Installer

[Jonathan Andrews]

Hello to the group.... my first post....

I noticed some talk about the Reactos installer following the windows
form. As a long time NT admin who moved into product development on
Linux I would just like to point out how mediocre the windows installer
is.

With a bootable linux ISO you get a full network stack, functional USB
support, detected UDMA IDE drivers, Vesfa FB X11 etc etc etc... with the
windows installer you get a kernel, a few utils and a pretty inflexable
installer.

Would it not make more sense to write an installer thats based on a
bootable Linux image - if nothing else the use of networking offers a
host of possibilities (diskless installs, updates from the internet
during the install phase and so on).

Is the aim to clone windows, or to produce an operating system that is
API compatible with win32 ? They are very different aims with very
different requirements!

Jon

[TwoTailedFox]

"NT-Compatible".

I can make a bootable Windows XP Professional Live CD, with all the
functionality you just described, bar X11.

It all boils down into how much effort you take to make it.

On 12/4/05, Jonathan Andrews [e-mail] wrote:
> Hello to the group.... my first post....
>
> I noticed some talk about the Reactos installer following the windows
> form. As a long time NT admin who moved into product development on
> Linux I would just like to point out how mediocre the windows installer
> is.
>
> With a bootable linux ISO you get a full network stack, functional USB
> support, detected UDMA IDE drivers, Vesfa FB X11 etc etc etc... with the
> windows installer you get a kernel, a few utils and a pretty inflexable
> installer.
>
> Would it not make more sense to write an installer thats based on a
> bootable Linux image - if nothing else the use of networking offers a
> host of possibilities (diskless installs, updates from the internet
> during the install phase and so on).
>
> Is the aim to clone windows, or to produce an operating system that is
> API compatible with win32 ? They are very different aims with very
> different requirements!
>
> Jon
>
> Ros-dev mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

--
"I had a handle on life, but then it broke"

[KJKHyperion]

Jonathan Andrews wrote:
> With a bootable linux ISO you get a full network stack, functional USB support, detected UDMA IDE drivers, Vesfa FB X11 etc etc etc... with the windows installer you get a kernel, a few utils and a pretty inflexable installer.

that's going to change
> Would it not make more sense to write an installer thats based on a bootable Linux image

no, it wouldn't. It has to be a ReactOS image

[Reuben Perelman]

Jonathan Andrews wrote:
> Hello to the group.... my first post....
>
> I noticed some talk about the Reactos installer following the windows
> form. As a long time NT admin who moved into product development on
> Linux I would just like to point out how mediocre the windows installer
> is.
>
> With a bootable linux ISO you get a full network stack, functional USB
> support, detected UDMA IDE drivers, Vesfa FB X11 etc etc etc... with the
> windows installer you get a kernel, a few utils and a pretty inflexable
> installer.
>
> Would it not make more sense to write an installer thats based on a
> bootable Linux image - if nothing else the use of networking offers a
> host of possibilities (diskless installs, updates from the internet
> during the install phase and so on).

The end goal should be to write stuff like networking into reactos 
itself. (In fact it is in there right now, just nothing to make it easy 
to use.)
> Is the aim to clone windows, or to produce an operating system that is
> API compatible with win32 ? They are very different aims with very
> different requirements!
>
> Jon
>
> Ros-dev mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev