ReactOS loads Half-Life

http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4982

Tell me your not a little impressed? They also have moved up to a 2 month release schedule.

Personally I'm really rooting for ReactOS. If an open source direct replacement to Windows can be made, it might be used more so than Linux currently. I'm still a Linux fan but any open source project is good. More people using open source the more things might start working together, like developers opening up hardware specs for open source drivers, etc.

I'm looking forward to 0.3.5 as that should allow for initial NIC support and being able to test it on actual hardware. (It works on actual hardware now, but no NIC support unless in VM).

I've been hoping this project would succeed. With Vista being worthless than a ketchup popsicle I really would like to have something to put on my computers thats free, stable and runs my programs.

Go baby go!

pffft Half-life... can it run GLquake is my question!!

lol nice to see it coming along, a big step in the right direction...

That's in qemu and vmware...?

I think qemu does not support opengl and direct3d, while some versions of vmware come only with experimental acceleration. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is crap.

I'd rather see ReactOS installed on a hard drive and run it without qemu/vmware. Maybe would work well?

Lets how it it works when the Beta version hits.

Krogen said:

That's in qemu and vmware...?

I think qemu does not support opengl and direct3d, while some versions of vmware come only with experimental acceleration. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is crap.

I'd rather see ReactOS installed on a hard drive and run it without qemu/vmware. Maybe would work well?

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*yawns* Professor Newbie is now going to explain why this is a relatively Big Deal.

First off: The original HL had software rendering; I believe this option still exists but apparently you still need elements of D3D implemented to software-render in 3D. Those elements aren't fully implemented but apparently some of them are.

Merely getting a game to load at all is indicative that a LOT is going on in the background. A whole bunch of services have to be present and mostly functional/Windows compatible even to get to the home screen.

Trying to implement something as hacked together as Microsoft Windows is hard; there are lots of thunks and poorly-if-at-all documented things going on every day on your Windows box...so the fact that they can even load to the home screen without BSOD'ing is an achievement. The real test that will make people sit up and take notice is when you can load Black Mesa Inbound...but this is still an important milestone.

Captain Newbie said:

*yawns* Professor Newbie is now going to explain why this is a relatively Big Deal.

First off: The original HL had software rendering; I believe this option still exists but apparently you still need elements of D3D implemented to software-render in 3D. Those elements aren't fully implemented but apparently some of them are.

Click to expand...

That makes a little more sense.

Trying to implement something as hacked together as Microsoft Windows is hard; there are lots of thunks and poorly-if-at-all documented things going on every day on your Windows box...so the fact that they can even load to the home screen without BSOD'ing is an achievement.

Click to expand...

Well, since ReactOS is closely binded to wine I'd expect to see something more.

Krogen said:

Well, since ReactOS is closely binded to wine I'd expect to see something more.

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You will see much more, but see the main issue is WINE's just a layer ontop of Linux. ReactOS has to have the kernel itself built, and all the various ways that hardware is interacted with. For instance there has been the keyboard/mouse bug until this release. For about 75% of the people the system would not recognize the keyboard and mouse when running on real hardware. This problem WINE doesn't have to worry about because all they do is translate the calls for keyboard/mouse into the calls Linux uses. Same with D3D, currently ReactOS uses WINE's method of converting D3D calls into opengl calls, but ReactX, which by 0.4 will replace is their own implementation of actual D3D (/dx) features.

That is pretty impressive. I am rooting for the ReactOS guys, but they do have a lot on their plate. Unfortunately I doubt it will ever become a competitor to Windows as I don't feel like they will be able to reverse engineer every little thing in Windows to make all Windows apps work as you would expect.


Imho Linux has a better chance of being a real competitor to Windows.

funnyperson1 said:

That is pretty impressive. I am rooting for the ReactOS guys, but they do have a lot on their plate. Unfortunately I doubt it will ever become a competitor to Windows as I don't feel like they will be able to reverse engineer every little thing in Windows to make all Windows apps work as you would expect.

Click to expand...

Lack of documentation = job security.

Imho Linux has a better chance of being a real competitor to Windows.

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No competition, one is clearly better. Oh. You meant economic, not technical, competition.