ReactOS 0.3.13 - (free, modern operating system based on the design of WinXP/2003)

[FunkY]

ReactOS® is an effort to create a Free Software replacement for Microsoft Windows® that is compatible with existing hardware and software!

React Operating System

ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows-NT® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.

The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows® and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change.

Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.13 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is not recommended for everyday use.

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2011-03-22, Aleksey Bragin

ReactOS 0.3.13 Released
The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.13.

This version continues building on the work first previewed in 0.3.12, ranging from memory management improvements to better sound and display control. A Coverity scan also occurred between 0.3.12 and 0.3.13, helping the team clean up potential security holes and also help improve general stability by enforcing more care in memory operations.

Some of the biggest system changes happened with memory management with the introduction of a new heap manager based on the Windows 2003/Vista architecture, significantly increasing ReactOS’ compatibility with advanced memory allocation types and providing proper kernel mode heap management used by win32k. Performance should also see a significant boost for many memory operations even without the addition of optimizations on top of the new heap. The addition of a debug heap manager late in the release cycle also spurred on a series of fixes to memory usage across ReactOS, from the operating system to bundled applications. These changes should significantly improve system stability, moving ReactOS one step closer to being a viable daily use operating system.

Other improvements include the merging in of work done in the yarotows branch for improved display driver loading and dynamic mode changing, significantly increasing ReactOS’ usability.

During the preparation of this release, 282 bugs were fixed, including 50 regressions with the oldest regression being issue #4811 ("comctl32.dll sync broke Abiword toolbar"). The oldest bug fixed is #1567 "Taskmanager still showing processes while they are closed" (almost 5 years old). 382 new bugs were opened since the release of 0.3.12.

Previous releases 0.3.11 and 0.3.12 were downloaded 238 and 526 thousand times, which totals up to an amazing amount of 764 000 downloads, and a significant increase looks very promising.

Some of the most important changes:

Implemented dynamic video mode switch and improved graphics drivers compatibillity.
Fixed several graphic issues.
Completely rewritten heap manager with additional debugging capabilities for detecting out of bounds operations.
Improved management of audio mixer lines, preventing application sounds from becoming garbled due to overlapping lines.
Heavy bug fixing in user subsystem ( improved handling of user mouse input, messages and timers).
Visual artifacts fixed in some apps as Firefox and Thunderbird.
Fixed several bugs in the installer.
Improved apps compatibility: Stellarium 0.10.2, LHelp, winpcap,FlashPlayer 10.1 and Mono 2.8, OllyDbg 1.10, Xenon 2000, VLC 1.1.5, Foobar 2000, Skype 4.0.0 work now.
More SATA devices are supported.
Lots of test cases were fixed.
Many improvements in the memory manager that fix several bugs and make it more compatible with NT memory manager.

The detailed 0.3.13 changelog is also available.

Homepage, more information and download
http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

[Bearcat]

Thanks for the share FunkY! This is most interesting. A free OS based on Windows XP, I like it!

[Boyfriend]

Thanks FunkY I surely love to try it. Few of my friends have old hardware and ReactOS might be viable option for them.

[JayCub]

Thank you FunkY i have been keeping an eye on its progress and it is starting to take shape although it is in alpha along time now i will be interested in using it as soon as i swap pc's around..

[hellnoire]

It's more like Windows 3.11 if you consider what it can do. But it's not based on the design of XP/2003, it's based on Wine, and it's trying to make Wine something more amazing.

[JayCub]

Thank you Paul for the information, i see it has a start menu that i thought was MS only ( you mentioned this to me earlier) to the eye it gives a representation of all things XP, i never used an OS older than XP, a bit of 2000 and a bit of 98 ME, it really is slow in development to be honest but i think i would like to give it a try at some point..

[hellnoire]

It's going to take a LONG time before it reaches beta status, I think most of the developers will be dead by then.

[Bearcat]

It's going to take a LONG time before it reaches beta status, I think most of the developers will be dead by then.

Well, that sounds encouraging! Thanks for the heads up!

[Newbie Comp user]

Interesting... thanks for the heads up!

[jj1two3]

Thanks FunkY. Very interesting.