reactos / reactos

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## Quick Links
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## What is ReactOS?
ReactOS™ is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft® Windows™ NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7).
The ReactOS project, although currently focused on Windows Server 2003 compatibility, is always keeping an eye toward compatibility with Windows Vista and future Windows NT releases.
The code of ReactOS is licensed under GNU GPL 2.0.
### Product quality warning
**ReactOS is currently an Alpha quality operating system.** This means that ReactOS is under heavy development and you have to be ready to encounter some problems. Different things may not work well and it can corrupt the data present on your hard disk. It is HIGHLY recommended to test ReactOS on a virtual machine or on a computer with no sensitive or critical data!
## Building
 [![rosbewin.badge]][rosbewin.link] [![rosbeunix.badge]][rosbeunix.link] [![coverity.badge]][coverity.link]
To build the system it is strongly advised to use the _ReactOS Build Environment (RosBE)._
Up-to-date versions for Windows and for Unix/GNU-Linux are available from our download page at: "Build Environment".
Alternatively one can use Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) version 2019+. Building with MSVC is covered here: "Visual Studio or Microsoft Visual C++".
See "Building ReactOS" article for more details.
### Binaries
To build ReactOS you must run the `configure` script in the directory you want to have your build files. Choose `configure.cmd` or `configure.sh` depending on your system. Then run `ninja ` to build a module you want or just `ninja` to build all modules.
### Bootable images
To build a bootable CD image run `ninja bootcd` from the build directory. This will create a CD image with a filename `bootcd.iso`.
You can always download fresh binary builds of bootable images from the "Daily builds" page.
## Installing
By default, ReactOS currently can only be installed on a machine that has a FAT16 or FAT32 partition as the active (bootable) partition.
The partition on which ReactOS is to be installed (which may or may not be the bootable partition) must also be formatted as FAT16 or FAT32.
ReactOS Setup can format the partitions if needed.
Starting with 0.4.10, ReactOS can be installed using the BtrFS file system. But consider this as an experimental feature and thus regressions not triggered on FAT setup may be observed.
To install ReactOS from the bootable CD distribution, extract the archive contents. Then burn the CD image, boot from it, and follow the instructions.
See "Installing ReactOS" Wiki page or INSTALL for more details.
## Testing
If you discover a bug in ReactOS search on JIRA first - it might be reported already. If not report the bug providing logs and as much information as possible.
See "File Bugs" for a guide.
__NOTE:__ The bug tr