Windows XP clone ReactOS turns 30

The ReactOS project is celebrating its 30th birthday. The first commit to the ReactOS source code was made at the end of January 1996. In a blog post, the current project maintainers are honoring the event. They roughly outline the development history of the Windows XP-compatible operating system.

ReactOS History: Evolved from Windows 95 Alternative

Between 1996 and 2003, developers began to forge ReactOS from the "FreeWin95" project, which wasn't progressing well, aiming not for a DOS extension but for binary compatibility for apps with the Windows NT kernel. This dragged on, however, as they first had to develop an NT-like kernel before they could program drivers. On February 1, 2003, the project finally released ReactOS 0.1.0. This was the first version that could boot from a CD. However, it was limited to a command prompt; there was no desktop.

Between 2003 and 2006, the development of ReactOS 0.2.x gained rapid momentum. "New drivers were constantly developed, a simple desktop was built, and ReactOS became increasingly stable and usable," write the developers. At the end of 2005, the project coordinator at the time, Jason Filby, resigned and handed over to Steven Edwards. In December 2005, ReactOS 0.2.9 was released, which heise online reported on for the first time. However, at the beginning of 2006, there were fears that some project participants might have had access to leaked, original Windows source code and used it for their contributions to the ReactOS code. A "war council" subsequently decided to freeze development and review the existing code with the team.

Between 2006 and 2016, development on ReactOS 0.3.x continued. The ongoing code review and the halt of new code contributions towards the end of the ReactOS 0.2.x era significantly slowed down development. Steven Edwards resigned as project coordinator in August 2006 and handed over to Aleksey Bragin. At the end of the same month, ReactOS 0.3.0 was released, whose first release candidate became available in mid-June, and brought network support and a package manager called "Download!".

Since 2016, development has been taking place on the ReactOS 0.4.x branch. In February 2016, ReactOS 0.4.0 improved 16-bit emulation for DOS applications, but also added support for NTFS and the Ext2 file system. The introduced support for the kernel debugger WinDbg has noticeably advanced development. Since March of last year, ReactOS 0.4.15 represents the current state of development.

But the current project developers also comment on the future of the project. "Behind the scenes, several projects beyond the official software branch are under development," they write, such as a new build environment, a new NTFS driver, as well as new ATA drivers and multi-processor support (SMP). Class 3 UEFI systems are also to be supported, i.e., those that no longer offer compatibility with old BIOS. Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) to make it harder to exploit memory errors for malware smuggling is also under development. The upcoming support for modern graphics card drivers, based on WDDM, is also important.

(dmk)