ReactOS 0.4.2 Officially Released (with introduced dot.NET 2.0/4.0 support)

jeditobe writes: Version 0.4.2 of ReactOS, the open-source binary-compatible Windows re-implementation, is now officially available.

What’s more appealing in ReactOS 0.4.2 is it includes the ability to read and write various file systems for Linux/Unix namely ext family and Btrfs and ability to read such file systems as ReiserFS and UFS.

ReactOS 0.4.2 also features Cygwin support, .NET 2.0 (https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-6382) and 4.0 (https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-11266) application support, among other updated packages and revised external dependencies such as Wine and UniATA. The team also worked to improve overall user experience.

ReactOS support has improved to the point that games like Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJTL8srScQI) and Doom 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY) should even be playable on this "open-source Windows" OS along with applications like Thunderbird and 7-Zip.

ReactOS is free. You can boot your desktop or laptop from it. It looks like Windows (a 10-year-old version, anyway), so you already know how to use it. And it'll run some Windows and DOS applications, maybe including DOS games that regular 64-bit Windows can no longer touch.