Does anyone know why ReactOS uses an older version of Wine, Firefox and just about every application in their repository

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shagunrai
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Does anyone know why ReactOS uses an older version of Wine, Firefox and just about every application in their repository

Post by shagunrai »

First, let me explain that I like the idea of running ReactOS, but I can barely do anything with it. Even going on-line is a bit annoying thanks to Firefox 48.0.2 when the latest FF stable build is 59.0.2 -- not to mention old plug-ins like Java and Flash (for games only).

Second, I know building anything without the budget of mega corporation is difficult. The latter makes ReactOS even better. It's like rooting for the underdog.

Having said all the this, couldn't the developers of ReactOS use the latest stable version of Wine (3.0) and work on applications around Wine? To be more specific, could they allow us to play with the OS using Wine with all the free MS libraries while forking key applications like Firefox properly?
shunesburg
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Re: Does anyone know why ReactOS uses an older version of Wine, Firefox and just about every application in their reposi

Post by shunesburg »

ReactOS use already libraries of Wine 3.0, but the main goal of ReactOS is Windows Server 2003, if you want install or launch applications not compatible with Windows Server 2003, try the compatibility option in proprieties of the exe file like Windows.
But the compatibility with Windows upper of Windows Server 2003 is not the priority and the bugs are legion.
Don't forget, ReactOS is an Alpha status for the moment.
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mrmajik45
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Re: Does anyone know why ReactOS uses an older version of Wine, Firefox and just about every application in their reposi

Post by mrmajik45 »

I mean we are in alpha. And if you tried to install firefox it wouldn't work. Why? It's not supported yet. Do I hear another "why?" We ARE in alpha and not 64-bit. And no we are not linux.
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ThFabba
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Re: Does anyone know why ReactOS uses an older version of Wine, Firefox and just about every application in their reposi

Post by ThFabba »

As already mentioned, the RAPPS database will usually simply contain the latest Firefox version that works in ROS. This applies to pretty much all software listed in the database. Reasons why newer versions may not work include missing features or broken implementations in ROS, or it may be because the app in question dropped support for XP/2003, and therefore ROS will not run it without special tricks.
Forking Firefox (or any other major app) to make it work correctly would be counterproductive. For one, changing apps in order to "better support" ROS is highly discouraged because all that does is hide our own bugs -- we want to fix those bugs instead. Secondly, maintaining a fork is an incredible amount of work that we simply don't have the manpower to take on.
And arguably using Java or Flash in a browser in 2018 is a bad idea anyway ;)

As for Wine, we aim to have all our Wine components in sync with a recent development release -- however, one, syncing takes a significant effort so we can't too it too often, and two, because Wine components interact with other core OS components (which we use our own versions of, not Wine's), updating to a newer version often brings out bugs in either those components or in Wine's components, and these must be fixed during/after every sync to avoid regressions.
Using stable Wine for ROS would be even more problematic because the sync would become more prone to breaking things (because the number of changes between one major version to the next is enormous).
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