[ros-dev] GSoC 2016 interest on RAPPS and GUI installer

[Niebieski Poganiac]

Hello everyone.
I'm Niebieski from freenode.

I like Free Software and thus believe that a free software OS that is
binary compatible with Windows will be huge contribution to the computing
world.
When I saw ReactOS on the orgs list in GSoC I totally considered checking
the possibility of working with you guys.

I'm interested on RAPPS and the GUI installer. Why ?

It's clear that it's easy to install Windows because of the GUI installer,
is it the easiest OS installer ever ?
If you insert a bootable Windows media and kept pressing ENTER, you will
probably end up with an installed system.

So I think the GUI installer is a big step into ease of use.
For RAPPS, it's essential utility. Lets you install apps without searching
their names one by one on a search engine. or even give me a script that
installs my favourite tools ? It's also a good way to discover new good
software, specially if it's GPL software.
Note that I'm talking about end-user point of view.

I've seen the document made by Amine Khaldi about RAPPS.

I've tried to get familiar with the WIN32 API a couple of years ago. Why ?
because I like low level GUI stuff and then tried out GTK and Qt when I
used Linux. I found out about Charles Petzold's book.

I like C that's why I liked WIN32 API at first. The latest code I wrote was
mainly academic assignments, A Caesar cipher implementation and a
multi-threaded sorting program using pthread library.

Note that I didn't develop something serious using WIN32 API I just read
some tutorials but didn't build something. I know handles, WinMain and
these basic stuff.

so honestly I don't have any 'real' development experience. but I've
tried
to contribute to several open source orgs.


I'm pursuing my bachelor degree in computer engineering and going to submit
my senior project implementation during May/June. I might register for
summer courses.

I would like to have your honest opinions, do you think I should drop it ?
or continue and try to find how it's going to be done technically ? and
submit a proposal ?
I've seen that some people are already interested on RAPPS and doing good
job.

Thank you guys for the work on ReactOS and the time spent on helping GSoC
students. I really appreciate it and hope you the best.