ReactOS 0.4.8 Released (osnews.com)

jeditobe shares a report from OSNews: With software specifically leaving NT5 behind, ReactOS is expanding its target to support NT6+ (Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10) software. Colin, Giannis and Mark are creating the needed logic in NTDLL and LDR for this purpose. Giannis has finished the side-by-side support and the implicit activation context, Colin has changed Kernel32 to accept software made for NT6+, and Mark keeps working on the shim compatibility layer. Although in a really greenish and experimental state, the new additions in 0.4.8 should start helping several software pieces created for Vista and upwards to start working in ReactOS. Microsoft coined the term backwards compatibility, ReactOS the forward compatibility one. Slashdot reader jeditobe adds: "A new tool similar to DrWatson32 has been created by Mark and added to 0.4.8, so now any application crashing will create a log file on the desktop. This crash dump details the list of modules and threads loaded, stack traces, hexdumps, and register state."

The announcement, general notes, tests, and changelog for the release can be found at their respective links. A less technical community changelog for ReactOS 0.4.8 is also available.

Comments

Status: pre-alpha

[steveha]

I wish the ReactOS project success.

In the past I was not interested because it didn't even run on real hardware; you had to run it inside a virtual machine. Checking their web site it seems it does run on some real hardware now, but only some devices are supported. Actually that is great progress and I hope that it will attract more developers.

It's not that fun to work on a project when it's super primitive and everything is broken. When it works a bit and just needs a tweak here and there, more people will be interested in working on it. I hope that will be the case for ReactOS.

I would love to have a Windows-compatible system that doesn't phone home constantly and can run some of my favorite games. It will take a while but it's starting to look like they will get there.