Category Archives: Arca Noae

ArcaOS 5.0.4 updates for 2020-02-26

Dynamic Icons Several packages included in ArcaOS 5.0.4 have been updated or refreshed today, and are now available as part of the Support & Maintenance subscription for your ArcaOS product. Please log into your account and see your ArcaOS order details page to access your software. Specifically, these are:

Dynamic Icons 2.5.2.1 (refreshed)
Archive Tool 1.03.03 (updated from 1.0.0)
ArcaOS Desktop 1.0.13.1 (updated from 1.0.12+)

In addition, it is now easier to identify which packages have been updated since the last ArcaOS ISO release.

More updates are on the way to the Support & Maintenance subscription channel as we continue our work on the next release of ArcaOS. Watch for more announcements right here.

If you are still running OS/2 and/or eComStation systems and haven’t yet moved up to ArcaOS, this is a great reason to do so now. If you’ve already made the switch, but haven’t renewed renewed your support subscription, this is also a good time. Not sure what’s coming next? Have a look at our product roadmap pages.

ACPI Driver Package version 3.23.13 released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our ACPI Driver Package for ArcaOS, OS/2, and eComStation version 3.23.13.

This release contains improved bus bridge fixup logic for systems with multiple busses and a problematic BIOS. Please see the ACPI Driver ReadMe for details about this update.

This is a non-critical maintenance update that only contains an improvement for specific systems in rare cases. This update is recommended for everyone.

If you have ArcaOS, this driver package is available for download from the Arca Noae website as part of the Support & Maintenance subscription for your ArcaOS product. Please log into your account and see your ArcaOS order details page to access your software.

If you have an Arca Noae OS/2 & eCS Drivers and Software Subscription, this driver package is available for download from the Arca Noae website as part of your Arca Noae OS/2 & eCS Drivers and Software Subscription. Please log into your account in order to access your software.

If you are still running OS/2 and/or eComStation systems and haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now. It may also be a good time to consider moving up to ArcaOS.

Driver and Software Preview Releases: Some General Guidelines

From time to time, we may make feature preview releases available. Driver and software preview releases differ from new GA releases and testcase packages in several ways. Consider testcase packages first:

Packages uploaded to the testcase files area are made available to specific customers to evaluate the effectiveness of various changes to our GA versions, usually to address one or more issues reported in specific trouble tickets. Feedback from the affected customer(s) is requested when we provide these packages, and these links are limited to only the custmer(s) involved in the related ticket(s), not for general use, and as always, not for sharing with other users.
Sometimes, we may go through several testcase revisions. Usually changes which have been vetted through this process will end up in the next GA of the package. Once the GA is released, all customers with related subscription access to the new package will be able to download and install it.
Testcase packages are almost always time-limited, and the remaining time will be prominently displayed in the banner during bootup or for other software, at program start. If a new GA of the package is not available when nearing the expiration, simply follow-up in the ticket to request a refresh.

In contrast, preview releases serve a different purpose and are subject to different terms of use:

Preview releases are made available to all customers with related subscription access.
Preview releases generally are not updated (one preview is provided before GA).
Preview releases may be time-limited. If a preview release is time-limited, that does not mean that another preview will be made available.
If a time-limited preview release has expired and a GA version has not yet been released, it may be necessary to uninstall it.
No trouble tickets are accepted for problems with preview releases. These are not beta tests. A preview may simply be feature-limited version of what would otherwise be considered finished software, or it may be a preview of as-yet-unfinished software that will be coming soon. Because these releases are previews – and may not be fully functional – reports of missing functionality, unexpected behavior, etc. are not relevant and will not be addressed. Please read the documentation that comes with the preview for a description of its particular limitations.
Preview releases may be completely broken or disabled by a subsequent update of another related GA package. As an example, if installing a preview release of a network driver, and later updating the network stack package, that preview release driver may cease to function. This is not unexpected behavior, and not a software fault. To continue to use the preview, simply return the system to its previous state, wait for the GA release of the driver, and then update the driver and the rest of the stack.
No feedback via email or tickets is requested for preview releases. They are for your benefit and use only, and intended to provide a sample of what is to come.

In the near future, we hope to bring preview releases for various works in later stages of development.

All previews will be available through the ArcaOS Support and Maintenance Subscription, However, some preview packages may not be available through the Arca Noae OS/2 & eCS Drivers and Software Subscription, so now may be a good time to consider moving up to ArcaOS.

Dynamic Icons version 2.5.2 for ArcaOS released

Dynamic Icons, the new spin on Sunny Icons from eCo Software, specifically enhanced and built for ArcaOS, has been updated to version 2.5.2, and is now available as part of the Support & Maintenance subscription for your ArcaOS product. Please log into your account and see your ArcaOS order details page to access your software.

Version 2.5.2 includes a new unified Icon page in the WPS Properties notebook with the ability to easily switch between and browse for either a traditional icon file or a PNG image. In addition, it is now possible to add one-line comments to the “bigicons.txt” icon list file (see the online help from any Icon page for more details).

What Arca Noae’s upcoming UEFI support means for ArcaOS

The UEFI Forum As we previously mentioned here, Arca Noae has been working to develop a solution to install and boot ArcaOS on UEFI-based systems. Many of these laptops, desktops, and servers lack a traditional BIOS, rendering them – until very recently – unsuitable for OS/2 (and thus, ArcaOS). Likewise, tablet devices and Chromebooks have been almost beyond our grasp, with very few exceptions.

If you have attended any OS/2-focused events in the past year, you may have witnessed demonstrations of UEFI-based installations of ArcaOS. We are extremely pleased to announce that this functionality is in our betas for ArcaOS 5.1, and should provide a very smooth and similar installation experience to our current system install (DVD, USB, or hard disk partition).

The work is not yet finished, and much remains to be completed, particularly in the area of DOS video support. Our objective, of course, is to have a fully functioning ArcaOS environment on this type of hardware, complete with full screen and windowed DOS and Win-OS/2 sessions. We are very close to accomplishing these goals.

ArcaOS 5.1 will be an upgrade from ArcaOS 5.0. For a more complete list of planned enhancements for 5.1, as well as what’s in beta now for 5.0.5, please visit our ArcaOS Roadmap page.

Don’t have ArcaOS yet? Now is a great time to pick up a license or two and replace that aging Warp 4 or eComStation installation and get to know what’s new and improved. ArcaOS runs the vast majority of existing OS/2 Warp 4 software, because it really is OS/2 – just better. ArcaOS supports more modern hardware than any other OS/2 distribution available today, making hardware upgrades much easier than ever before. An ArcaOS 5.0 license now means steep discounts on future upgrades, including 5.1.

Arca Noae progress report: ArcaOS in your language

Translation work continues for ArcaOS. General availability of German and Spanish editions of ArcaOS are anticipated for the 5.0.5 release, with more languages slated to follow. We are making tremendous strides toward achieving the goal of a non-English reader to be able to install and run ArcaOS with minimal effort.

Translators are invited to join a core team working on the project. If you have the linguistic skills, enjoy a challenge, and would like to participate in a truly fun and rewarding endeavor, please let us know. Translators automatically become members of the test team, with early access to development releases (among other benefits).

Potential localized versions of ArcaOS include:

German
Spanish
French
Italian
Dutch
Portuguese
Japanese
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditioinal)
Korean
Russian

(This is by no means a promise to deliver any of the above. Partial work has at least been done on most of the above translations, however.)

Need a language not listed above? Need one of the above languages completed sooner? Talk to us about specific localization needs for your enterprise.

Public services back online

Our Mantis bugtracker is back online, email announcements are running, and we are able to build new ArcaOS images for immediate delivery.

There is still work to be done, but for customers and subscribers, things should be back to normal.

Thanks to everyone for being patient and supportive through this trying time.

We are currently experiencing server issues

Our sincere apologies to anyone attempting to access our bug tracker or waiting for email from the store. We suffered a server hardware failure overnight and are working diligently to restore services.

No email is flowing, so no new order notifications are being sent, however, it is still possible to place orders and to download some content. Renewing subscriptions is still possible, though as with all other orders, email delivery of receipts will be delayed.

If you have placed an order for a new ArcaOS license or have requested a fresh download, those ISO builds will be delayed until services are available.

Arca Noae progress report: USB, ArcaOS updater, multimedia

Here are some of the recent happenings around the Arca Noae labs and design studios:

We’ve recently made significant progress toward localizing various parts, particularly for German and Spanish, and will soon have a new test build of the CWMM classes in Spanish (a completely new translation for this component).

We continue to improve the update process for the next ArcaOS release, as we find edge cases where the current updater doesn’t quite finish due to unexpected conditions in the target system. (As a reminder, please check the ArcaOS Updating wiki page before beginning an update to the latest release. There you’ll find hints and tips to help avoid – or resolve – some known problems.)

When IBM left off USB driver development, OS/2 had a working, 16-bit USB 1.x and 2.0 driver stack. Fast forward to 2019, and this is no longer adequate for the needs of today’s hardware.

The Arca Noae USB stack is now fully 32-bit, and USB 3 support development continues to make good progress. Implementing USB 3 support has been tedious because the OS/2 USB architecture didn’t accommodate the peculiarities of USB 3 well.

Adding USB 3 support was not as simple as just writing a new xHCI driver. Significant changes were required throughout the entire USB stack, including changes to USBD and the OHCI, UHCI, and EHCI drivers. The xHCI driver as it exists today in beta testing works quite well. There are just a couple of things that still need to be done before we will be able to release it for general availability. One thing is to implement support for Isochronous transfers (audio and video devices). The second thing is to improve the error recovery speed. Error recovery speed was not an issue with USB 2 because USB 2 devices rarely, if ever, had errors. Super Speed (USB 3) devices operating at the new USB 3 speeds have higher error rates so the error recovery speed is important. We are actively working to resolve these last two issues.

Once the xHCI (USB 3) driver is released, the Arca Noae USB stack will make it possible to install and run ArcaOS on systems which lack USB 2.0 (EHCI) controllers. (Even though many modern systems advertise the availability of USB 2.0 ports, these ports are indeed wired to xHCI controllers. Without an xHCI driver, this will result in loss of keyboard and mouse control shortly after boot and the inability to mount the installation ISO from USB-attached media.)

Don’t have ArcaOS yet? Now is a great time to pick up a license or two and replace that aging Warp 4 or eComStation installation and get to know what’s new and improved. ArcaOS supports more modern hardware than any other OS/2 distribution available today, making hardware upgrades much easier than ever before.

Arca Noae progress report: Bits and Pieces

We continue to explore new ways to make the ArcaOS desktop experience more user-friendly and useful. To that end, we’d like to share some upcoming enhancements which should be available in the near future.

An update to the Arca Noae Removable Media Monitor widget for the XCenter is currently in testing which handles JFS, HPFS, and FAT32 media changes better, avoiding a trap which could otherwise occur when removing one device and inserting another without a proper eject operation.

We also have a component in testing now which transparently switches audio output from the built-in audio device to a USB audio device and back again when the USB device is attached or removed.

If you have a Brother laser printer, and have not been able to print to it, even via CUPS, we have some possibly good news for you: The brlaser CUPS driver package (RPM) has recently been updated to version 6.0.0, and our port should be moving from our experimental repository to the subscription repository very soon.

Don’t have ArcaOS yet? Now is a great time to pick up a license or two and replace that aging Warp 4 or eComStation installation. Better yet, why not upgrade to newer hardware entirely, and install ArcaOS fresh? ArcaOS supports more modern hardware than any other OS/2 distribution available today.