ReactOS reaches major milestone with NTFS install support
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ReactOS, an open-source alternative to Windows, has achieved a significant milestone by gaining the ability to install directly onto NTFS partitions. This development removes a long-standing barrier that previously forced users to rely on FAT32 for installations. The new driver addresses a gap in the project's history, as read-only support was added in 2016 and boot support in 2022, but full installation capability was missing. Despite this progress, the ReactOS team warns that the driver currently lacks caching, journaling, and security features, which may result in inferior performance. They also caution that potentially undiscovered bugs remain, advising even experienced tinkerers to proceed with care. This advancement brings the community-driven project closer to its goal of binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003 and a eventual beta release. While ReactOS remains in alpha after decades of volunteer development, this step allows it to utilize the same filesystem standard as modern Windows systems.
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