ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Making Progress On x86_64, Multi-Monitor

ReactOS as the long-running open-source project striving for Windows ABI compatibility has been making some significant progress this summer on various endeavors.

ReactOS continues going strong after more than two decades for aspiring to be an open-source drop-in replacement to Windows. The open-source project today published their latest newsletter outlining many of their accomplishments so far this year.

Some of the ReactOS work that has been tackled since February includes:

- The AMD64 (x86_64) support is becoming more mature with various issues resolved and other fixes. At the moment only the MSVC compiler is able to produce a working ReactOS 64-bit build.

- The i686 APIC HAL now works.

- Thanks to Google Summer of Code, there is progress being made on SMP support for ReactOS.

- ReactOS' ISA bus driver has been seeing "massive" improvements in working towards plug-and-play ISA hardware support.

- Multiple monitor support is in the works though at the moment is only capable of displaying a wallpaper on secondary displays.

- ReactOS memory management continues to improve.

More details via the ReactOS.org newsletter. There's still a long ways to go before being a viable drop-in replacement to Windows for daily production use, but the developers remain motivated and continue tackling more features and functionality. At least it is advancing more rapidly than the GNU Hurd.