Tag Archives: upgrade

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.

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.

Join Us at Warpstock 2019 in Orlando

Warpstock 2019 will be held November 8-10 at the Country Inn & Suites, Orlando Airport. Arca Noae staff and developers will be there with the latest ArcaOS news and how-to sessions, as well as a host of other OS/2 experts ready and willing to share their knowledge and expertise.

Register in the next 24 hours (before June 1) and receive a $30 Early Bird discount on a full conference registration or $20 on a daily conference registration! Spouses/family members/guests/office mates attending sessions also receive great discounts, and non-attending guests are FREE. Students with valid student ID are welcome to attend sessions at no charge, with full benefits! (This is a great opportunity for Computer Science majors and aspiring young developers and engineers to gain some exposure to a platform which is still in use in the manufacturing, finance, and insurance sectors around the globe today.)

Arca Noae Package Manager version 1.0.4 has been released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an updated Arca Noae Package Manager for ArcaOS, OS/2, and eComStation. (1.0.4)

While this is technically a minor update, it includes an array of substantial enhancements:

Implemented editing of secure repositories.
Implemented passing of long (>900 char) parameter lists by pipe instead of going through CMD (for package export).
Install from file now goes through yum engine, thereby enabling dependencies and update/downgrade/reinstall.
Ensured that special characters in encrypt/decrypt commands are not intercepted by CMD.
Make sure reinstall, update, and downgrade also enable DLL conflict checking.
Even more improved message formatting.
Expanded help guide.
Updated included libraries.
Various bug fixes and other minor improvements.

Arca Noae Package Manager is available in English with Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Swedish language packs.

This open source utility is available to everyone, free of charge, regardless whether you have an Arca Noae software subscription or an ArcaOS license.

Please review the wiki for important first-time installation and upgrade notes and other tips.

DFSee MAJOR version 16.0 released

In case anyone missed this in the news outlets, here is an abbreviated version of the official DFSee 16.0 release announcement:

DFSee version 16.0 has been released, with significant new functionality and fixes.

It is a MAJOR release, introducing TWO new filesystems with full support including file browsing and recovery, bringing the total number of supported filesystems to around 10!

The new filesystems are:

ISO – The ISO9660 filesystem as used on CDROM’s and DVD media, and perhaps more importantly in .ISO imagefiles representing them.

You can now use DFSee to copy files from a CD/DVD or ISO image.

The Rock-Ridge (Unix/Linux) and Jolliet (Windows long names) extensions are supported as well, selectable where needed.

APFS – The new Apple filesystem, used in iOS and newer macOS versions (High Sierra, Mojave) that moves up a lot of the filesystem limits from the older HFS+ and is optimized for SSD storage.

APFS supports multiple independent volumes in one partition, all sharing the same pool of storage blocks (container), and it is organized using B-trees for almost everything, making access to information really fast.

The APFS support has all the familiar DFSee analysis functions and also supports browsing and file-recovery for normal files. (XATTR and Resource-fork support will be coming soon).

There have also been some improvements in the menu-system like attached submenus to select a partition for PTEdit or LVM, to select an APFS volume from a container or to select between Standard, Jolliet or El-Torito areas within an ISO.

Of course, as usual, there are also many smaller improvements and bug fixes.

This being a major release, it will require an upgrade if you currently have a registration for an older version, so visit the DFSee product page in the ArcaOS store to purchase an upgrade at a great price.

Note: Keys sold on or after January 1, 2019 are valid for version 16.x, with no additional upgrade required.

For key installation instructions, please visit this page.

See our new product and activity roadmaps!

We often get asked,”so what’s next for ArcaOS?” “Where can we see you guys?” “What have you done with XYZ?” We realize our original roadmap page fell short, and the more work we did, the harder it became to keep updating that page — especially when it was all-in-one.

So, we decided to do something about that. We’ve split our roadmaps into different targeted areas, namely, General, ArcaOS, Drivers, Software, and Advocacy & Events. We’ll do our best to keep these pages updated with our latest plans and releases.

2019 is starting off as a great year for Arca Noae, and there is a lot of great stuff on the horizon. ArcaOS 5.0.4 is in beta, which will include a number of great updates including Samba 4.9 and a handy updater feature which should update even an early 5.0 release to the latest code in a matter of a few minutes. USB 3 is also on the way very soon, now.

Watch for more updates to our software and to our roadmaps as we move further into this year.

Arca Noae at Warpstock 2018 in Calgary…and an ArcaOS Sale

This year’s Warpstock event is scheduled for September 14-16 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.There will be several sessions devoted to getting the most out of ArcaOS and OS/2, in general.

To celebrate this year’s event, Arca Noae will be running a sale on ArcaOS personal and commercial licenses for the duration of Warpstock, Friday through Sunday. This is a great time to get in on this fresh and exciting OS/2 release or to pick up additional licenses for more stations. ArcaOS 5.0.3 was recently released, and the first beta for 5.0.4 is already in testing. Version 5.1 is scheduled for release in 2019, with a host of new features planned, including NLVs for several popular languages.

More information about Warpstock, its history, past speakers and presentations, and this year’s event may be found on the Warpstock site.

If you can’t join us in Calgary, be sure to watch the live feed on the WarpEvents page on YouTube.

Once there, locate the WarpStock 2018 Live Stream URL.

Users with OS/2 can watch the stream in two ways:

Firefox with Flash pointing to the WarpEvents site; or
Grab the YouTube URL and play it in VLC (preferred; get the latest VLC, ported by KO Myung-Hun, from Hobbes).

To ask questions during the live event, use the #netlabs channel on IRC.

There will be up to date information on OS/2 World and the following social networks:

Arca Noae Package Manager version 1.0.3 has been released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an updated Arca Noae Package Manager for ArcaOS, OS/2, and eComStation. (1.0.3)

This is a minor update, featuring various fixes and enhancements:

Ability to select specific platform for package installation/replacement.
Better filtering of duplicate packages in lists.
Improved message formatting.
Improved and expanded help guide, with more “how-to” references.
Updated included libraries.
Various bug fixes and other minor improvements.

Arca Noae Package Manager is available in English with Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Swedish language packs. Some have added help file translations in this version.

This open source utility is available to everyone, free of charge, regardless whether you have an Arca Noae software subscription or an ArcaOS license.

Please review the wiki for important first-time installation and upgrade notes and other tips.

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.

Want to learn more about using ArcaOS? Come to Warpstock 2017 in Toronto!

Warpstock as an event has been around since 1997. Since its inception, the goal of Warpstock has been to educate and expose users to OS/2, its available software, and how to get the most out of the environment. In addition, Warpstock has always been a great venue for meeting developers and engineers involved with OS/2 and its derivative operating systems, including eComStation and ArcaOS.

This year’s Warpstock event is scheduled for September 8-10 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Several key members of the ArcaOS development team will be on hand to present, answer questions, and take suggestions to improve the operating system as we continue to move toward the 5.1 release, planned for later next year.

More information about Warpstock, its history, past speakers and presentations, and this year’s event may be found on Warpstock’s site: http://www.warpstock.org.

Come join us in Toronto!