ReactOS has introduced support for installing the operating system directly onto NTFS partitions. Previously, the project required users to maintain a FAT32 partition for all installations, which hindered the goal of achieving binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003.
The development of this feature addresses a gap that has persisted for nearly a decade. While read-only NTFS support was implemented in 2016 and boot support for FreeLoader arrived in 2022, the ability to perform a direct installation remained unavailable until now.
Despite this progress, the project team advises caution. The new driver currently lacks journaling, security support, and caching, which results in lower performance. Developers also noted that the implementation may still contain undiscovered bugs.
ReactOS is an open-source project maintained primarily by volunteers, with development coordinated via GitHub and community forums. The project remains in an alpha state, reflecting the complexity of building an operating system from the ground up.
