RE: [ros-kernel] Forward: "ReactOS is too limited"

[Frohwalt E. <ma...@fr...>]

Hi everybody & Joe in special ...


   we should all lose a bit of hostility here - by leaving out the words "we" and "them".

Coming from a "pure" Linux world, I have soleley been using Windows for the last three years and - what I would never have
expected - I really like some parts of Windoze. (While I still utterly despise other parts ...)

In these three years there was something very enlightening: My coworkers - who are mostly really skilled software developers - like
to use the GUI. And they are amazed that I always use the command line.

The bottom line is - there are "command line" people and there are "GUI" people. What interface is superior is a matter of personal
taste. So we should all stop flaming each other and get constructive.



To start with, here is my personal list of "What I don't like about Windows and how Reactos could make it better".

- Even if you are administrator you are not allowed to do everything by default. (Opposed to "root" in Unix, who normally may do
everything). For example Administrator can not kill all processes in Task manager. This is a *major* annoyance to Unix power users
working on Windows - and probably a minor issue to fix. (It can even be configured in normal Windows by adding the needed
priviledges to the administrator account.)

- The console window on Windows is really weak. Unix has gained a lot from being able to write "terminal emulators" as normal user
mode programs. It is not too difficult to write a new terminal emulator, so on Unix we nowadays have a plethora of really great
terminal emulators. Considering to do something "interesting" for Windows I didn't find any good point to start, in NT the Console
seems to deeply interwoven with the rest of the system. Reactos could improve on this by taking the "Unix Idea" of being able to
write "Terminal Emulators" in user mode. And whoops we'd have a Win32 Reactos console, maybe one for X11 like xterm or whatever.

- cmd.exe is REALLY REALLY REALLY weak compared with bash or zsh. I know bash/zsh do run on Windows, but I'd like something "native"
with the same power (programmable command line completion, good scripting, etc.) No big issue, just a lot of work to write a really
really cool cmd.exe.

- Many things do not have a command line interface. For example, the "disk defragmenter", a bundled version of DiskKeeper can not be
started via command line. This makes sense if you want to sell commercial versions of DiskKeeper, but it recently annoyed the hell
out of Joe (*) who tried to add a defragmentation run to his unattended install routine.

- I can't remember much more right now. When I'm on the phone with Joe he always gripes about not being able to delete open files in
Windows.



And this is to Joe: Compile your wishlist. I do not believe you will state _any_ point for "more features" that cripples
compatibility with Windows. Nobody is coding following a "Windows spec". There are applications and people that are trying to make
these applications run. Expressing our wishes might get exactly the people who do the coding understand us. I do not believe
somebody will remember this email and implement the console window I dream of when he gets around hacking on the console (**). But
if people get to implement something they might think "What might some command line person want from my app?" "How might someone
like to schedule this?"  Say what you want from Reactos, but do not flame it because of some email of a mailing list reader that is
not among the most active developers.


Cheers,
   Froh



*= The same Joe who I am replying to. We're personal friends.

**= By the way, if he does, I'll vow to send him/her a barrel of bavarian beer :-)