ReactOS 0.4.13 CE (Coronavirus Edition)

Hello, Habr!

To our shame, during self-isolation, we got so depressed that we forgot to publish the news about the next release under the number 0.4.13, which took place back in April 2020. We are getting better.

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Download system images | Press release | List of changes | TL; DR | Tests and Regression List

Release 0.4.13 we cooked for more than six months, and three quarters of that time was spent on correcting the regressions that have accumulated over the past couple of years. There were 39 such regressions found and destroyed.

USB

The key feature of this release is absolutely new USB stackdeveloped by Vadim Galyant, Thomas Faber and Viktor Perevertkin, the development of this stack took almost 5 years. Almost any mice, keyboards, flash drives, some external hard drives and maybe optical drives should now work in ReactOS. But there is also a fly in the ointment: web cameras, USB sound cards, USB printers will NOT function yet.

Another temporary inconvenience is that you cannot install ReactOS on a USB flash drive and use it while saving the work results.
But you can create a bootable LiveCD or an installation flash drive with ReactOS according to a special manual or by the simplified instructions below:

  1. Use the tool Rufus
  2. Select your USB flash drive with a capacity of at least 1 gigabyte in it. All data on the flash drive will be deleted!
  3. Click “Show advanced drive properties”
  4. Select boot type: Syslinux 6.x
  5. Partition scheme: MBR, File system: FAT32
  6. Format the disk using the above options
  7. Unpack the contents of the archive to the root of the flash drive link

Launch speed

The FAT file system driver in the FreeLDR loader was significantly accelerated, as a result the system started faster, especially when booting from a USB-stick.

Rendering fonts

For the 0.4.13 release, we have fixed over 20 different font issues.

The improvements are visible to the naked eye.

It was:

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Became:

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Other improvements

The system now has its own built-in file search.

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We also added an “accessibility” center, so far there is only a magnifying glass and an on-screen keyboard.

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There have been significant advances in porting ReactOS to the original Xbox. The system is already running in the emulator of this set-top box.

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We also launched a completely new official website, this is how it looks now:

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Did you like this release? We look forward to your comments and opinions! Do not forget that you can help the project not only donations, but also just putting it an asterisk on github!

Until next time, friends! Be healthy!

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