After more than three years of development, the release of the ReactOS 0.4.15 operating system has been introduced, aimed at ensuring compatibility with Microsoft Windows programs and drivers, as well as offering a Windows-style interface. An installation ISO image (117 MB) and a Live build (in a zip archive of 85 MB) are prepared for download. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 and LGPLv2 licenses.
Since the last release, over 8600 changes have been made and 1319 bug reports closed. Key changes include:
- The default visual style has been changed to the "Mizu" style.
- Support for large icons on the taskbar has been added.
- Support for ZIP archive files has been added, allowing them to be used in the file manager as a virtual file system and unpacked using a separate wizard.
- An "Internet Browser" icon has been added to the desktop for launching the web browser.
- Issues with the incorrect display of icons in applications such as Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Visual Basic 6, and Hoyle Cards have been resolved. Stability of the Shell32 library has been improved.
- The PnP (Plug and Play) manager has been significantly redesigned in the kernel, which has expanded ReactOS's capabilities to run third-party drivers created for Windows.
- Support for booting ReactOS from USB devices on chipsets with EHCI, OHCI, and UHCI controllers has been added. Issues with USB driver looping when the USB device is not ready, which hindered booting on some systems, have been resolved.
- The sound stack has been improved. The AC'97 driver has been ported from the Windows Driver Kit (WDK), allowing sound usage during installation in VirtualBox when selecting ICH AC'97 sound controller settings or when booting on systems with older motherboards. Support for higher sampling rates, multi-channel output, new sound file formats, and looping playback of wav files has been added.
- In the memory management system, the "Section Objects" mechanism has been redesigned to allow shared memory regions. This change resolved issues with executing files from external partitions, such as network storage and shared disks. of virtual machines.
- The FAT driver, developed by Microsoft, has been transferred from the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). The new FAT driver addresses issues of low stability and performance in the old driver, while also enabling proper disconnection of external devices.
- Mechanisms for recovery, state flushing, and registry caching have been implemented, enhancing the system's resilience in case of crashes or power failures. The recovery mechanism allows for automatic correction of corrupted registry areas, while the state flush mechanism ensures periodic saving of changes to disk, and caching significantly speeds up registry operations.
- The Se (Security Subsystem) has been improved in the kernel, introducing a mechanism for managing access to system objects.
- The capabilities of basic applications and system utilities have been expanded. For instance, the Paint graphic editor now features a text tool, and the Notepad text editor has a print dialog. The IME (Input Method Editor) has also been enhanced to manage input methods more effectively.
- Initial support for booting on multiprocessor systems with SMP mode enabled has been added.
- Significant improvements have been made for 64-bit mode operation.
- A new command-line utility, tasklist, has been added to display the list of active tasks.
- The code for third-party components has been updated: ACPICA 20210730, mpg123 1.26.2, mbedtls 2.16.11, libxml2 2.9.12.
- The Windows Driver Framework and Kernel Mode Driver Framework from Microsoft have been included.
- The implementations of d3dx9 and wininet have been synchronized with Wine 6.0, msi with Wine Staging 7.3, and dbghelp with Wine Staging 5.16. In regapi, DLLs from Wine Staging 5.7 have been incorporated, and in dbgeng, changes from Wine Staging 4.18 have been merged. Code for supporting the Metafile format has been transferred from Wine to gdi32.
Support for UEFI, SMP, and power management is being further developed in the master branch, along with the addition of a graphical installer and NTFS driver.
Source: opennet.ru
