DOS ain't dead

> Well, it's a start.

Yes, maybe in year 2100 it will be finally 100% compatible with W2K including working NTVDM but there will be no living x86 machine to run the system :)

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > > Changes: "A major new feature for this release is the inclusion of
> > > NTVDM,
>
> Not yet much usable. No DPMI or VGA/VESA emulation. Has problems with full
> screen apps. I tested a 16 bit version of vim, Robert's patched fed and MS
> Word 5.5 installer. Haven't had luck with either. First had problem with
> starting full screen, second required a dpmi host and the third crashed
> before even starting the install. Also, there is no way to change ntvdm
> settings, no pif files or right click ntvdm properties.
>
> But I guess this would work with simple command line apps (although it's
> much better to use win32 versions if they exist).
>
> Well, it's a start.

Some old graphics .com games works.
And since they're working on protected mode and FPU (i.e. CPU side), DOS APIs and peripherals like keyboard and mouse don't have much priority ATM.

> > > Changes: "A major new feature for this release is the inclusion of
> > > NTVDM,
>
> Not yet much usable. No DPMI or VGA/VESA emulation. Has problems with full
> screen apps. I tested a 16 bit version of vim, Robert's patched fed and MS
> Word 5.5 installer. Haven't had luck with either. First had problem with
> starting full screen, second required a dpmi host and the third crashed
> before even starting the install. Also, there is no way to change ntvdm
> settings, no pif files or right click ntvdm properties.
>
> But I guess this would work with simple command line apps (although it's
> much better to use win32 versions if they exist).
>
> Well, it's a start.

That is quite true. The primary reason I am interested in ReactOS's NTVDM is that there is no NTVDM in 64-bit versions of Windows any more so that I need a replacement to run under Windows x64 (which is the main system I am using). But as RayeR said we may have to wait until Year 2100 that it finally includes a fully working NTVDM. DOSBox is probably still the best solution so far on such systems.

> > > Changes: "A major new feature for this release is the inclusion of
> > > NTVDM,
>
> Not yet much usable. Well, it's a start.

Indeed, I think we all got our hopes up for 99% compatibility when clearly they were just proud to have anything! Hey, "something" is always better than nothing.

If I had to guess, their priorities are probably more focused on overall stability (which isn't even quite 80% yet), then Win32 fixes (for popular programs like modern web browsers), then secondary stuff like NTVDM.

Wengier:
"The primary reason I am interested in ReactOS's NTVDM is that there
is no NTVDM in 64-bit versions of Windows any more so that I need a
replacement to run under Windows x64 (which is the main system I am
using)."

It's almost a lost cause. MS has better things to do. The closest you get from them is Hyper-V (Win8 Pro x64 with advanced VT-X [nested page tables / POPCNT] only), but that clearly is focused 99% on modern Windows and (barely) some enterprise-y Linux (and their website doesn't seem to mention older partial support for FreeBSD at all). Hyper-V (since 2008) seems to be moreso a competitor to cloud companies and VMware than anything else. Even VirtualPC seems to be abandoned since 2011. In fairness, MS probably thinks home users will just use third-party tools (VirtualBox, DOSBox) anyways.

No, I don't think ReactOS NTVDM will ever be well-supported on Win64, but who knows? I think you're expecting too much from them. I think VirtualBox (with Intel Nehalem 2010 VT-X) is as close as you're going to get, for now. (Or just dual boot, but that has its own problems.)

RayeR:
"I think that for old 16b apps is dosbox good enough but for some
latest 32b PM games and demos it's still slow. Did something changed
on dosbox to better utilize multiple cores? or some new vtxx
instructions? that could help boost performance."

DOSBox is very slow, yes. It needs 1+ Ghz just to reach "fast 486" speeds. It's only for old games, not everything else. If you want more, you may do better to use DOSEMU under Linux (although even that, AFAIK, doesn't use VT-X). The goal of DOSBox was to be portable, so it doesn't have much x86 hardware support (no V86 mode, no VT-X). Heck, they haven't had a proper release in over four years. Who knows if GCC (or MSVC or whatever) has improved enough since then to show any speedups. Feel free to recompile it yourself and test (yeah right, I probably wouldn't). Actually, I heard that a 64-bit build was slower than a 32-bit one. Gotta love the 64-bit hype that "everything is faster" (yes, I personally blame you, MarcoV, heheh). It uses SDL 1.2, which I don't think?? is multi-threaded although it may?? offload the audio to a separate thread (don't quote me!). No idea when or if "core=dynamic" works the way we expect. Honestly, it's just not meant for anything besides old games, and they've clearly accomplished their goal, so I blindly guess they don't care as much anymore or have better things to do. Even ReactOS NTVDM seems mostly motivated by trying to get old games working.

> We in Yugoslavia were not so close with Soviets. Even when communists took
> over after the ww2 wictory, the love afair with Stalin lasted only
> till 1948 or
> so. After that we were independent of Warsaw pact. Actually,
> Yugoslavia was one of the founders of the
> Non-Aligned
> Movement which was founded in Belgrade, the capital at the time (now
> the capital of Serbia) in 1961.

So you got a luck that your country was not invaded by Soviet and Warsaz pact armies to "normalize" situation and enforce the right socialism by strict Moscow rules. There was uprising in 1956 in Hungary and was supressed. In our Czechoslovakia there started liberal reforms in '60-ties that was resulted in Soviet and Warsaz pact armies internation "help" to setup back the hard socialism. And part of soviet army kept occupation over next 2 decades if something would go "wrong"...
But in Yugoslavia it was not also very liberal, I would say totalitarian and socialist too otherwise we could not travel to Yugoslavia so easy (here it was quite impossible to travel to West Germany or Austria without special permission). I was in Yugoslavia in 1986 on vacation. I also remember there was then some economy crisis in late 80-ties with huge inflation (I got some banknote with value maybe 1000000 dinars and you cannot buy nothing for it) so neither your independent socialism plan was successfull...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Like I said, the "ReactOS Applications Manager" has some interesting stuff
> since default is pretty bare bones. E.g. (Tools) 7-Zip and (Internet &
> Network) Firefox are fairly crucial, I'd say, if you intend to actually
> test anything.
>

I am afraid those can be pretty buggy. An earlier version of Firefox might work better (3.6.x?).

But, I'm more bothered with non working "back"/"forward" buttons in the explorer and the desktop that refreshes once per logon. They keep talking about the "new explorer", but I don't see even those basic things fixed.

Although I noticed their CMD (win32) got in much better shape several months/year ago. It used to be much buggier before. Now it's pretty usable.

So something is moving, but it's really slow. I guess most of the changes currently are under the hood.

>
> Actually, (Other) has Bochs and DOSBox, and (Development) has FreeBASIC and
> Lazarus, so that's interesting as well, although I didn't test them.

I think Dosbox used to work. I don't know for the others.

For me, ReactOS is more of the curiosity. I first found out about project 8-9 years ago. I can't say it didn't improve, but it's still very obviously alpha quality. Although they did have that big code refactoring few years ago. That set them back a little.