Can someone explain how Wine and ReactOS integrate?

[carltonh]

I'm curious how ReactOS and Wine interact. Is it a combination like Linux and GNU? Where Linux is the kernel and all the GNU utilities, libraries, and programs help make it a complete operating system?

I was curious why some things run better in Wine than ReactOS at the moment and was guessing that the comparison above might be the answer. Is it that Wine might be more advanced than ReactOS at the moment, and the ReactOS kernel not yet able to take advantage of all that Wine can do? And I assume that when ReactOS is at a further stage it will be able to fully integrate with Wine and we will see ReactOSlWine distributions all over the place like Linux/GNU?

If any of this is correct, it is all guessing. Either way, how ReactOS and Wine will interact should make a good question for the FAQ.

[phoenix]

EDIT: Ooops... I should read more carefully ^^
It's not exactly like Gnu/Linux, as ReactOS is not only the kernel but also lots of additionally programs or apis which cannot be shared with wine.

we will see ReactOSlWine distributions all over the place like Linux/GNU?

The dlls are already shared, so that what you can download is already something like that.

[Z98]

Wine isn't a project to create utilities and the like. It's a set of libraries and API implementations. And there will not be any 'distributions' in the sense of Linux distros, thank god. ROS is not just the kernel, it's all the subsystems as well. Wine at best provides one or part of one of those subsystems, albeit an important one. And as far as things running better in Wine, that's not entirely true. It's more that things are running better on Linux. ROS is badly incomplete. No matter how good Wine is, it can't make up for an incomplete baseline system.

At most, there might be 'versions' of ReactOS, such as ones bundled with Apache, or OpenLDAP, My/PostgreSQL, or whatever. But again, these will not be anything like Linux 'distros'. 'Versions' won't exactly do much more than save some time, since there would be no difference in using the regular ROS and installing the stuff yourself and using a 'version' that has all the stuff bundled.

[Mrkaras]

wine is not really part of reactos directly but the 2 projects do share a lot of code. wine only tries to do one part of the system (to run programs) whereas reactos tries to provide a total solution. defiantly a lot of reactos code is copies of wine code but they will both implement extra bits on there own that may or may not be usefully/compatible to the other. Reactos does not run wine, parts of wine are hard coded into reactos, intermingled with reactos only code.

[GreyGhost]

Hello , heres how it is all working .. (afaik)
WINE is basically (as previously already mentoned) implementation of Win API calls under Linux kernel .. And not an OS by itself ..
So many user mode libraries have been directly ported from WINE to use in ROS which provides us with the API calls ... then some WINE apps are also in ReactOS like WineFile.. calc.. Notepad.. Solitaire. Winemine and so on ..

Yes so basically a whole lot of Usermode code is shared ..

Whereas ReactOS is a complete stand alone OS .. so it has its own kernel .. which will never be used in WINE .. rather *u can't* use in WINE ..

And this gives ROS an upper hand over what WINE can do and ROS *will do in the future* .. like natively running Windows NT drivers for example ..

But at the present condition WINE is better stability and compatibility wise as far as i know .. but ReactOS will get there in the future.. and WINE even has a small DX wrapper catching calls and using OpenGL instead ...
Whereas under ROS DX compatible interface will be implemented ..

[keytotime]

Wine is on google summer of code:
http://code.google.com/soc/wine/about.html

[Speedator]

I think it isn't as important for wine and reactos to share code, more to share the knowledge how some thinks in window may work or not. So wouldn't it be interesting to have a kind of "windows-api-documentation-cooperation"?

[superppl]

And there will not be any 'distributions' in the sense of Linux distros, thank god...At most, there might be 'versions' of ReactOS, such as ones bundled with Apache, or OpenLDAP, My/PostgreSQL, or whatever. But again, these will not be anything like Linux 'distros'. 'Versions' won't exactly do much more than save some time, since there would be no difference in using the regular ROS and installing the stuff yourself and using a 'version' that has all the stuff bundled.

I thought that ReactOS is opensource. And if it is, then you can probably do nothing to stop the creation of distros, and if ROS gains popularity then there will be distros like there are in linux.
What you can do, and I think mean, is say that these are the official ROS versions that we recommend, and there are other options for the curious.

But out of curiosity, will wine benefit from ROS and will ROS benefit from wine?
I think it's a yes, but you don't particularly state that anywhere. You just dance around the answer while kind of suggesting it.

[Z98]

Except any "edition" of ReactOS would not be anything like Linux distros. The work required to put together an "edition" of ROS would be incredibly small compared to a Linux distro. People are perfectly free to make their own bundles, but none of them will have the incompatibilities inherent between different Linux distros.

ReactOS' relationship with Wine is somewhat complicated. Wine only accepts patches from certain ROS developers, so do they benefit? A little. But ReactOS makes use of Wine far more than Wine makes use of ReactOS work.

[Ged]

I thought that ReactOS is opensource. And if it is, then you can probably do nothing to stop the creation of distros, and if ROS gains popularity then there will be distros like there are in linux.

Linux is just a kernel, hence it needs a distro to be of any use.
ReactOS is a full operating system, there isn't the same need for distros on that kind of scale.

I suspect people will fork it for separate radical projects, like using the ROS kernel for other things, but as long as ROS continues to follow the NT design, there won't really be a need for other distros. They would effectively be trying to achieve exactly the same thing, as deviating from the NT design would become a different project.