OS/2-Based 'Arcanos 5.0' Has Finally Been Releas -- Oh Wait, No It Wasn't. Never Mind. (arcanoae.com)

"Because we want ArcaOS 5.0 to be the best that it can be, Arca Noae has made the difficult decision to delay release two weeks, with a new projected delivery date of April 15, 2017," reads a new announcement on the Arca Noae web site. Because we don't believe in selling anything we are not ready to ship, we will not be taking pre-orders for ArcaOS 5.0. Please be patient while we get the last few things as they should be, so that your experience installing and using ArcaOS 5.0 is as smooth as possible.
One of last week's most popular stories was about the upcoming release of this x86 OS/2-based operating system (codenamed "Blue Lion") which will offer full backward compatibility with legacy OS/2, DOS and Windows 3.1 applications, as well as "ported Linux applications." It's still on its way, the developers explain, but "Finishing touches can often take longer than expected."

Comments

OS/2 to be ported to AMD's ARM...

[unixisc]

OS/2 has been sold to AMD to be ported and used on their ARM platform. It will be available exactly 3 years from today: 4/1/2020

Re:OS/2 to be ported to AMD's ARM...

[Joe_Dragon]

and still be sub 64 bit and still have no win32 apps

Re:OS/2 to be ported to AMD's ARM...

[markhb]

Yup, alas. The best things it still has are the object-oriented Workplace Shell and the patented "highlight everything I mouse over" (rather than a box lasso) technique, and I'm thinking the patent on the latter is nearing its expiration. Unfortunately, a lot of WPS code was Microsoft's, so it'll never see the light of day.

Re:OS/2 to be ported to AMD's ARM...

[dryeo]

Does give access to memory above 4GB, though only as a RAM disk currently and has Odin, mostly based on WINE. Flash is the Win32 binary and OpenJava is recompiled Win32 code.

Actual cause of the delay:

[Gravis Zero]

It's currently in the process of being integrated into systemd. ;)

Re:Actual cause of the delay:

[Gr8Apes]

And will integrate NTFS as its native file system.

Re:Actual cause of the delay:

[fred911]

It won't be using New tech file system, it will be using the betterer HighPerfomance file system (hpfs).

Re:Actual cause of the delay:

[dryeo]

Actually it'll be the Journalism File System v2 (JFS), though not the GPLed Linux fork.

Re: Actual cause of the delay:

[Entrope]

The non-GPL fork of Journalism File System has 90% less Fake News Files.

Re:Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup!

BOHICA libtards!

LOL!

Better 2 Weeks Late Than A Faulty Release?

[dryriver]

It would have been nice if they had made the release date, but I'd rather play with a bug-free ArcaOS release than one where the installer fails midway or similar. This is OS/2 with a lot of modernization work done on it from the looks of it. Its going to be interesting to see what Blue Lion can run software wise.

Re:Better 2 Weeks Late Than A Faulty Release?

[GNious]

It would have been nice if they had made the release date, but I'd rather play with a bug-free ArcaOS release than one where the installer fails midway or similar..

Failing during install is pretty much what I remember the most about OS/2.

Re:Better 2 Weeks Late Than A Faulty Release?

[Bearhouse]

Yup, same here. Really a pain when you were using floppies...
I remember when I was trying to install at a customer site who had a load of Compaq boxen; was with IBM, and we'd just managed to persuade this big customer to go with OS/2 instead of Dos&Win. Could not get the damn thing to install - due to being IBM and the high-profile nature of the deal, managed to get through to the devs.
"We've only ever tried to install on IBM machines...." (Remember the wonderful PS/2?)

Quit IBM shortly after.

Re:Better 2 Weeks Late Than A Faulty Release?

[Bearhouse]

But to fair, I should add that - if you managed to get it working - it was streets ahead of windows.

Which is it?

[freeze128]

Is it "ArcanOS" or "ArcaOS"?

Re:Which is it?

[Stormwatch]

ArcaOS, as the company's name is Arca Noae.

Re:Which is it?

[BlueStrat]

Is it "ArcanOS" or "ArcaOS"?

Taking into account the editing quality at /. I'd dismiss EditorDavid's "spelling" out of hand, and believe the quoted article's version; "ArcaOS", even without visiting the project's website for confirmation.

Supposed "geek/nerd" news website that can't even get such basic facts about an OS news item right.

Sad.

Slashdot Media's 'geek card' status: Revoked with extreme prejudice.

Strat

Why?

[markdavis]

>"will offer full backward compatibility with legacy OS/2, DOS and Windows 3.1 applications, as well as "ported Linux applications."

So how is this better than just running free and open-source Linux? Then one gets all Linux applications, and can also run MS-DOS and 32 and 64 bit MS-Windows apps with WINE, Virtualbox, containers, whatever, under a very mature and stable OS. Are there even any useful or relevant OS/2 apps out there?

Re:Why?

[dryeo]

You get the WorkPlace Shell, still considered one of the better graphical shells though the 2D graphics show its age. DOS (and Win3.1) programs run in Ring 2 which mostly gives them full access to the hardware, handy for some industrial controllers etc.
The killer OS/2 program that most of us run ended up being backwards, VirtualBox, designed to run OS/2 instead of run on OS/2, which due to using ring 2 as well as ring 0+3 was hard to virtualize.

Re:Why?

[qzzpjs]

You get the WorkPlace Shell, still considered one of the better graphical shells though the 2D graphics show its age.

I really liked the WorkPlace Shell, but I still find this project pretty pointless. It's like trying to get more coal miners working again - the world has moved on. I don't have any 20 year old programs from Windows 3.1 that I want to run anymore.

It would have been better if they created a new WorkPlace Shell as a new window manager on Linux, Mac or Windows. A lot of people hate the Windows 10 UI, so maybe this could have been an alternative.

Re:Why?

[dryeo]

Arca Noae is mostly aimed at industries with legacy OS/2 systems that need updated. There is still a surprising amount of enterprise OS/2 systems chugging away in some backroom or running post offices, railroads and such. Hardware fails and software needs migrating and often it is cheaper to not port the software to a different system.
As for rewriting the WPS, there's been lots of talk and a few failed attempts. Unluckily it is a big project beyond a couple of programmers working in their spare time. As stated above, what money is to made is in supporting industry, not rewriting.

Re:Why?

[markdavis]

I am not hating anything, just asking questions.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

You get the WorkPlace Shell, still considered one of the better graphical shells though the 2D graphics show its age.

Only by OS/2 devotees. All I even remember about it is that it had some kind of annoying drag behavior. The only thing I remember being superior about OS/2 was that you could format a floppy and do stuff at the same time. But I had Xenix on a 286 and AmigaOS on a series of machines at home and had used NeXTStep on a turbo slab so I knew that there was nothing particularly remarkable about OS/2. What was remarkable was that Windows was so successful even though it sucked so badly, not that OS/2 was not more successful simply because it was basically competent.

The only reason anyone should care about OS/2 today is if they chose to use it for industrial control or some other embedded application, and they are networking it. In that case, they might like a newer version which might take the last bunch of years into account when it comes to network security. Or, you know, if they're just a curious hobbyist.

Re:Why?

[dryeo]

Yes, the drag'n'drop defaulted to hiliting with the left button and dragging with the right button, both could be changed from their defaults unlike any other system I've used. Generally the WPS was very customizable.
The network stack has been secure for close to 2 decades, ported from AIX, it was pretty secure and IBM fixed the couple of issues like being able to syn flood it. As for the rest of the network applications, they're like on most platforms, use the latest Samba, Apache, Firefox (which is falling behind thanks to Mozilla's weirdness) or use straight netbeui, which is insecure but not routable. Using the native peer over tcpip would be stupid as it is very unsecure (authorization).
Other reasons to use ArcaOS, ACPI.PSD allows using modern hardware IRQ routing as well as SMP to take advantage of multiple cores (OS/2 is licensed per physical CPU, not cores). AHCI support to access later SATA hardware, JFS file system to get around HPFS's 64 GB partition and 2 GB file support. Along with the rest of the DASD stack to allow using up to 2TB disks/partitions (2TBs is about how big you can get using CHS addressing), USB support, A VESA video driver that works fine on modern hardware for non-accelerated 2D graphics and I'm sure other stuff that makes it close to impossible to install on modern hardware such as up to date network drivers (little wireless support yet) and bonuses like being able to use memory above 4GBs (actually more like 3.5GB) for a ram disk

Re:4/1

[unixisc]

The giveaway was right in the headline - 'Oh Wait, No It Wasn't. Never Mind'

I'd buy it for $20

[Orion Blastar]

without the subscription option. I just want to put it on old PCs because it is more stable than DOS/Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I'm into retrocomputing and I'ved used OS/2 2.X and 3.X when I worked, and I like the virtual DOS machines and WINOS2 that runs 16 bit Windows software. I think there was an ODIN add on that worked like WINE but for OS/2 to run 32 bit Windows programs.

Windows 10 is big and bloated, and they added too much stuff to it. I had to downgrade from 10 to 7 using a different hard drive. I unpluged the Windows 10 hard drive and put in a new one and installed Windows 7 on it. One thing I like about OS/2 is that it loads faster and has less bloat than Windows 10 has. I also like the same thing for Linux, lower overhead in memory because it swaps out modules from the kernel when they are not in use, etc.

Re: HANS REISER JUST CALLED.

[ZosX]

Killer comment.

Screenshots or it's not real

[wjcofkc]

I've been doing some digging into ArcaOS and have found several articles about it going back as far as four years. What I cannot find are screenshots. Every time I find an article with screenshots, the screenshots are of eCommstation. I can't even find screenshots on their website. You would think they would be wanting to drum up excitement with not just a few "look at these features" pre-release screenshot but also a YouTube video to be picked up by tech sites. Maybe they just suck that bad at marketing, but otherwise something does not seem right here.