
ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution - ch_123
https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos-5-0-now-available/
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mhd
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?

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jccalhoun
According to their About page
[https://www.arcanoae.com/about/](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.

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richard_todd
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.

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shawnbaden
I was reminded of this ([http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-
os2-the...](http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-os2-the-
birth-death-and-afterlife-of-a-legendary-operating-system/)) 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.

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hsivonen
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).

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AkirIkasu
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.

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donpdonp
the pricing model is also from the 1980s.

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sixothree
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.

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guilt
Their installation Guide has some previews:

[https://www.arcanoae.com/wp-
content/uploads/wiki/ArcaOS50_In...](https://www.arcanoae.com/wp-
content/uploads/wiki/ArcaOS50_InstallationGuide.pdf)

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IntelMiner
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

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aidenn0
TIL that ALSA is available under LGPL (Uniaud, the sound-system in ArcaOS is
ALSA based).

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rmrk
Are there orgs out there still running OS/2 ?

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ch_123
The eComStation site lists some orgs who are using it -
[http://ecomstation.com/](http://ecomstation.com/)

~~~
dmix
> Belgacom, Belgium

Wasn't that the one NSA hacked?

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

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

