We urgently need a beta

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erkinalp
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Location: Izmir, TR

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by erkinalp »

And this is one of the reasons I advocate open-sourcing of Windows. Windows will get more backwards compatibility and some performance enhancements, ReactOS will get more users and testers.
-uses Ubuntu+GNOME 3 GNU/Linux
-likes Free (as in freedom) and Open Source Detergents
-favors open source of Windows 10 under GPL2
Walt
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:39 am

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by Walt »

Well that was sloppy. The second quote was supposed to be:
According to some info, in Europe there are some people that brings machines with Intel ME disabled by modifing the necesary components to just delete all possible components from Intel ME...
Sorry ...
Walt
Posts: 42
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Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by Walt »

The Fabba:
It sounds like you're not accounting for the fact that we have zero full-time employees, and hundreds of such bugs.
I understand that there are ~5 developers, all working part time. There's no question that limits what can be done.

At the same time I think 'hundreds of ->such<- bugs' is much worse than the reality. There ARE hundreds of bugs, but not all of them will show up on the way to a functioning desktop and installation of a browser using the Applications Manager. Thinking about what I've been experiencing -- ROS can't be installed at all on my Dimension 3000 due to file system troubles and on the Latitude D610 I'm using it often fails somewhere in second stage of install or soon after the first subsequent boot -- I think more in terms of no more than three real bugs and wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was just one that affects the file system. Particularly something that might be invisible or bypass-able if running in a virtual machine rather than on real hardware.

Timing dependent? These machines were among the fastest off-the-shelf-at-Wal-Mart of their day -- 2005 or so.

ROS often asks for a file system integrity check when booted. When it is allowed to do the check there are always problems, sometimes just a slight error in reporting of free space, often much worse. If the file system is corrupted, death will follow, though the apparent manner may vary.

I just tried a boot of the distro of Oct. 16th: It wanted a file system check, I let it go ahead, it reported shared clusters, it truncated PAGEFILE.SYS, then BSOD'ed out. Several repeats from the distro CD over a couple of hours got me to various modules reported as not made for ROS or corrupted, then to can't download an intact Firefox 48 (via App Mgr) and installing it from a copy downloaded on another machine succeeded but hangs on invocation.

When ROS can pass that test -- install, boot, install a browser, and look at a web site or two -- on most machines close to every time as long as you stay on the narrow path, it can be promoted as "Try this out!" That'll bring more resources. It's an EXCELLENT job, absolutely natural to use and will sell itself. Right now it's only for true fanatics, of which I am definitely one.

erkinalp:
And this is one of the reasons I advocate open-sourcing of Windows. Windows will get more backwards compatibility and some performance enhancements, ReactOS will get more users and testers.
From the manufacturer's point of view 'open source' is a loser: You can't really sell it because you didn't make all of it. Microsoft makes a lot of money selling software.

Back in the day when the machines were big and few (hence VERY expensive) the money could be made there. Users often had microfiche and source code for the OS and we often debugged problems for the maker. But the OS could be a FREEBEE because we paid REALLY BIG $ for the machine on which it ran.

Which was maybe 1000 times slower than the one on which I type this. The operations were bigger so direct comparison isn't possible but that's the ballpark.

I can't see a route to paying MS (or any major company) very much other than for software. If computing moves into the cloud the software will be there with the data -- still not ours. The only hope is efforts like ROS (and Firefox and Linux of course) that are open source developed and ultimately carried forward by foundations (like Mozilla) that organize and distribute the result. So I don't see how open source Windows could happen.

But ROS definitely could. Damn I wish I'd heard about it at the start. 20 years younger some different choices would have been available.
andreas84
Posts: 101
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:09 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by andreas84 »

Quim wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:44 am According to some info, in Europe there are some people that brings machines with Intel ME disabled by modifing the necesary components to just delete all possible components from Intel ME...
What they do is enabling the HAP mode from U.S. government's High Assurance Platform (HAP) they say that disables the ME.
From what i read before there were some tries to disable ME and Intel did fix it to not work later. Lets look how long this fix will work. Also using the tool looks like a quite dangerous operation which might fail and leave the computer unbootable.
I can't argue with the organizational goal but of course the ME is also in the chipset/firmware for personal machines where its potential uses are far darker. Obviously that has no software solution; Quim's comment.
If it would not be sinister there is little reason to prevent the user from disabling this.
ROS often asks for a file system integrity check when booted. When it is allowed to do the check there are always problems
I wonder a bit then. ROS needs certainly more testing infrastructure and people to fix this before they really can start to think about real hardware if they still get corrupted filesystems.
Guess best would be to make something that helps to find from where those corruptions are originate and fix it.

Surely this is one of the main reasons why its not beta.
andreas84
Posts: 101
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:09 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by andreas84 »

Guess best would be to make something that helps to find from where those corruptions are originate and fix it.
A layer that logs filesystem access and can match corrupted sectors to where the corruption came from
erkinalp
Posts: 861
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Location: Izmir, TR

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by erkinalp »

Someone forgot to turn off debug symbols in Windows 10 release build.
-uses Ubuntu+GNOME 3 GNU/Linux
-likes Free (as in freedom) and Open Source Detergents
-favors open source of Windows 10 under GPL2
elhoir
Test Team
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Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by elhoir »

simple solution for IME - plug computer off
SOOAHPAZ
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:03 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by SOOAHPAZ »

Hello everyone.
The ultimate question, ReactOS is projected for virtualbox forever ?
For what Windows 1.0 - 1980 last be have ago is projected for install in real machine pc computer.
This time after ReactOS on 20 years ago, no have structures for a install on computer, only virtual machines.
Please dont no understand me wrong. I love this project, I like ReactOS ever.
But try learn with this union community.
ReactOS have so much potential, but code need keep protected and elaborate for real machines, pc, computer. same how alpha version.
No body a make donation for an promise of 20 years in alpha version non installable!
ReactOS have all necessary for run an real computer.
After implement others stuff.

Thanks everyone.
ctasan
Posts: 392
Joined: Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:02 pm
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Contact:

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by ctasan »

SOOAHPAZ wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 7:27 am Hello everyone.
The ultimate question, ReactOS is projected for virtualbox forever ?
For what Windows 1.0 - 1980 last be have ago is projected for install in real machine pc computer.
This time after ReactOS on 20 years ago, no have structures for a install on computer, only virtual machines.
Please dont no understand me wrong. I love this project, I like ReactOS ever.
But try learn with this union community.
ReactOS have so much potential, but code need keep protected and elaborate for real machines, pc, computer. same how alpha version.
No body a make donation for an promise of 20 years in alpha version non installable!
ReactOS have all necessary for run an real computer.
After implement others stuff.

Thanks everyone.
Currently we have lots of Plug and Play/HAL issues, which is being fixed outside of trunk. Fixing those will eliminate lots of BSoDs and enable replacing USB drivers.
Graphics cards, sound cards, printer, other hardware are another story...
ReactOS Community Changelogs | Admin of ReactOS Official Twitter Account | Admin of ReactOS Turkish Twitter Account @reactos_tr
SOOAHPAZ
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:03 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by SOOAHPAZ »

ctasan wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 8:47 am
SOOAHPAZ wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 7:27 am Hello everyone.
The ultimate question, ReactOS is projected for virtualbox forever ?
For what Windows 1.0 - 1980 last be have ago is projected for install in real machine pc computer.
This time after ReactOS on 20 years ago, no have structures for a install on computer, only virtual machines.
Please dont no understand me wrong. I love this project, I like ReactOS ever.
But try learn with this union community.
ReactOS have so much potential, but code need keep protected and elaborate for real machines, pc, computer. same how alpha version.
No body a make donation for an promise of 20 years in alpha version non installable!
ReactOS have all necessary for run an real computer.
After implement others stuff.

Thanks everyone.
Currently we have lots of Plug and Play/HAL issues, which is being fixed outside of trunk. Fixing those will eliminate lots of BSoDs and enable replacing USB drivers.
Graphics cards, sound cards, printer, other hardware are another story...
Wow, this so good!
knowmad
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2014 11:04 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by knowmad »

Out of curiosity and looking over the commits, it seems there has been fair amount of work on PnP. Are we at all close to that possibly becoming functional/useable?
middings
Posts: 1073
Joined: Tue May 07, 2013 9:18 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by middings »

The current status of PnP (Plug and Play) support is worth its own topic. Discussing it in this thread strays from this thread's topic.
Ancient
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:32 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by Ancient »

Walt wrote: Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:01 am
Back in the day when the machines were big and few (hence VERY expensive) the money could be made there. Users often had microfiche and source code for the OS and we often debugged problems for the maker. But the OS could be a FREEBEE because we paid REALLY BIG $ for the machine on which it ran.
Back in the day systems programmers modified IBM source code for various OS products. It was not illegal, however the copyright and all rights were owned by IBM. Many companies had variants of IBM operating systems, which were locally customized. Source for many things, including operating systems were available for free and distributed on tape. They could be installed on hard drives, there were instructions provided to create a variant of an operating system. Boot loader source was also published, in the day there was a 3 card and 5 card loader. When booting from cards was a thing.

Copyright and patent laws evolved, and this is no longer the case. The need for open license is to permit development as has historically occurred. Without development of source code by various affiliated and unaffiliated corporations, institutions and individuals we would not evolve software as quickly or as well. Ideas, very good ideas would never be tried, and would never propel us forward. Windows shipped with no browser, and without an Internet stack for a very long time.

Windows is retarded in both complexity and understanding compared to Linux. At the moment Linux development is going through a bit of a breakdown, but it'll eventually fix itself. At the very least Windows is likely very prone to having significant undisclosed security issues.

ReactOS is the only legitimate venue for Windows to be an open source platform upon which development can occur. It's been around a long time, has some gravitas, but is taking far too long to get launched. It needs to boot onto real hardware, it needs to boot from USB. It needs this yesterday. Without a beta, without USB boot, without real hardware boot, ROS is going to die in the not distant future. It will be unable to attract any developers.
Last edited by Ancient on Wed Jan 02, 2019 7:36 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Adcock
Posts: 241
Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2016 5:37 pm

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by Adcock »

Gentlemen, please stop using 'Open Source' and start using 'FOSS' when you mean ReactOS or Linux.
hbelusca
Developer
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Location: Zagreb, Croatia

Re: We urgently need a beta

Post by hbelusca »

Adcock wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 7:21 pm Gentlemen, please stop using 'Open Source' and start using 'FOSS' when you mean ReactOS or Linux.
Dear Gentleman, might you please explain to us what the difference is between "open source" and FOSS?
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