gmane.os.reactos.announce

Please read: A personal appeal from ReactOS Project Coordinator Aleksey Bragin

Aleksey Bragin — 2012-05-01T22:16:21

Normally this list is used to announce new releases of ReactOS operating 
system, however this time is an exception. There is a significant, rare 
event which I would like to get your attention to.

ReactOS Fundraiser 2012.

The ReactOS Project has engaged in several fundraising efforts in the 
past, and thanks to their success and non-monetary donations, an 
industry-grade infrastructure 
<http://www.reactos.org/en/Infrastructure.html> was developed and 
deployed, and is being continuously improved.

Donations have also helped developers travel to several conferences and 
events to promote and present ReactOS. These presentations were crucial 
in drawing attention to the project and often helped spur further donations.

This year we want to do something different, something even grander. 
ReactOS is quite close to transitioning to beta testing and we are 
constantly improving the development process itself. However for many 
core developers ReactOS remains a hobby in which they participate in 
their spare time as all have other real life obligations to meet. All of 
the developers are extremely skilled and every contribution they make 
helps significantly improve ReactOS' quality.

For the first time ever, the ReactOS Foundation seeks to go beyond the 
usual small fundraising campaigns aimed at paying infrastructure 
expenses. We wish to raise money 
<http://www.reactos.org/en/foundation_donate.html> *to formally hire as 
many core developers as possible*, to work on the project they believe 
in, the project they've been working on, to transform a hobby into a job 
so they can dedicate all of their time to the ReactOS project.

In light of the significant advances the project enjoyed thanks to work 
done as part of Google's Summer of Code 2011, it became even more 
obvious that the fastest way to accelerate the development of ReactOS is 
by directly funding developers to contribute to ReactOS. As such, the 
project is reaching out to our many fans and believers to help make this 
happen.

Together, we can make ReactOS into a true competitor and alternative for 
computer users worldwide.

Thanks,
Aleksey Bragin
ReactOS Project Coordinator

Links:
Official news text: http://www.reactos.org/en/news_page_75.html (other 
languages may be available)
ReactOS Fundraising Campaign 2012 Progress bar (updated daily): 
http://www.reactos.org on top of the page.
Donation page: http://www.reactos.org/en/foundation_donate.html (other 
languages may have country-specific ways of donation)

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ReactOS 0.3.14 Released

Aleksey Bragin — 2012-02-08T10:38:10

The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.14.

This version includes a significant amount of changes including both 
user visible and architectural improvements. Also included in this 
release is the valuable work accomplished as part of the Google Summer 
of Code 2011 event, of which ReactOS was a mentoring project.

One of the more significant sets of improvements was to ReactOS’ 
networking stack. As part of the GSoC, ReactOS gained a new TCP/IP 
driver built around the LwIP project. The LwIP library is a popular and 
stable implementation of TCP/IP originally intended for embedded use. 
The new driver has significantly increased both stability and 
performance, allowing the use of high bandwidth applications such as 
torrents. Furthermore, ReactOS has improved compatibility with NT5.1 
drivers with the export of scatter/gather DMA functionality. Last but 
not least, ReactOS now includes wireless network support and is able to 
connect to both open and WEP encrypted networks.

One of the more obvious user visible changes includes the implementation 
of theme support. Users can now change the look and feel of ReactOS’ 
user interface by installing XP based themes and changing the appearance 
of the desktop from the default classic look to something more exciting.

Architecturally, the addition of a kernel mode testing framework has 
helped to identify a variety of bugs in kernel mode components. This is 
an important change with regards to core stability and is proving 
invaluable in ensuring the project does not suffer unexpected 
regressions in the kernel.

Support for building ReactOS using the Microsoft toolset has also played 
a large part in the release. This is now at a stage where ReactOS can be 
entirely built using an MSVC based environment and can produce a working 
boot and livecd. Along with GCC, ReactOS can now be built using two 
different toolsets and on a variety of platforms including Windows, 
Linux and Mac OS X.

During the preparation of this release 789 bugs were fixed, including 
118 regressions with the oldest regression being issue #1009 (can't open 
context menu with Shift-F10). The oldest bug fixed was #209 (PrintScreen 
doesn't work) from over eight years ago. 811 new bugs were opened since 
the release of 0.3.13.

A list of some of the more significant changes includes:

* ACPI
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface support is now enabled 
automatically when the ACPI Hardware Abstraction Layer is used, 
providing support for power buttons and full system power off.

* LwIP
A new TCP/IP driver using the LwIP driver has been integrated into 
ReactOS, significantly improving network performance and stability and 
also presenting an upgrade path to IPv6.

* MSVC Compatibility
ReactOS can now be built using Microsoft's compiler to create a working 
boot or livecd.

* Scatter/Gather Support
Scatter/Gather DMA operations are now supported, significantly improving 
compatibility with network drivers written for NT5.1 and later.

* Shell Improvements
The shell32 library rewrite in C++ has been merged in and brings with it 
various architectural improvements that will help serve as a foundation 
for future work on the new explorer shell.

* Special Pool
A special pool designed to guard against misuses of kernel pool memory 
has been implemented.

* Theme Support
ReactOS now has the infrastructure needed to theme the user interface 
and shell, allowing users to install and use something besides the 
classic Windows theme.

* WiFi Support
ReactOS now supports wireless network drivers and is able to join open 
and WEP encrypted wireless networks.


The detailed 0.3.14 changelog is available here: 
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/ChangeLog-0.3.14

Main news link: http://www.reactos.org/en/news_page_70.html
Download link: http://www.reactos.org/en/download.html

I would like to thank all the past and present members of the ReactOS 
team for their hard work and of course all those in the community that 
support us.
We will never forget involvement and contribution of those who left our 
world too early.
http://www.reactos.org/pipermail/ros-dev/2011-June/014419.html

--
Aleksey Bragin
ReactOS Foundation President
http://www.reactos.org

ReactOS 0.3.13 Released

Aleksey Bragin — 2011-03-22T16:19:56

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.

Main news link: http://www.reactos.org/en/news_page_65.html
Download link: http://www.reactos.org/en/download.html

--
Aleksey Bragin
ReactOS Foundation President
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ReactOS 0.3.12 released

Aleksey Bragin — 2010-10-20T19:39:15

The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.12.

This is a huge release for the team, not just with regards to the  
number of improvements which this release holds but in terms of the  
leap forward architecturally, stability wise and in bringing some of  
the more modern aspects of the NT kernel into ReactOS.

It's been almost a year since the last release and whilst this is  
understandably excessive, it was required to stabilize the OS due to  
the nature of the work which was undertaken. Focus at the start of  
this release was on a single area, the trap handler mechanism, which  
resulted in a complete rewrite of this area. This brought with it the  
need for more changes which escalated into many areas getting an  
overhaul and many new technologies being developed and brought into  
the core. What resulted from this was a vastly more modern kernel  
containing code which had been exercised significantly less than the  
code it replaced. This triggered a large testing phase to bring the  
stability and compatibility to levels above that of the previous code.

During the preparation of this release, 259 bugs were fixed,  
including 61 regressions some of which originated from ReactOS 0.3.7.  
Ten of those bugs are more than 3 years old, with the oldest fixed  
bug being #969 (5 years old).

A heavily cut down list of some of the more major changes which have  
been going on in the past year is as follows:

•Memory Manager - The memory manager continued to see much work as  
the ARM team replaced each component piece by piece whilst also  
maintaining the functionality of the old manager.  Although 0.3.12  
does not completely switch over to the new manager, what is obvious  
are the speed, stability and compatibility improvements of this new  
model.
•NMI support - ReactOS can now handle NMIs with a Red Screen of  
Death, useful for capturing hardware errors detected by the CPU or  
Bus. Additionally, support for 3rd party NMI callbacks has been  
implemented, which is useful for certain server systems. Finally,  
support for generating a crash dump during an NMI is partly  
implemented, which can help when a machine is frozen or hung and an  
external NMI dump switch is used.
•Trap Handler Rewrite - Almost all CPU faults, trap, exception, and  
system call code is now written in C instead of Assembly. Many legacy  
and/or deprecated code paths have been disabled and performance-heavy  
debugging paths disabled by default. Additionally, the x64 and ARM  
ports now share much more of this code. Finally, the code is much  
cleaner and can take advantage of compiler optimizations to generate  
the best possible code for the CPU instead of writing hand-crafted  
assembly that was specific only to certain CPU models. Work is  
ongoing to remove even more of the last remaining Assembly routines.
•EMS - Support for Emergency Management System (or Headless) has  
been partially implemented. The boot flags documented by Microsoft  
are supported, and certain debug output is sent to the serial port as  
expected. Work is ongoing to provide the EMS logging capabilities and  
to move the existing legacy KDBG debugger over EMS. SAC (Special  
Administration Console) driver work is also in progress to compliment  
this.
•PnP Compatibility - Various improvements have been done to increase  
hardware support and support for loading 3rd party drivers.
•ACPI Improvements - The ARM team has implemented the basic drivers  
required for supporting batteries and 3rd party UPS/battery drivers,  
including support for the ACPI Composite Battery specification. This  
support is not currently enabled in this release because ACPI is  
still undergoing work.
•New PCI-X driver - The ARM team has been slowly working on the new  
PCI bus driver. Previously, ReactOS was using a very simple and  
mostly stubbed PCI bus driver which lacked support for many real- 
world PCI bus features, PCI-to-PCI bridges etc.  With this new  
driver, compatibility on real hardware, not just virtual machines,  
should improve significantly, along with performance.
•SxS support – Side-by-side code was added, along with loading and  
finding manifest files. It’s an important step forward to be  
compatible with modern applications which use this technology.
•Pool Corruption Fixes - Perhaps the most serious of these suspected  
leaks were fixed thanks to combined efforts of key ReactOS developers  
utilising advanced methods including a customized version of QEMU  
virtual machine.
•Timer and message handling rewrite - Incorrect handling of non- 
queued messages led to deadlocks in some applications which the  
message handling rewrite resolved. The timer implementation rewrite  
is also completed by this release which fixes many timer-related  
problems, most known is the “need to move mouse in order to download  
in FireFox”.
•x64 build - While the x64 port is still in an early stage regarding  
the functioning of the kernel, most of the generic compilation issues  
are resolved and necessary core functionality implemented. These  
efforts have been merged back into trunk, so that trunk can be  
compiled for x64 target. With the help of automatic builds, possible  
breakages can now quickly be detected and resolved. Don't expect it  
to boot to GUI though!

The changelog <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/ 
ChangeLog-0.3.12> for 0.3.12 is also markedly different from previous  
releases, with an emphasis on conveying an understandable and concise  
summary of major changes in the release.  Thus instead of duplicating  
that summary here, we invite you to peruse its contents and see what  
has been accomplished.

Whilst the ReactOS team has still been attending many public events  
and conferences in various different countries, we’ve been out of the  
news due to what may appear as a quiet patch or a lull in activity.  
We hope this release will go some way to show that we’ve been busier  
than ever behind the scenes._______________________________________________
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ReactOS 0.3.12 released

Aleksey Bragin — 2010-10-20T19:39:15

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ReactOS 0.3.11 Released

Ged Murphy — 2009-12-19T13:17:08

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