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?
A new kernel with SMP support suggests they have at least some source access.
ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#22Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#23Are there orgs out there still running OS/2 ?
I believe the New York MTA use OS2 for their MTA metro card activity
They run Windows NT 4 on the mvm and even have a custom badged start up screen http://salim.virji.net/pix/transit/mta/crashed_metrocard_ven...
The OS/2 stuff is used on the back end of the metro card system.
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#24So 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?
According to their About page 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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Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#25So 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?
A new kernel with SMP support suggests they have at least some source access.
There were versions of OS/2 with SMP support, if I remember correctly.
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#26Classic 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).
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.
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#27The 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 audie…
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Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#28Are there orgs out there still running OS/2 ?
Used to be quite popular with ATMs, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few of those still survived for banks where they connect to IBM mainframes.
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#29the pricing model is also from the 1980s.
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.
Re: ArcaOS 5.0 now available: new OS/2 distribution
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
A new kernel with SMP support suggests they have at least some source access.
There were versions of OS/2 with SMP support, if I remember correctly.
I thought it was just the PowerPC one (which had a different, Mach-based kernel), but it turns out¹ that it has had some sort of SMP support since 2.11 in 1993.