed in order to make this happen. This will transform the old Descent for DOS in the CD version, that had redbook audio tracks.
Such enhancements were also created for Tomb Raider 1, by Paul that created Glidos ( www.glidos.net ). Please see http://www.glidos.net/retext.html?lang=en and http://www.glidos.net/audio.html?lang=en
Whenever Tomb Raider 1 asked for certain textures / audio data, it was "hijacked" or "redirected" to the better textures or audio files.
We already have a command prompt: cmd. At the moment it doesn't support copy/paste or Drag'n'Drop, but will sooner or later like Windows does.Another DOS related thing would be a command prompt (terminal?) in ReactOS that has drag'n'drop, copy and paste functionality.
3. Processors as a devices, in Device ManagerSome additional functionality in that area wouldn't hurt. When we are reaching 1.0, we might get some more additional stuff. Or earlier if there is somebody who is willing to write the needed code.
For example, let's say a PC has a Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, with HyperThreading. Windows XP reports this processor as two identical ones in Device Manager. ReactOS should also do that. Apart from Windows, if the user does a right-click on a processor as a device, in the Device Manager tree, and chooses the Properties page of the processor device, that page should also mention the SPEED of the processor. More than that, it would be a blessing to also see the L1, L2 and L3 cache size, FSB and multiplier, like those SiSoft Sandra / Everest applications report. Maybe even further, the instruction sets supported - MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, etc.
6. A Windows Media Center equivalentThat's something for ... "distros". Well, distros is not to be understood like Linux distros, all of them being different in the user experience and sometimes incompatible. More like ReactOS + applications. We are only developing the core. More than the kernel, but less than what a Linux distro is with 1000s of open source applications. We are not going to reinvent the wheel and create a new Media Player/Center, a new webserver or a new whateverfunkyapp. People like to decide for themselves what to use. Some people will use firefox, some will use netscape, some like mpc, some like vlc, some people don't want a webserver, some do. We don't decide for them. It's all out there. If you don't like it, choose something else or write something better. And noone stops you from bundeling all your favourite open source apps with reactos and put it for download somewhere as long as you respect the licenses.[...]
All of these should be properly implemented in ReactOS Media Center. Apart from them, "ROSMC" should have all the deinterlacing options and deinterlacing-method autodetection routines from Dscaler. That program also offers a whole lot of other image improvement things, like a good enough TV station logo killer and image de-noising that actually works. Even better than Dscaler, REMEMBER the settings the next time the user runs the program. Maybe also provide the user with basic video editing functionality, meaning most of the features from VirtualDub (the one I find most important is the ability to edit a film with "direct stream copy", meaning it just copies the video and/or audio stream, it doesn't re-encode it. Edit as in cutting parts of the film. In this scenario, the ability to go frame by frame is also very useful).
And since it's the Media Center and not the Media Player, this should be the application that rips audio cd's or audio dvd's.
Most of all, it should be "cluster-aware." Regardless of ROS being cluster aware or not, this one should be.
oiaohm said this is not your job, but a job for other projects. He pointed me to MediaPortal. I e-mailed all of them (Virtualdub, Dscaler and MediaPortal) but I doubt they'll combine the three projects. Still, that's why John User still buys Windows. Linux is all over the Internet (docs all over forums, drivers all over sites, applications all over sites as well). Instead, Linux has "cool" stuff like "mousespedometa" (measures the speed with which you move the mouse). Some people don't even have Internet to get what they need (X servers, for instance). To be a Windows alternative, it should contain a lot of things Windows has.
7. Running on 16-bit systems like 286/386/486 in a "ReactOS Essentials" (equivalent to a stripped-down XP) modeEhh? Some people say that in a few years noone will use 32 bits anymore and we are still developing an "outdated" 32 bit OS. And you suggest 16 bit Hw compatibility? Noone is using 16 bit PCs anymore. And if then only for the fun. But then they use DOS. ReactOS will never run on 16 bit. And there's no point in even thinking about it. If you have an old record player it will simply never play DVDs. Get used to it and buy a dvd player.
It should be the same operating system, but in 16-bit mode only. That's an ideal scenario and I'm sure it cannot be done no matter how good the programmers are. So, what can someone do on a 286 ? Listen to mp3's ? No way. Listen to audio CD's, yes, and hopefully digital playback, too. Watch TV ? Yes, if the user can find an ISA TV tuner (ATI made such tuners, but they required a PCI ATI video card, and if you have PCI why not get a better tuner?). Record TV shows ? Not on that kind of computer. Browse the internet ? That may be possible, with some really outdated, 16-bit browser, like the Internet Explorer for Windows 3.1. And I don't know how many sites will work on it. Play games ? Yes, either old DOS or Windows 3.1 ones or the ones that come with ReactOS, written in 16-bit especially for this mode. Join a hive as either master or slave ? Hopefully it will be possible, but probably in the year 2015 at least. Use office applications ? Sure, if the user can find that last Microsoft Office or maybe Microsoft Works version compatible with Windows 3.1. Run a web server ? I know a guy who had a server running on a 386 system, on Windows 3.11. So yes, it is possible, only I don't know what software he used to actually serve the data. Act as a router ? Again, hopefully. That is, if the entire network is on 10 megabit, because I don't think there are ISA 100 megabit network cards (ISA bandwith is not enough). 2D graphics ? It was possible in Windows 3.1, why not ? Maybe the first Photoshop versions actually were 16-bit. 3D graphics ? The first 3D Studio Max (that is, 3D Studio) was for DOS only. That probably means 16-bit right from the start, and that should mean yes, you can do it, with the DOS compatibility layer. Web design ? If you can find a 16-bit application, yes.
A separate ReactOS for 16-bit only, or just all the 16-bit functionality included in the normal ReactOS ? Things look better when it works out of the box, but it's a waste of space to include applications written for 16-bit only. People that really need the 16-bit version will not mind paying extra attention to actually download this one and not the normal one. Besides that, ReactOS is free. And the presence of such a version would mean a selfless devotion to people. An act of charity for real. Allowing people to use their computers and do as many modern things as possible on them.
Those are my suggestions. They are not for now, they are not easy to do, etc. Just don't discard them, please.
Alex
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