Re: [ros-dev] Pale Moon drops ReactOS support

[Riccardo Paolo Bestetti]

I'd like to drop my two cents, just because I really believe in this 
project's filosofy. Since things have gotten pretty hot in the past, 
especially when someone who is not a developer intervened in a 
discussion, let me apprise you that my only intention it to bring in the 
point of view of a potential user that really wants to see ReactOS 
happen and isn't emotionally attached to the work that has been done.

The reality is that very very few manufacturers and developers still 
support NT5 and all of them are going to drop support in the next few 
years. This is just a fact. NT5 is legacy software and there's nothing 
no one can do about that.

I've followed this project and this mailing list for the past five years 
and in this time I've upgraded all of the computer systems of my 
father's business to Windows 7 and then to Windows 10, because all the 
pieces of software they run dropped support for NT5, one after another. 
They still have a single machine in the whole building running Windows 
XP, for legacy software, and honestly they don't use it very often. In 
my school, pretty much the same. And even if someone, for whatever 
reason, intends to run NT5 for 10 more years, why should (s)he re-setup 
all the systems again to run ReactOS instead of keeping Windows XP?

The point is, you can either implement the architecture that runs all of 
the computer in building, or the architecture that runs that one legacy 
machine. And even that would happen if and only if you can achieve 100% 
compatibility with all of NT5 and Windows XP bugs and quirks and give 
people a really good reason to reinstall the OS on such machines, and 
sorry that's just not gonna happen.

I get why some of you may want to stick to NT5, but you have to be aware 
that if you do that ReactOS will never be used in the real world. No 
reason to stick to NT5 is good enough, since no one out there needs or 
wants NT5. Hell, it would probably be easier for a business to switch 
from NT6 to GNU/Linux than to go back to NT5.

Again, these are just the two cents of a guy that works in the field.

Best regards,
--- /Riccardo Paolo Bestetti/


Il 16/05/2016 16:42, Ged Murphy ha scritto:
>  
>  But you’re missing the point. The problem is that modern software is 
>  leaving XP behind and focusing on Win7 as a minimum recommended 
>  requirement.
>
>  What use is ReactOS if none of the modern browsers or applications 
>  will run on it? It limits the OS to being a compatibility solution for 
>  older software, or a POS device. No one really wants to see that.
>
>  I think the best solution to start with is to keep reporting as 5.2 in 
>  the kernel, but allowing developers to start moving to the NT6 model. 
>  An mish-mash of NT5 and NT6 can co-exist as long things are done 
>  sensibly. e.g. adding IO cancelation to our NT5 kernel isn’t going to 
>  make us incompatible for XP’s drivers, but it allows us to implement 
>  an NT6 feature which hugely benefits the OS. Other obvious candidates 
>  are unimplemented areas such as the fltmgr . Why implement the 2k3 
>  fltmgr when we can implement a later fltmgr model which still loads 
>  older filter drivers.
>
>  Usermode should also still report as win2k3 (at least in the short 
>  term), but start to add NT6 APIs directly into the codebase instead of 
>  using a shim. We then maintain a whitelist of processes that don’t run 
>  on ros due to a minimum requirement issue, and they get a modified 
>  result from VerifyVersionInfo (and friends) to a later OS version.
>
>  The above changes keep things pretty simple to start with, and allow 
>  us to move forward almost immediately with very little infrastructure 
>  work.
>
>  Ged.
>
>  *From:*Ros-dev [mailto:[e-mail]] *On Behalf Of 
>  *Javier Agustìn Fernàndez Arroyo
>  *Sent:* 15 May 2016 22:55
>  *To:* ReactOS Development List <ros-dev(a)reactos.org>
>  *Subject:* Re: [ros-dev] Pale Moon drops ReactOS support
>
>  "Being runnable only on old computers"
>
>  I think this is a bad understanding of the problem....
>
>  By such statement, it seems that ReactOS will only work on old 
>  computers. And thats not true.
>
>  ReactOS may work in any computer where there is hardware drivers for. 
>  And, as such, any software written for XP/2k3/ReactOS will work in 
>  that computer.
>
>  And afaik, manufacturers are still releasing drivers compatible with 
>  XP :) (nVidia, for example....)
>
>
>
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