reactos VS hardened_malloc

https://reactos.org/ implement some of the windows API

You can use Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/

To modify the ISO to turn off hardware check and TPM support for Windows 11 to install it on an unsupported PC.

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#user-content-Help_...

Besides Linux and BSD Unix there is: https://reactos.org/ https://aros.sourceforge.io/ https://www.haiku-os.org/ and https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/

I know some third-world nations still use DOS and the BORLAND DOS compilers because people donate old computers to their nations.

With the right OS, old computers are still usable. Please don't throw them away, e-cycle them so they get used by poor nations that cannot afford new PCs.

ReactOS is sometimes very disappointing. Take the issue with toolbar icons, for example. Toolbar icons in at least Office 97, Office 2000 and Visual Basic 6 were affected, as was some game [0]. Microsoft Office is a complex Win32 application, making it a good guinea pig for testing compatibility. And yet, this was fixed a few months ago, and the Office bug was reported in 2016 [1]. The bug with no text wrapping for tray balloons is also an embarrassing thing to have lingering for years (I assume it was like this since the balloons were first implemented in ReactOS).

Does the world really need a buggy Windows Server 2003 reimplementation? I think the efforts of the development team could be better spent elsewhere.

[0]: https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/5227

[1]: https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-12377

Anyone tried ReactOS recently? Supposed to be a clean-room FOSS Windows NT compatible OS.

https://reactos.org/

It's still on my TODO. Mostly cause my parents want XP back.

> It's whitespace. There's wayyyy too much god damn whitespace in modern UIs, and it's awful.

I wanted to see how LibreOffice would compare on my netbook, and frankly it's better than the new Word, but still "worse" than the old version: https://i.imgur.com/cWGYh3M.png

That said, at least LibreOffice lets you have your custom themes and actually offers a variety of different interface layouts, which I think is a nice touch: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Videos/User_interface

> Windows 7 with the Classic theme (which really was just a slight evolution over Win2K) was peak UI/UX, and you'll never change my mind. It's been downhill ever since, getting worse and worse with each generation.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with this. That's also why I rather enjoyed the Redmond theme even in *nix distros. There's just something so very usable about the old Windows look and more modern attempts, such as SerenityOS https://serenityos.org/ and even ReactOS https://reactos.org/

Relevant copypasta:

Fellow humans, there are alternatives to Google and Apple! Your neck need not be under anyone's boot! You don't even need to give up any functionality:

Data service:

The simplest thing is to buy a prepaid SIM and top it off with cash. The lovely people over at /r/nocontract maintain a big spreadsheet so you can filter by various properties of the available contracts.

Another way to go is to pay for a postpaid plan with a virtual credit card (VCC) like at privacy.com. It won't be linked to your name at the telco, but of course privacy.com knows who you are. There is also Abine Blur, and some others.

Yet a third way to go, which is nascent, is buy an eSIM with crypto. You can also buy prepaid VCCs with crypto.

An interesting new choice is PGPP https://invisv.com/pgpp/ who rotate your IMSI and do some other cool stuff. It works by e-sims.

All these methods make you /pseudo/nymous, but obviously you're still identifiable by subscriber number and possibly IMEI, to put aside correlational things like your traffic profile. You can help this problem by routing everything through a VPN. Then you're pseudonymous but the cell carrier knows nothing about you other than that you use a VPN. Pay for the VPN with crypto. Of course now the VPN provider knows your traffic, but you're much more anonymous to them than you are to a telco. You make your choices. Defense in depth. Etc.

OS:

GrapheneOS: https://grapheneos.org/ Very much like Calyx, but extra-hardened and with no MicroG. No involvement with Google at all by default. You can make a secondary profile in which you install Google Play Services to set up an environment where you can run unprivileged Play services + whatever crapware you need that requires them. Unprivileged here means it's like any other app: if you don't give it access to your location, it won't know where you are. If you end the profile session when you leave, Play Services stops running and stops talking to Google.

CalyxOS: https://calyxos.org/ Privacy-respecting Android distribution that replaces Google spyware with MicroG, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Most everything will work as you're used to, but it does still talk to Google to make that happen.

LineageOS: https://lineageos.org/ The successor to CyanogenMod, will work with many different phones. More privacy and control than stock Android.

There are also many others: Sailfish, Replicant, e

Hardware:

CalyxOS and GrapheneOS run best on Pixels. The path of least resistance is to get one of these phones and run GrapheneOS with Google Services installed in one profile or other.

You could also buy a Librem 5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ If privacy and security and hacking are really important to you.

Or a pinephone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Neither work very well by regular standards, but they're cool :-)

It might be worth to switch to GrapheneOS if you have Pixel phones: https://grapheneos.org/

It is a more serious project than LineageOS in the sense that they take security very seriously and they take their development more professionally too. There are no disadvantages to using GrapheneOS compared to LineageOS.

You can see a comparison here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

If it still powers up but just won't boot you could try installing https://grapheneos.org/.

On 4thgen Pixels and up you can install GrapheneOS which is a security and privacy focused Android build. It does not come with any Google services pre-installed but you can put them on. https://grapheneos.org/

yes... will also de-google it cuz we can install GrapheneOS and also close the bootloader