Re: [ros-dev] Installing and running ReactOS on modern hardware

[Thomas Mueller]

from "David Quintana (gigaherz)" <gigaherz(a)gmail.com>om>:

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>   First of all, I'm not an expert when it comes to
> what ReactOS supports in
>  terms of real hardware. 
        
>   I believe (someone will correct me if I'm wrong),
> that ReactOS is not
>  currently able to boot from USB, and in fact, will fail to boot at all if
>  an incompatible USB controller (which is most of them, I think?) is
>  present. Burning a CD-ROM with the setup or livecd images, and possibly
>  disabling the USB controllers from your bios config, may give you better
>  results. 
>   I'm assuming that your intention is to try ReactOS
> in real hardware,
>  otherwise it would be better advised to just use VMware, VirtualBox, or
>  QEMU, as those work mostly out of the box. 
>   Ideally, your real-hardware testing platform should
> have a serial port, and
>  this serial port should be connected to another computer with a serial
>  port, by using a null-modem cable. This way you could see debug messages
>  through the serial port, and interact with the remote debugger driver when
>  (more than if) it crashes. 
>   ReactOS currently only supports FAT32, because
> it's a simple driver that
>  does not need advanced features of the storage system. As the storage stack
>  improves, it will be possible to attempt using more complex drivers. We
>  already have an EXT2 driver, but last I heard it was not stable enough to
>  be able to boot from it. 
>   That's all I know. If it's not enough, maybe
> someone with more experience
>  can add to it. 
Thanks for response, but surely one-part plain text would be better than
multipart/alternative?

I could try commands such as drivemap in GRUB 2, but then ReactOS would be lost when
trying to boot.

Would MS-Windows drivers work in ReactOS when running from within VirtualBox or QEMU?

I don't really want to try ReactOS on the same disk with FreeBSD and Linux
installations that I want to keep intact, might be too hazardous.

I don't have any serial ports but have serial headers on motherboard, could
conceivably make a serial port.

FreeDOS can boot from USB stick thanks to recognition by the BIOS/UEFI.

I really would want to install ReactOS to something rewritable; having to burn a new CD
for every little change is too much.

With ReactOS being far from ready for production use, I figure I would have to make
frequent changes/adjustments.

I downloaded the installation iso for ReactOS 0.3.15, burned to CD, but that failed to
boot.        

I believe Linux and *BSD are far more flexible in where they can install to than
MS-Windows or OS/2.  I hope ReactOS could rise above such Windows booting limitations.

I ran OS/2 from 16-bit 1.3 in 1990 or 1991 to OS/2 Warp 4 in the single-digit days of
April 2001.  Then following a crash, on the next boot, CHKDSK, which ran automatically on
the uncleanly-dismounted file system, ran amok and trashed everything on the hard drive. 
I was never again able to boot OS/2 after that.  Now Linux and FreeBSD capabilities seem
to far surpass OS/2 and its successor eComStation.

Tom