[CONTENT] ReactOS 0.4.16 press release - #144
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| During 0.4.16 development, core developer The_DarkFire_ recognized that the kernel was running out of system page table entries (PTEs) when loading third party drivers. | ||
| This limitation was most apparent with graphics drivers, which allocate more memory than most other drivers. | ||
| The_DarkFire_ changed the memory layout used by our memory manager to increase the amount of system PTEs. | ||
| This fixed a hard-to-debug slowdown bug with Nvidia graphics drivers, increased the success rate of using AMD graphics drivers, and got Intel graphics drivers to load much further. |
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thiis like 5% of what actually happened here. I'll make a comment improving this section a lot in the next few days
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One correction I initially thought the PTE fixes solved the Nvidia slowdown bug partially due to regressions that made it difficult to determine the exact point it was solved.
julenuri and i verified it was the combination of P6CACHE enablement in both videoprt and ntoskrnl
discussion is in this jira report
https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-20298
and the relevant fixes but note between Hervé Poussineau and Adam Słaboń fixes there is a videoprt regression that lead to the confusion.
https://git.reactos.org/?p=reactos.git;a=commit;h=59ae6b3e15d78df2d86efa7c55fc88fa08c9636b
https://git.reactos.org/?p=reactos.git;a=commit;h=afbadf5c4418ad3da09b7af4c819f2939d71f8e3
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For 0.4.15 development, core developer hpoussin put in the ground work for multimonitor support and vga fallback when display drivers fail. The foundation put into 0.4.15 allowed us to continue striving for better video driver compatibility in 0.4.16. For years ReactOS has been plagued by different issues with all of the major video driver vendors.
NVIDIA GPUs in particular had been plagued by a slow down issue that many talented contributors and developers attempted to investigate. Eventually core developer The_DarkFire_ recognized that the kernel was running out of system page table entries (PTEs) when loading third party drivers. This limitation was most apparent with graphics drivers, which allocate more memory than most other drivers. The_DarkFire_ with guidance changed the memory layout used by our memory manager to increase the amount of system PTEs. This fixed a hard-to-debug slowdown bug with Nvidia graphics drivers. AMD was a different story where the OpenGL window would end up blank, this was resolved by rewriting ExtEscape inspired by the initial patch by late core developer Jimtabor. While these improvements stand out to get GPU drivers from all 3 vendors working, it involved an incredible amount of research and guidance from many of the contributors and developers to improve stability, handle resource management of the new devices, and fix many edge case bugs in our win32k.
| date: 2026-07-02 | ||
| tags: [ "release" ] | ||
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Here we probably need to say hello to our followers first I guess:
| Hello ReactOS followers! |
or even better like this:
| Greetings ReactOS followers! |
| ReactOS 0.4.16 introduces asynchronous connection support. | ||
| This greatly improves networking performance by allowing applications to execute networking operations without stalling. | ||
| This also improves application compatibility as many programs assume that these asynchronous connection APIs are always present. | ||
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It definitely makes sense to mention recent audio improvements made during 0.4.16-dev in this place too (e. g., new HDAudBus bring-up (and KMDF required by it), audio volume control support improvements and fixes, audio devices enumeration fix which fixes non-working audio device detection with some sound cards (e. g., Realtek HD Audio) etc.).
I can even write an initial article for that if you prefer (it might be improved/fixed later as well). 😉
Like this:
| ## HD audio support | |
| For a couple of years, ReactOS had unstable and very incomplete HD audio bus driver (hdaudbus.sys) | |
| implementation written by Johannes Anderwald, which is required by many HD audio codecs. It was mostly | |
| stubbed and non-working at all, causing blue screens when attempting to install an audio codec for any HD | |
| audio controller. | |
| But now, our core developer Oleg Dubinskiy imported a new modern HD audio bus driver which was initially | |
| written for Windows 10, from the following repository: https://github.com/coolstar/sklhdaudbus. And Justin Miller | |
| has imported a new functionality from (open source) Microsoft Kernel Mode Driver Framework (KMDF), which | |
| is used by that driver. | |
| This allows to support all existing HD audio controllers which are compatible with (and have a driver for) | |
| Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. For example, Realtek High Definition (HD) audio codec R2.74 for | |
| Windows XP has been tested and confirmed to be working properly in ReactOS with Realtek ALC660 audio controller | |
| on Asus-F5R test notebook at least: | |
| https://private-user-images.githubusercontent.com/26385117/584169871-b6474c2c-160b-4eb8-992c-3608854c92f5.mp4?jwt=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJnaXRodWIuY29tIiwiYXVkIjoicmF3LmdpdGh1YnVzZXJjb250ZW50LmNvbSIsImtleSI6ImtleTUiLCJleHAiOjE3ODMwNjY1MjAsIm5iZiI6MTc4MzA2NjIyMCwicGF0aCI6Ii8yNjM4NTExNy81ODQxNjk4NzEtYjY0NzRjMmMtMTYwYi00ZWI4LTk5MmMtMzYwODg1NGM5MmY1Lm1wND9YLUFtei1BbGdvcml0aG09QVdTNC1ITUFDLVNIQTI1NiZYLUFtei1DcmVkZW50aWFsPUFLSUFWQ09EWUxTQTUzUFFLNFpBJTJGMjAyNjA3MDMlMkZ1cy1lYXN0LTElMkZzMyUyRmF3czRfcmVxdWVzdCZYLUFtei1EYXRlPTIwMjYwNzAzVDA4MTAyMFomWC1BbXotRXhwaXJlcz0zMDAmWC1BbXotU2lnbmF0dXJlPWE0YTk1NzZjMzk4Njk5ODVjOGQwYjI5M2VlOTJhNDY5NWViMzhiNzQ2Mzc4MmJjZmY2MTFiZTM4OWFlZjNkODAmWC1BbXotU2lnbmVkSGVhZGVycz1ob3N0JnJlc3BvbnNlLWNvbnRlbnQtdHlwZT12aWRlbyUyRm1wNCJ9.FlnzOhDvwcJ-_Td4pbK12ZEQugwYisVGQqA0guMNi8Y | |
| ## Other audio enhancements | |
| ReactOS 0.4.16 also introduces other audio improvements and fixes. | |
| In particular, Oleg also fixed improper volume control handling (audio volume level changing) from Control | |
| Panel -> Sound Properties (mmsys.cpl) and Audio Volume Mixer (sndvol32.exe). So now, the volume sliders | |
| are moving correctly, actually changing volume level and volume balance properly. For HD audio codecs, the | |
| volume level set by user is also properly saved and restored upon OS restart. | |
| Another fix he made, is fixing audio devices enumeration code, which allows to properly enumerate all audio | |
| devices and skip invalid/improperly detected ones, and hence fixes not detected audio device and non-working | |
| sound with some sound cards. | |
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Newlines to be added and wording to be corrected in some places.
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No worries, this is just the working draft. I wanted to get it out so people can start thinking about how they want to add onto it 🙂
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https://private-user-images.githubusercontent.com/<super_very_long_SUS_URL>
I'm sure there's a way to simplify that (also "private" on github may not be available to everyone -- I tested the link and I just get a black empty webbrowser page).
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https://private-user-images.githubusercontent.com/<super_very_long_SUS_URL>
I'm sure there's a way to simplify that (also "private" on github may not be available to everyone -- I tested the link and I just get a black empty webbrowser page).
Yeah, seems it needs to upload that video into Web-Content directly, to make able to play it on the page directly, as in the following example:
https://github.com/reactos/web-content/blob/master/content/blogs/newsletter-104.md#audio-improvements
(looking to the video file URL, it's actually inside Web-Content repository)
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OK, added some newlines now and corrected wording a little bit in my suggestion above.
| ## Graphical Installer and the All-in-One Boot CD | ||
| Historically, ReactOS offered two images for download, a livecd which let you test ReactOS in a read-only environment, and a bootcd which let you install ReactOS to your harddisk using a text-based installer. | ||
| With ReactOS 0.4.16, we are introducing a new graphical installer and a combined bootcd and livecd. | ||
| Now you can test and install ReactOS using the same image. |
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I would suggest linking to parts 2 and 3 of the blogs, that described the overhauling of the setup:
https://reactos.org/blogs/gui-setup-part2-partitioning/
https://reactos.org/blogs/gui-setup-part3-first-testing-problems/
(or maybe only the part 3 maybe??)
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For reviewers: please have a look also at #138 . |
Co-authored-by: Hermès BÉLUSCA - MAÏTO <hermes.belusca-maito@reactos.org>
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This is currently a draft