-----Original Message----- From: ros-dev-bounces@reactos.com [mailto:ros-dev-bounces@reactos.com] On Behalf Of Karim Liman-Tinguiri Sent: 24. februar 2005 12:34 To: ReactOS Development List Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Release 0.2.6
Greetings everyone,
I totally agree with Murphy and I believe we should launch another 0.2.x release before the next 0.3 release. I think before we can launch a 0.3 release, we need to have a solid support for Win32 drivers: networking doesn't limit to LAN-Ethernet, but it also includes PPP and modem connection (analogic and broadband).
With the growing amounts of winmodems, Win32 driver support must definitely be implemented before claiming "networking support": this is one of the weaker points of Linux: driver compatibility (though lots of efforts are being made by manufacturers and hackers), many drivers are still only available on the windows platform. It'd be much cheaper, programming-effort wise, to natively support windows driver than try to port them to ReactOS, (I'm not even mentionning the case of closed-source drivers and undocumented hardware).
As is stated in the status page of the library "Driver Support At the moment, work to support 3rd party drivers (Microsoft Windows compatible) is restricted. The focus is more on only basic drivers that are written in conjunction with the various kernel facilities." ; there's not much 3rd party Microsft Driver support. It'd definitely have to be implemented before 0.3 release.
That would be nice, but it's not practical since nobody has volunteered to work on it and thus it will not get implemented any time soon. If you will work on it or can find someone who will and can give a rough timeframe for its completion (say 5-6 months), I might vote for a delay of a 0.3 release.
Casper