Guest post by The OS/2-derived ArcaOS is now up to version 5.0.3. This latest release appears to be mainly bug fixes and hardware compatibility enhancements.
ArcaOS 5.0.3 is (again) the result of many hours of collaborative work to keep up-to-date and to further refine ArcaOS 5.0. Post-install fixes are included, and these will be made available for separate download as part of the ArcaOS 5.0 Support & Maintenance subscription. In the interim, a full download of the refreshed media image is required to obtain all of these fixes and updates.
ArcaOS 5.0.3 includes over 40 updates and fixes since 5.0.2. The USB stick image package (available as a separate download for ArcaOS licensees with current support and maintenance subscription) has also been updated to incorporate the latest changes in ArcaOS 5.0.3.
Looks like the site down.
https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/arcanoae.com
Once it’s back I’ll be checking it out.
Seems to be back.
I’m hoping to install in in VBox over the weekend. I’m currently running a 5.0.1 VM which is full of cruft as I installed most of my old OS/2 software to see what worked – this royally mucked up the config.sys and I’m not sure I got it back to a fully clean state of health
All permalinks (osne.ws) are down. Which defeats the purpose of permalinks. They show when hovering over the little “url” button.
This was one OS series what I completely left out from my life.
It is surprisingly difficult to install on old(er) computers.
https://winworldpc.com/product/os-2-warp-4/os-2-warp-452
I have tried 4, 452, ecomstation 1.1, 1.2 without much success on physical hardware (ended up with beeping, installer can’t proceed, error messages, installer froze etc). It is good that Vmware still supports them tho.
They should open source it tho, otherwise it will end up with Solaris and AIX in the OS graveyard. Open source is the future.
They cannot open source it – There was even a large petition years ago to try get this to happen but the reality is Microsoft own quite a chunk of the code base and so IBM cannot release it.
VirtualBox does a very good job at running OS/2 so you could try it on that.
Well, maybe they could try again. Microsoft and their position regarding open source is (allegedly) not the same as it was years ago.
Or maybe IBM could rewrite the closed source stuff with open source libraries? That is what HP did after it axed webOS (which in turn has led to the community fork LuneOS).
Sure, they could. They could spend years rewriting all the closed bits, then spend years debugging them and making sure they all worked exactly the way the original OS/2 does, quirks and all. But… why bother? It’s a tiny niche, and the amount of effort and time would cut into other projects that, you know, actually make money for IBM.
The PowerPC version of OS/2 contains no Microsoft code, that would be the place to start.
Yup.Definitely.
I tried to find a source for that but no luck so far. I’m not sure how that could be possible unless IBM wrote the PowerPC version completely from scratch, but it does not seem to be the case. Since OS/2 was originally written by Microsoft there would have to be tons of MS owned code in it.