Tag Archives: subscription

October 2017 happenings

ArcaOS 5.0.2 in the works

We are hard at work finalizing the last bits to be included in ArcaOS 5.0.2. Among the enhancements and features are a few bug fixes, updates to included RPM packages, updated Samba client, and the new ability to install from an ArcaOS bootable USB stick (or local partition). We call this new feature AltBoot, and it is a milestone for OS/2. This should assist those with USB 2.0 capability but no optical drives in getting ArcaOS installed and running.

Arca Noae experimental YUM repository access now restricted

In an effort to better ensure the integrity of packages provided by Arca Noae in our release and subscription channels, we have now restricted access to the arcanoae-exp repository to developers and the test team only.

Rest assured, any software which you may have installed from the experimental repository will continue to function just as it did before. However, we strongly urge that if you have installed the arcanoae-exp RPM to configure the experimental repository in Arca Noae Package Manager (ANPM) or YUM, you uninstall that package. It will be withdrawn from the Netlabs stable repository shortly.

Firefox 45.9 RPM coming soon to an Arca Noae YUM repository near you

Firefox 45.9 GA should be arriving soon for installation via ANPM as part of the subscription content for ArcaOS licensees with active support and maintenance and Drivers & Software subscribers. This new packaging should ease the burden of upgrades by managing dependencies and better ensuring a successful installation. More details will be provided in an upcoming post. (Of course Firefox is free for all to download as zip from Netlabs. There is no requirement to maintain a subscription with Arca Noae in order to get the latest Firefox for OS/2.)

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.

Crediting your remaining OS/2 & eCS Drivers & Software subscription toward ArcaOS

As promised (though a little late), for those of you wishing to trade in your remaining OS/2 & eCS Drivers & Software subscription time against the purchase of ArcaOS, you may now do so by following the directions on the Subscription Trade-up Request form, located here. The form includes handy tables listing the cash value of your remaining time as well as the number of equivalent months of an ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription, for both personal and commercial licenses.

Three request options are available to you:

Additional time on your included ArcaOS support & maintenance subscription; or
Credit toward the renewal of your included ArcaOS support & maintenance subscription; or
Cash rebate (considered for ArcaOS purchases made with 12 months remaining on the subscription being traded)

You will need some information regarding the subscription being traded and your ArcaOS purchase. Simply fill in the form and submit. Please allow 7-10 days before acknowledgement of your submission.

Even if you ordered your subscription and/or ArcaOS license through one of our partners, Arca Noae will handle your trade-up request.

ArcaOS 5.0.1 now available

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of ArcaOS 5.0.1, the first maintenance release of ArcaOS 5.0 (Blue Lion).

ArcaOS 5.0.1 is the result of many hours of work to adjust things discovered after the release of ArcaOS 5.0, particularly impacting installation of the operating system. Of course, there are many other post-install fixes included, as well, and these will be made available for separate download as part of the ArcaOS 5.0 Support & Maintenance subscription shortly. In the meantime, a full download of the refreshed media image is required to obtain these fixes and updates.

If everything is working in your current installation, it may be prudent to wait for the subscription content to become available, as Arca Noae has not classified any of the 5.0.1 updates as critical.

If you have experienced difficulty installing ArcaOS 5.0, the fixes and updates included in 5.0.1 may address your issue(s).

For a complete list of updates in this release, see the ArcaOS wiki.

To download your fresh ISO, simply visit your customer portal page, select the Orders & Subscriptions link on the navigation panel to the left, then click on the order for your ArcaOS license. Once there, click the download link to request a fresh ISO, and wait for your notification email.

How ArcaOS 5.0 licensing fits together with existing subscriptions

You’ve probably heard us discuss this topic in the abstract at Warpstock events over the past year or so. As we count down the final days to ArcaOS 5.0 release, considering how the purchase of an ArcaOS 5.0 license may – entirely at the option of the licensee – either work alongside or replace an existing Drivers & Software subscription, we thought a brief discussion was in order.

What’s included with ArcaOS 5.0 in terms of support and maintenance

ArcaOS 5.0 licensing includes either 6 or 12 months of technical support and drivers & software updates, depending upon whether the personal or commercial edition is licensed. Technical support includes the ability to open support tickets in the Arca Noae Mantis bug tracker, as well as telephone support (as available). Much of the driver & software update content overlaps with the existing Drivers & Software subscription, but licensed exclusively for use with ArcaOS. Support, however, is extended to include the entire operating system, and not just the drivers and software components distributed as updates.

ArcaOS 5.0 personal edition licensing includes 6 months of support and maintenance. ArcaOS 5.0 commercial edition, on the other hand, includes a full 12 months of support and maintenance, with priority technical support (these tickets are handled first).

What to do with an existing Drivers & Software subscription

There are really two options:

Keep it in force for one or more existing OS/2 or eComStation systems (as noted, drivers & software distributed as part of the ArcaOS support subscription are not licensed for use on non-ArcaOS systems), with an eye toward the changing licensing scheme for personal subscriptions (see below); or
Convert the remaining period to a credit against the cost of ArcaOS licensing. This can be done by completing an online form and submitting it to Arca Noae. We will issue a rebate, coupon, or credit to your account for the value of any whole or fractional months remaining on your subscription.Example:
You just renewed your personal subscription April 1 for $44.10, and on May 10, you purchase an ArcaOS 5.0 Personal Edition license for the introductory price of $99. You complete the online form, answering a few non-personal questions, and submit it. Arca Noae credits your account $40.23 (the value of 11 months remaining on your previously renewed subscription).The trade-off is that while any non-ArcaOS systems may continue to use whatever subscription content had already been installed on them prior to the point of subscription conversion, no new subscription content is licensed for use on these systems.

How the existing Drivers & Software subscription licensing scheme is changing

To better align the terms of the Drivers & Software personal edition with those of ArcaOS 5.0 personal edition, any subscriptions purchased or renewed after the official launch of ArcaOS 5.0 will be limited to one installed system, and no longer metered to cover an entire household. Thus, one subscription will be required for every system benefiting from the updated software and related support.

In keeping with Arca Noae’s commitment to fair use, any driver and/or software updates obtained prior to this change in licensing scheme are fully licensed for use on all systems where they were previously licensed.

How to handle a mix of ArcaOS and OS/2 or eComStation installations

There will be valid reasons for not replacing all existing OS/2 or eComStation installations with ArcaOS. ArcaOS does not provide extensive support for ISA or MicroChannel hardware, for example. Other reasons also exist. Our recommendation for such systems is to maintain a Drivers & Software subscription for each one, alongside a support subscription for each ArcaOS installation. Only in this manner can you be assured that you are always using the latest, fully supported drivers and software on all of your OS/2 systems.

How the ArcaOS support subscription will be handled when ArcaOS 5.1 is released

ArcaOS 5.1 is already in the planning stages, as are incremental updates to ArcaOS 5.0 (incremental updates to 5.0 will be included as part of the 5.0 support and maintenance subscription content). An ArcaOS support subscription is version-less, meaning that a subscription purchased six months after the purchase of an ArcaOS 5.0 license and still in effect when upgrading to ArcaOS 5.1 will extend the included support in the 5.1 upgrade license. Also, should you choose to stay with ArcaOS 5.0 and not upgrade to 5.1, your investment in 5.0 is protected, because Arca Noae fully expects to support ArcaOS 5.0 for some time after 5.1 and later versions are released.

Convenience of shutdown/poweroff in a virtual machine

At one time, shutting down an OS/2 guest under VirtualBox meant full shutdown and virtual powerdown. With recent versions of VirtualBox (5.x), however, this has not been the case.

We’ve noticed, and we’ve done some work to address this.

Did you know that Arca Noae’s ACPI driver runs just fine under these latest builds of VirtualBox? Using the ACPI driver, it is possible to configure the OS/2 (or eComStation) guest machine for complete poweroff using ACPI, just as you might configure a physical workstation.

If you’ve thought that the Arca Noae Drivers and Software subscription didn’t bring value to your virtual OS/2 experience, think again. Now is a great time to subscribe.

Blue Lion in the news

It’s happened again… We’ve been slashdotted…

It all started when James Sanders wrote this piece in Tech Republic, which among other bits of Blue Lion news, correctly reported the official product name of Blue Lion as ArcaOS 5.0.

As was to be expected, this news took on a life of its own, and pretty soon, we were slashdotted.

Try a quick web search for “ArcaOS 5.0” and you’ll see what we mean…

Some of the comments which follow these articles can be quite humorous. Many people have fond memories of OS/2 (2.0? 3?), but have never had an opportunity to run it on modern hardware or even on a gigabit LAN, nor have they had the experience of running modern software on the platform, such as Firefox 38.8.0 ESR or Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2. (Both of these current applications have been ported and made possible on the OS/2 platform by our good friends and strategic partners, bww bitwise works, GmbH. You may find more great stuff from bitwise in our store.) For those of you who do take the time to post and respond in these venues, our heartfelt thanks for updating some of the users who seem a little out of step.

Of course, there are some great comments by well-respected people in the tech arena, like Brian Proffit and Brian J Dooley (thanks, guys).

Whatever your preferred language, enjoy the read, and be sure to add your own comments, including your more recent experience with OS/2 and the difference modern drivers and software make.

Stubborn renewals…made easier!

In case you renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and previously experienced difficulty accessing your downloads, we are happy to report that the problem has been resolved. If for some reason you are still having difficulty, then by all means, please contact customer service.

In addition, we’ve improved the order details page for renewal orders and added a link to the original subscription, to make it easier to access your downloads.

Edit 2020-06-07: This link is identified as Access associated downloads here and appears directly below the name of the subscription (Support & Maintenance, Drivers & Software, etc.).

Thanks again for everyone’s patience and understanding while we worked to resolve these issues. We appreciate your business, your continued support of Arca Noae and our shared computing platform of choice, and we look forward to seeing many of you at an OS/2-focused event sometime this year.

Stubborn renewals

In case you have renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and are experiencing difficulty accessing your downloads, please contact customer service. We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. We appreciate your patience.

Another area of some confusion is the lack of download links on the order details page for the renewal item itself. Once you have successfully renewed your subscription, simply visit your original subscription order details page (where you have been accessing these links all along), and all of your downloads should work as expected. If not, just drop us a note. We’re working to improve the flow and presentation of the content.

Edit 2020-06-07: Since this post was originally written, we’ve improved the order details page for renewal orders and added a link to the original subscription, to make it easier to access your downloads.

This link is identified as Access associated downloads here and appears directly below the name of the subscription (Support & Maintenance, Drivers & Software, etc.).

Subscription renewal discounts

Did you know that the value of your Arca Noae Drivers & Software Subscription grows year over year?

Renewals are subject to a 10% discount when ordered within a month of expiration. We’ve also implemented renewal reminder emails to make renewing your subscription easier. If you renewed by making another full purchase, we’ll be getting in touch to extend a credit voucher for your next order of anything in our store, including sponsoring.

The renewal discount applies to personal and commercial editions, and applies to the total number of subscriptions renewed.

If your original purchase was through one of our resellers, you should definitely order your renewal through the same channel. It may take a short while for all of our resellers to add the proper SKUs to their stores, so be sure to contact your vendor of choice to ask about renewal ordering if you have any questions or don’t see it listed.

If you are already an Arca Noae subscriber, thanks for your business. If you still haven’t felt the need, or for whatever reason have held off purchasing a subscription, we’d welcome the chance to prove the value of our subscription service to you.

Arca Noae: a new name, but with familiar faces

Arca Noae has been active for about half a year; our online store opened mid-November, and our popular drivers and software subscription has seen several updates. We’ve made numerous news postings, as well as personal appearances at Warpstock. We’ve even added a FAQ page and a roadmap to our site. Still, some people seem to be confused as to why Arca Noae was created, who works for Arca Noae, and what Arca Noae’s long term goals are.

For more details on Arca Noae’s history and mission, please see our updated About page.