LiberNT: ReactOS fork targets Windows 11 compatibility across modern hardware

LiberNT is an open-source operating system taking the ReactOS codebase toward Windows 11 compatibility, with a focus on AMD64, ARM64 and RISC-V hardware. Started and maintained by Ahmed Arif, the project combines work on the NT architecture with support for newer platforms and devices. Windows 11 compatibility remains a development target, rather than a promise that existing applications and drivers will all work.

The changes extend well beyond appearance. According to its development documentation, LiberNT introduces a replacement memory manager, a new cache manager, NTFS work and a modern Windows graphics driver model. It also includes work on running x86 applications on ARM64 through FEX, alongside Raspberry Pi hardware support.

The latest full operating-system pre-release listed on GitHub, nt10.0-043-2555, was published on 14 October. It provides test builds for several architectures, including PowerPC, and reports improvements to graphics, networking, USB and storage. Its console update adds virtual terminal sequences and 24-bit colour, while NTFS changes improve handling of volumes written by Windows 11.

Development has continued with separate component releases: Mesa software-rendering packages arrived on 22 October, followed by an ARM64 FFmpeg package on 28 October for the project’s H.264 and AAC decoding components. These are component updates rather than a new complete OS release.

The developers also openly acknowledge using AI to help write and review code, stating that generated changes undergo human review and testing before reaching the main branch.

For anyone keen to experiment, source code and downloadable images are available on GitHub. However, LiberNT remains under active development: its Debug pre-releases are intended for virtual machines or spare hardware, and the project explicitly advises against using them on a computer you depend on.