https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/co ... eryone_is/
Turns out that on Microsoft-family operating systems, drivers are the realm of the hardware vendors -- and drivers usually can't be redistributed on media by an open-source project
How many Windows Open Source drivers are there?Welcome to the Microsoft ecosystem, where there's about two billion drivers from three billion vendors and no real open source alternatives for most hardware.
Linux can use these devices because people and companies have put in time and effort to create open source driver software. For Windows there was never such a drive, not from the vendors because closed source is the norm, not from the customers because there's working vendor drivers already.
Windows has Windows Update to download drivers from but distributing these drivers requires consent from each vendor, so an automated solution is nearly impossible. Neither is packaging proprietary drivers since that would be a massive copyright violation. I do think an open source driver catalogue would be a good idea, not just for ReactOS but for Windows as well, but I don't think scouring obscure vendor websites for old, XP/Vista compatible drivers is within the scope of the ReactOS project.
Don't expect the ReactOS to write their own drivers or convert the existing open source ones either; porting that amount of software will probably cost more effort than writing ReactOS itself.
The sad truth is that unless vendors release their Windows drivers' source code, your odd/non-standard devices will probably never work out of the box with ReactOS. It's a logical result of an ecosystem not built for interoperability and centered around closed-source software.
Turns out that on Microsoft-family operating systems, drivers are the realm of the hardware vendors -- and drivers usually can't be redistributed on media by an open-source project
Welcome to the Microsoft ecosystem, where there's about two billion drivers from three billion vendors and no real open source alternatives for most hardware.
Linux can use these devices because people and companies have put in time and effort to create open source driver software. For Windows there was never such a drive, not from the vendors because closed source is the norm, not from the customers because there's working vendor drivers already.
Windows has Windows Update to download drivers from but distributing these drivers requires consent from each vendor, so an automated solution is nearly impossible. Neither is packaging proprietary drivers since that would be a massive copyright violation. I do think an open source driver catalogue would be a good idea, not just for ReactOS but for Windows as well, but I don't think scouring obscure vendor websites for old, XP/Vista compatible drivers is within the scope of the ReactOS project.
Don't expect the ReactOS to write their own drivers or convert the existing open source ones either; porting that amount of software will probably cost more effort than writing ReactOS itself.
The sad truth is that unless vendors release their Windows drivers' source code, your odd/non-standard devices will probably never work out of the box with ReactOS. It's a logical result of an ecosystem not built for interoperability and centered around closed-source software.
If there are, they should be listed in ReactOS wiki.
And could Open Source drivers like "nouveau" and Atheros AR9170 Wi-Fi be ported to ReactOS?
Maybe contacting their respective developers could convinced them to work on ReactOS ports.
