For the last few years we've been intrigued by the progress of ReactOS, a free software Windows implementation that could one day give Microsoft the chills. Well, ReactOS 0.3.9 is now here, with major performance improvements.

The idea of an open-source operating system that is designed to be 100% compatible with Windows XP and Windows 2000 is something new and has the potential to straddle the divide between consumer friendly and open-source. And that’s what ReactOS is aiming to do.

Aleksey Bragin announced the 0.3.10 release of ReactOS, the Free Software replacement for Microsoft Windows(TM).

It features a new Universal ATA driver as the default disk driver that allows support for Serial ATA and partitions greater than 8GB.
Also there's a lot of work done on increasing USB compatibility.

Funny how it's always Linux which Microsoft is alleging is infringing on Microsoft's patent portfolio, isn't it? Not FreeBSD, not OpenBSD, not NetBSD, not Solaris (open or closed), not Plan Nine From Bell Labs, not ReactOS, not Minix, not GNU-HURD, not any of the flavors of proprietary Unix.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” is where ReactOS, what is essentially an attempt at a free Windows clone, derives its name. The project aims to be ‘binary compatible’ with Windows NT, which XP, Vista and the upcoming 7 are based on, meaning that users will be able to run native Windows applications without forking out for a licence from Microsoft...

I've been writing about the ReactOS for at least five years (the project itself is more than 10 years old). It's an effort to try and replicate a Windows operating system in open source.

ReactOS was meant as a free and open-source operating system. But after 11 years in development it never reached a satisfactory level of usability. Due to lack of developers, reimplementing the Win32 subsystem proved to be complex. Given the deficiencies in ReactOS developer Aleksey Bragin decided to rewrite it from scratch using Wine source code.

The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.11. This release has been delayed by quite some time due to various blocker bugs which manifested each time we tried to release. A lot of time has gone into hunting down these bugs and various steps have been taken to try to ensure we don't hit this problem again.

The ReactOS team has just put out its latest newsletter, and it contains some interesting information on the progress being made. However, it also provides some definitive insight into what, exactly, the project is trying to recreate - a topic of some confusion.