Download ReactOS 0.3.1

Version 0.3.1 of ReactOS was released yesterday. This project aims to build an open source operating system that is compatible with Windows NT, 2000 and XP, so that Windows applications and drivers can be run on it. on this page some screenshots can be admired. The software can be downloaded as a installation CDif Live CD version for people who want to give it a try without having to reconfigure their system, or as VMware image. The changelog of this version is very long, which is not surprising, since the previous release is already half a year old. If you want to read all the changes, go to this page rightly so, a summary can be found in the release notes:

ReactOS 0.3.1 Released!

It’s been almost half a year since the last release (0.3.0). And all this time work was going on like crazy – sometimes up to 50 commits per day.

Mainly, the work focused on rewriting certain parts of the ReactOS Core (kernel, HAL, bootloader, etc). It’s very hard to sum up the huge Changelog in an outline, but briefly:

• Freedr was improved
• HAL’s key areas have been significantly improved (irql-related, bus support, kd-functions)
• The Kernel experienced a massive rewrite of incompatible parts (and is still in the process of improvement)
• Run-time library (Rtl) got a lot of improvements and bug fixes
• Bugs were fixed in kernel-mode drivers and a better USB driver was added
• Registry-support has been greatly improved thanks to addition of “cmlib”, a library shared by the boot loader and the kernel to handle binary registry hives; it even supports binary registry hives created by Windows
• More fixes in the Win32 subsystem and user-mode DLLs
• Boot video driver (and a splash screen) was added

Read through the changelog, and you will see the amount of changes in this release!

However, there are a few things worth mentioning. First of all, please don’t forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS (due to stability and compatibility concerns). And second, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware.

Also, we aim to continuously reduce delays between releases, and keep to a regular release schedule in the future.[break]