[CONTENT] Newsletter 100 - January 2021 news (#89)

content/blogs/newsletter-100.md

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+---
+title:       "Newsletter 100 - January 2021 news"
+author:      "Extravert34"
+date:        2021-02-06
+tags:        [ newsletter ]
+---
+
+Hello ReactOS followers!
+This is an attempt to re-instate the Newsletter, which informed you about recent developments.
+The previous [Newsletter 99](/blogs/newsletter-99) was in 2013!
+
+This month we were mostly focused on the kernel work, merging pull requests and fixing regressions.
+
+## Memory manager and Common cache work
+
+Being in development for almost six month, this work by Jérôme Gardou finally landed in the master branch.
+This change refactors many aspects of the Section Objects feature in NT-compatible kernel, making it more compatible with Windows.
+
+Here are notable changes from the user perspective:
+
+* A long-standing bug preventing starting of executables from remote locations is fixed ([CORE-10038](https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-10038)).
+* Open source Microsoft FAT filesystem driver is enabled by default now.
+* Better compatibility with FS drivers in general, `ntfs.sys` and `exfat.sys` drivers from Windows are now close to a working state in ReactOS.
+* External drives with FAT filesystem can now be properly ejected.
+
+## Changes for GCC amd64 build
+
+At the moment, we support building for an amd64 target only with the MSVC compiler.
+Hervé Poussineau fixed most of the places preventing the compilation with GCC, but there are still some linker issues not fixed.
+
+## NTFS boot sector
+
+Tests show that our homegrown NTFS driver is capable to boot ReactOS (with experimental features enabled),
+and `ntfs.sys` driver from Windows is also close to a working state. So it's a good time for working on a bootloader for this filesystem.
+The FreeLoader already supports working with NTFS, only the VBR boot sector part is missing.
+
+Sylvain Deverre started to work on the support in a [pull request](https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/3416).
+We need more people to test different configurations with this VBR, testers and contributors are welcome!
+
+After this VBR work, the only missing bit for supporting NTFS installation (with both our and proprietary driver)
+would be formatting support in the ReactOS installer and in the shell.
+
+## PnP and I/O kernel subsystems
+
+A major code cleanup and refactoring was done here by Victor Perevertkin,
+allowing better compatibility with Windows drivers and **booting from USB media**.
+
+It's still not perfect though (some hardware we tested has issues with USB controllers),
+but now you can just dump a nightly build of ReactOS onto a flash drive and try to boot/install it.
+If it doesn't work for you check out other installing options available on our [wiki](https://reactos.org/wiki/Installing_ReactOS#Installing_ReactOS).
+
+This change also improves debugging capabilities, which will speed up driver bugs fixing in future.
+
+## Kernel-mode Driver Framework
+
+Max Korostil continued [the work](https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/3276) on a `wdfldr.sys` driver for loading a KMDF library. This will eventually allow ReactOS to have KMDF drivers
+in its codebase, without the hack we currently use for static linking.
+
+## FOSDEM 2021 and Matrix room
+
+ReactOS is participating in FOSDEM conference this year, join our stand at [https://stands.fosdem.org/stands/reactos](https://stands.fosdem.org/stands/reactos/)!
+
+Also, an official room on [Matrix](https://matrix.org) network is available now,
+feel free to join our community: [#talk:reactos.org](https://matrix.to/#/#talk:reactos.org)