A retrospective on actively using ReactOS
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After i recently noticed that i haven't posted
anything about ReactOS after July, and then
noticing that i haven't linked the posts i have
written about the installation "adventure" to
my "Computer Stuff" category i thought it is
on the time to correct this missteps.
Well, where do i start... first things first:
I am still running ReactOS on my Thinkpad and
surprisingly it works. After i have fiddled
around with drivers and various settings i
have it in a state where it runs pretty stable
for alpha-stage software. Yes, it can (and will)
bite you in your backside if you treat it like
a super stable Unix system, but if you treat
it the same way you would have Windows 95
everything is fine.
What does i mean with that? Well... NEVER put
data or software you are not ready to lose on
your OS partition, NEVER!!! It also calms the
mind to have a backup (preferable an full drive
image) of your system at hand. And if everything
fails, just remember: A fresh install only takes
about 5 - 8 minutes on an nearly 2 decades old
laptop...
Well, that said, i am really not THAT masochistic
as it may seem at a first glance. The last time
i had to make an rollback was around August of
last year and since than i really had no major
issues. I can send and receive emails, can use
the K-Meleon browser to access the web and code
using Freepascal and / or Lazarus. All in all
considered, it is somewhat like back in the day
when i used to use an ...unofficial... and very
premature beta release of Windows 2000 i got from
a friend as my daily driver. Would i use this
system to work on mission critical stuff? Hell no,
but as a day to day writing / coding / gaming
system its indeed surprisingly nice.
What i absolutely not get is why ReactOS is
getting so much negativity in the web. On every
video or article that is published you have this
bunch of people that claim "that is trash... why
not simply run Wine on linux"? Or people that
harshly critisize the developers why they "waste"
their time working on this project, it would be
so much more useful if they would help to improve
Linux. Wouldn't it have been so much more useful
if Linus Torvalds had spend his time writing
accounting software instead focussing so much on
his "hobby project"?
And after all: In my personal opinion everything
computer related has become too much focussed on
"what use does this have?", what has become of
the "computer" hobby? Was an Altair 8000 really
that much of a practical tool (it could be) or
was it in most cases just an explorational tool
to "play" around and try out things? To quote
an famous philopher: "Why so serious?".
