ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution | Hacker News Reader

ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution

arcanoae.com

94 pointsch_12333 comments

The problem I have with these OS/2 "modernizing" projects is how the feature-set locks them out of 64-bit long mode. I think the only way to really try to revitalize OS/2 is to jump to 64-bit and seamlessly run 16-bit apps in a VM/emulator. But at that point you might as well just run OS/2 in a VM, which works really well even on free options like VirtualBox. So it seems like there is only a small and shrinking audience for a native 32-bit OS/2.

So this is the same deal as with eCos, i.e. the provider doesn't have source access to the innards and just fiddles with some common drivers and desktop tools?

According to their About page https://www.arcanoae.com/about/ :

Arca Noae was founded in July, 2014 when several of the developers who previously worked on the eComStation project felt that the future for the platform looked bleak, a feeling which came about due to lack of progress (or any work being done at all), therefore demonstrating a distinct lack of commitment on the part of the project’s new owner.

A new kernel with SMP support suggests they have at least some source access.

There were versions of OS/2 with SMP support, if I remember correctly.

I thought it was just the PowerPC one (which had a different, Mach-based kernel), but it turns out¹ that it has had some sort of SMP support since 2.11 in 1993.

1. http://www.edm2.com/0509/smp2.html

In 1997 I had a dual Pentium 90 running either OS/2 or BeOS. It was really cool seeing the CPU monitor light up during a big compile.

(I got better at picking operating systems)

I was reminded of this (http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-os2-the...) when OS/2 turned 25 in 2012. So this year marks its 30th anniversary.

From page 3:

> In New York City’s subway system, for instance, the travelers who gain entrance by swiping their MetroCards over 5 million times each weekday do so with the assistance of IBM’s theoretically defunct software.

Classic Mac OS seems to be the system from that era that's no longer available. There's still Amiga systems on the market. RISC OS is available for Raspberry Pi. DOS lives on in the form of FreeDOS. And now there are two OS/2 distributions (eComStation and ArcaOS).

As someone who extensively used classic Mac OS, I really don't miss it though.

The fun thing is that OS/2 2.0 would have easily beat classic Mac OS if MS did not turn it into an entire fiasco.

You can't forget BeOS, currently alive in the form of the open-source reimplementation Haiku. In spite of their perpetual Alpha status, I'm still continuously amazed that it's even half as good as it is.

the pricing model is also from the 1980s.

Pricing is cheaper than or on par with most other closed source operating systems.

I think the pricing is okay for those interested.

I just can't find a way to download a trial ISO or something that will let me experiment. I guess their target audience already knows very well what to expect.

As is the website. I like how they describe the new graphical features without including a single screenshot.

EDIT: To be sure, I'm genuinely interested in what it looks like.

Their installation Guide has some previews:

https://www.arcanoae.com/wp-content/uploads/wiki/ArcaOS50_In...

Do they actually have access to the source code? Or are they just sort of propping it up blindly and hoping the features they add hold together

TIL that ALSA is available under LGPL (Uniaud, the sound-system in ArcaOS is ALSA based).

Are there orgs out there still running OS/2 ?

The grocery store I worked at as a teenager had an OS/2 frontend to an AS/400 that was hooked into all of the cashier stations and inventory management. I doubt that they've replaced it.

banks

I believe the New York MTA use OS2 for their MTA metro card activity

They run Windows NT 4 on the mvm and even have a custom badged start up screen http://salim.virji.net/pix/transit/mta/crashed_metrocard_ven...

The OS/2 stuff is used on the back end of the metro card system.

Ah so they use OS/2!

Our voicemail server is OS/2. :(

The eComStation site lists some orgs who are using it - http://ecomstation.com/

> Belgacom, Belgium

Wasn't that the one NSA hacked?

Used to be quite popular with ATMs, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few of those still survived for banks where they connect to IBM mainframes.

IIRC it was pretty popular for running Lotus Notes. But who uses that anymore either?

It's called IBM Notes now, and people do indeed still run it.

Someone will buy it that has some really old hardware attached to a machine that they just cannot let go.

Is there anything OS/2 can do but other OS cannot do? Hope to be enlightened ... :-)

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