reactos VS nextspace

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/

Interesting project. Any link to NEXTSPACE?

I'd love to run GNUStep on my Linux machine simply because The NeXT heritage brings with it the only sane keyboard shortcut / keybinding system on the Linux desktop. Before I go on a tangent, let me link to NEXTSPACE [1] which is a CentOS based GNUStep OS. Sadly, since the author is from the Ukraine, all development has halted since last February :( I hope he is ok.

Now the keybinding tangent: If you're not rolling VIM keybindings in the whole desktop (which is tricky for non-modal interfaces and alienating a large amount of users), the next best ergonomic keybinding scheme is the Emacs / Gnu Readline system [2]. It allows moving the cursor without having to move hands around (e.g. going to the arrow keys, coming back to the alphabetical keys). It is one of the base tenets of unix systems. Every terminal supports it. Yet, the whole bunch of Linux Desktop systems completely ignored these keybindings and copypastaed the Windows concept instead, coming up with a weird chimera of readline in some places, and half-windows, half-self-invented in others.

Gnome used to have an Emacs compatibility mode that was somehow off by default and had to be enabled in a tweak. It was removed with GTK 4 however. If you want to do that in KDE, you have to run a weird python daemon, and half the apps constantly stop working because they key codes are being messed with.

MacOS on the other hand, supports these keybindings in every input dialog, it is a pleasure to use. Even more so, to have the same keybindings in every app and not having to learn new ones on a per-app basis.

Of course, running weird python key code daemons runs into the other problem that macOS & Gnustep solved in a much nicer way: By copying the shortcut system from Windows and patching it on top of Readline, many shortcuts have double entries. Printing is CTRL-P, but so is readline "Previous Line". macOS and Gnustep solve this by having a separate key for app actions: Command (or Hyper or Alt). So print is Command+P. Everywhere. Previous line is CTRL-P. This is always my go-to Linux joke where "Copy" is "CTRl-C" everywhere, except in the Terminal, where it's CTRL-SHIFT-C because yeah, CTRL-C has another meaning. Talk about a sane shortcut system if apps have to use different ones per shortcut because the amalgamation of Windows Shortcuts + Readline is a match made in hell.

[1]: https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

In case you want to have a NeXT-like experience on Linux, I’ve had good fun with NEXTSPACE:

- https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

Alas, the developer is Ukrainian, and hasn’t committed anything in a long while. But maybe someone could help out?

I described some of my feelings on the matter fairly recently here:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature...

My personal preference, and what I'm writing on right now, is Unity.

I am also very fond of the ROX Desktop.

What would I really like to see? Well, barring attempts to just rip up everything and start again for no good reason, I think there would be a lot of mileage in recreating some of the classic UIs of the past that many people have loved.

* Classic MacOS was a sublime UI, with a lot of subtle non-obvious features. In its way it was far more polished than Mac OS X, even now.

* OS/2 2.x's Workplace Shell was not one of my personal favourites, but it had some excellent design features, and was loved by many.

* I have an Amiga but I never was a big fan back in the day, but a good solid modern Amiga Workbench clone would have some mileage, and as I said in the article, there are already FOSS implementations, just not for xNix.

* GEM is FOSS now. Why not recreate DR's multitasking GEM/X on Linux, or any of the late-era multitasking GEM desktops from the Atari ST, such as Thing or TeraDesk?

One of my favourite UIs is undergoing a pretty good re-implementation effort, in the form of NeXTspace:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

There are more than half a dozen non-Windows-like desktop metaphors. Is that enough for you or shall I find some more? :-)

AFAIK, NEXTSPACE is the only NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment that is (was) actively being developed (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace). The author had been working on this project for more than 5 years and he had been pushing code almost every single day.

Unfortunately, he had to stop development since Russia invasion of Ukraine, as he lives in Kyiv, Ukraine. He said he was OK and would like to continue development "after Ukraine’s victory" (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/discussions/412). But that was about 4 months ago.

As someone who really likes NeXTSTEP and hopes NEXTSPACE to succeed, the current situation is sad.

Just wanted to inform the crowds at HN about this.

:wq

[Article author here]

> I think my ideal Linux OS is probably Ubuntu/CentOS + something like macOS’s .app bundle file format for distributing end-user applications.

Then I suggest looking at NeXTspace:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

It does exactly that. CentOS, plus .app bundles, all integrated into a single bundle.

But the .app bundles come from GNUstep, so you can't pick your own desktop.