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Search - "reactos"
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This rant was posted from the devrant web client in Firefox v44
running at ReactOS, an open-source alternative that looks/behaves like Windows10 -
I've never used Windows in my day-to-day life. No kidding.
When I got my father's first computer, I used an old distribution called BBC Linux. I didn't have any computer knowledge, it was my first contact with a computer, so I went to a friend's house and asked for a CD to install on my computer. I don't know if this friend ended up making a "gotcha" and thought I'd give up, but I just read the manuals and fell in love. That was year 2000.
Then I used Conectiva Linux, then I went to Red Hat 9, then Slackware, then in 2007 I started using Solaris. And I stayed on Solaris (Solaris 10, Solaris Nevada and OpenSolaris) until 2011.
In 2011 I bought a Mac. I stayed at Apple until 2020, when I couldn't stand Apple forcing me to buy new computers (I still don't understand how a 2011 iMac, i5 (4 Hyper Thread cores) with 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD only runs up to High Sierra).
Then I bought a Dell. It came with Windows 10, the first thing I did was install WSL2. I could not stand it, the system is bad, sorry. I installed OpenSuse and have been using it for two years.
It's just that every day someone tells me "how can you use this"? "There is no alternative to Windows, do you want to be different?"
I know that my story was the reverse of the "mainstream", so I'm going to talk about my vision of Windows, that in my brain it is actually the "alternative".
- Having a file explorer without "tabs" in 2022 is unthinkable for me.
- I love terminal. And the Windows terminal is very limited. "ps ... | awk ... | xargs ..." is a must for me. "find ./ -name '...' -exec ..."... these things on Windows are totally "different" and have the "powershell way" while all other operating systems keep the same form. And cygwin is not an option. As Wine for serious work is also not.
- Dragging a file into the terminal, and having it write its path, is so natural, that when Windows didn't do it, I was dismayed.
- I've always used StarOffice, OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. All the people in my story received my documents and reports as a PDF and no one complained. Until a coworker saw me editing in LibreOffice and said "oh I want it in word format". As long as he didn't know, everything was fine, right?
- Windows is paid. And is there advertising? I don't understand. And I refuse. If you want to display advertising, then excuse me. I have no problem paying, I'm not an opensource shiite. It's just that paying and not working bothers me much more than an opensource that I can fix or expect a fix knowing the good will of the people involved.
- Hyper-V is a joke. QEMU/KVM is better, and Bhyve on FreeBSD which is a very young project, is already a million times better than Hyper-V.
- Developing in C/C++ for Windows is only possible in two ways: Either you've always lived in Windows and your brain is conditioned, or you compile with MSYS2 (CLang or GCC).
- There is no significant evolution of the windows desktop since 95.
- Multiple workspace support with multiple monitors, not ready. It's another joke.
- REGEDIT does not need any comment.
- The system loses performance over time. I still don't know how Windows achieves this.
- I've seen people complain about desktop fragmentation on Unix and Linux. Many DEs end up leaving applications with different themes (like running a Qt application in Gnome and GTK in KDE), but to be quite honest, the lack of Windows standard bothered me much more. Even Microsoft's own software is completely different: Control Panel, Calculator, Paint and Office, To-Do, and Settings, have horrible style differences and look-and-feel fragmentation.
- Dark mode has not been implemented. It's another joke. Many applications are white while everything else is dark. Sorry, even on Linux which is a mess, this has been resolved. And well resolved.
- NTFS? Serious?
- C:, D:.. It doesn't convince me since DOS.
- Bloatware.
- News "biased" in the search bar is a lack of respect for those who use the computer to work.
And that. For me, Windows is the alternative operating system. I can't take Windows seriously, for me it's an experimental one like Haiku or ReactOS. It's good to play.
About market share, it doesn't convince me to use it. But convinces me to sell. I've always developed applications to run on Windows. And when I need it, I turn on a VM to compile the project. But in everyday life? Impractical.15 -
Just spent the entire day of which should have been the start of vacation fighting off a second wave of ransomware on one of our production servers. Gandcrab 5.2 anyone?
Turns out an exploit in our MySQL daemon allowed some fucking Chinese hackermonkey to upload a trojan and remote execute it. Thousands of angry customers, me the only one available and able to fix shit and patch up firewalls and system.
And now I get the pleasure of working on what I should have been doing today, another fire that MUST be put out today.
Fuck you deadlines. Fuck you Chinese hackers. In fact, FML.3 -
Fellow devranter detected?
I can hardly count how many times I've used profanities for variable names or placeholder text. But, unlike this landing page for the Norwegian company 1881's API they never see the light of day. At least I hope so...
Made my giggle out loud at least, 1881 is a well known and respectable (I guess) company over here. Hello world! :-D5 -
people always hate on ReactOS
maybe it would be worth your time if they actually had help and/or donations1 -
Tried to boot ReactOS on real hardware.
ALL the driver issues, and no way to fix them (USB had drivers assigned but only had power, not even my mouse worked.)
God I wish ReactOS was laughed at less. There's so much here that could grow into a full Windows replacement, but people are too busy laughing to help.
It's like comparing Windows 2.x to Windows 7 or 10. There's something there, it's just not progressed far enough to get up to where it could be. (Not literally ofc, metaphorically)2 -
!rant
My stock hp 2000-369wm notebook laptop with 4GBmem won't boot (from USB) ReactOS, RemixOS, or Android-x866 -
think all of this impulsive OS booting is burning out my old laptop,
RemixOS - partially boots then gets stuck on a black screen
Android-x86 - won't boot past a black screen either
Windows 7 - i infected that shit so quickly lmao
Windows 10 - i'm not disgracing my old laptop with that
Xubuntu - boots, but my tablet configurator dosen't start properly wrapped in wine (Shenzen HUION only has Win and Mac drivers), and i am an artist
Gamedrift - haven't tried
ReactOS - Last time i checked, it won't boot but i should try again
any other suggestions?
super low specs on that old laptop7 -
Installing ReactOS thinking I was getting a Android OS when I realize it was not. Guess I am getting that and RemixOS