3.14

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

This version includes a significant amount of both user visible and architectural improvements, including the work done in the Google Summer of Code 2011.

Some of the most significant changes include improvements to ReactOS’ network support. In addition to a new TCP/IP driver using the lwIP library, ReactOS has improved compatibility with NT5.1 drivers with the addition of scatter/gather DMA. A very prominent achievement is that ReactOS now supports wireless networking, and is able to join open and WEP encrypted wireless networks. All of this also opens up a way to implement ipv6 support in future.

Other user visible changes include implementation of theme support, allowing users to change the look and feel of ReactOS’ user interface. 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.

Architecturally, the addition of a kernel mode testing framework has helped to identify a variety of bugs in kernel components, an area that Winetests do not cover. Support for using Microsoft compilers has also been significantly improved to the point where a working boot and livecd can now be built using Microsoft’s toolchain.

Some of the other changes include merging of the shell32 library rewrite in C++, which brings various architectural improvements that will help serve as a foundation for future work on the new explorer shell, and a so-called special pool implementation that allows us to check for misuses of kernel pool memory and to simplify finding offending code parts within the kernel mode code.

The detailed 0.3.14 changelog is available for those who want to see the vast amount of changes.