In a first for any OS/2-based distribution, ArcaOS 5.1 supports installation on the latest generation of UEFI-based systems, and includes the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts. This enables ArcaOS 5.1 to install on a wide array of modern hardware.
ArcaOS 5.1.0 can be used for new installs or to upgrade any prior version of ArcaOS 5. If installing from USB stick, the USB install stick may be created using any major operating system at hand (Windows, Linux, MacOS, and of course, OS/2, eComStation, and ArcaOS). Once built, the USB stick can be inserted into any USB port in the target system to boot into the ArcaOS installer/updater in either UEFI or traditional BIOS mode (alternatively, the DVD image may be burned to physical media and also booted to either UEFI or traditional BIOS systems).
This release, and the support for UEFI and GPT-based drives in particular, is a massive achievement by the ArcaOS team. They’re most likely a rather small team, serving a small market, and I’m not even sure how much access they really have to the source code of the various parts that make up OS/2 – is anything known about the license between Arca Noae and IBM? – and this release has taken them quite a few years. However long it took, and however much work was involved, ArcaOS can now be used on modern hardware for a long time to come.
Hope it gets opensourced someday.
I also hope too. But it is kind of hard to get any source code from IBM. What I was thinking about is trying to (open source) clone some low level components first, and for example, trying to make the IBM’s binaries run over a different kernel. And later trying to move on to different components to clone those. But we (the OS/2 community) need crazy developers that would try at least some proof of concepts.
https://osfree.org/
FYI…The website for this project does not seem to be responding.
The website got flooded with traffic, so many customers couldn’t access the site to get the upgrade. They’re working on the issue.