We’ve got some seriously bad news for the OS/2 community. Hobbes, the massive software archive for OS/2 (and thus eComStation and ArcaOS), which hosts both old software as well as more recent releases, is shutting down in three months.
After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. You the user are responsible for downloading any of the files found in this archive if you want them. These files will no longer be available for access or download as of the decommission date.
As of April 15th, 2024 this site will no longer exist.
No one will be able to access this site or any information/files stored on this site as of April 15th, 2024.
I don’t even know how old Hobbes is, but I feel like it’s been around for decades. Seeing it being shut down is incredibly sad to read, but also a sign of the times for whatever’s left of the OS/2 community. Two of the four listed mirrors seem to be up, namely SunSITE Poland and Infania Networks in Sweden. We’ll see how long those last, but my advice to anyone interested in OS/2 – download the Hobbes archive and store it locally.
Hello. Right now at OS2World we are discussing the alternative to hobbes. We already have hobbes backed up on the Internet Archive, and it is possible that we want to enhance http://www.OS2Site.com/sw to replace it.
Thank you so much for your dedicated work, people at OS2World. The site is invaluable for the hobbyist old-OS-explorer.
Tom about your personal comment … “but also a sign of the times for whatever’s left of the OS/2 community.”
Even that we are not a big community and loosing Hobbes it is sad for us, these days we have our spirit very high with ArcaOS 5.1 running on UEFI BIOS machines. At OS2World.com we are discussing several subject on how to support the platform and Arca Noae is working on Spanish, German and some other languages translations of version 5.1.
Many years ago one could get the content of the site in 4 CDs (or was it DVDs?).
While I see brave people going through the effort of keeping alive valuable software like Apache OpenOffice on it, unfortunately the time for OS/2 is gone. IBM lost faith in it, if it ever had it, and it never got to play in the 64 bit arena.
RIP.
It would have to be DVDs, I’m in the process of copying the contents of one of the mirrors locally and it is over 60GB for the complete archive (not just OS/2 but also the DOS, Java, Windows, and text archives). I don’t know what to do with it all, I suppose I could host my own mirror if there aren’t any licensing issues with me doing so, but I didn’t want to let such an important archive die out without at least having a local backup.
Morgan,
Bit torrent is probably the best choice. I actually feel Hobbes is kind of missing an opportunity by not seeding an original torrent themselves. Had they done this all along it could have saved them bandwidth and even if they don’t continue to host it it would improve the situation for the future. Their copy would not only be authoritative and verifiable (even after they shut down), but the protocol has very robust recovery compared to http/ftp and allows others to download what they need piecemeal. It also encourages sharing out of the box with many clients sharing by default.
PS: Is this archive actually hosted on os/2? Maybe that could be a reason they’re not using bittorrent…?
I didn’t even consider that, thanks! I do have European seedbox with plenty of storage and bandwidth at my disposal so I can seed it from there.
I have no idea, but it would be really cool if it is!
Not sure if os/2 users are typically using it to connect to the internet these days, but out of curiosity I wanted to see if there was an os/2 bittorrent client, and it turns out there is!
https://www.qbittorrent.org/
Just upload everything to archive.org
60GB is 2/3 of a 100GB blueray… throw it up on archive.org as well as host it on arca noae servers and call it a day.
It’s just 15 GB – less than Aminet. Also, at least one of its mirrors is accessible via FTP protocol. Downloading now.
And thanks for the info.
Actually, there is much more than 15 GB. icm.edu.pl mirror seems to be partial, infania.net is several times larger.
Please do not hate me,
But unless you have to support some legacy software, or a hardcore hobbyist…
Why would anyone want to use OS/2 in this day and date?
The kernel was already obsolete when OS/2 NT was designed (and later marketed as Windows NT), the hardware support is limited, and I really know of no modern software that has not alternative on modern OSes (OSen?).
Anyway, “could have been” a really different timeline if IBM were not stubborn, and OS/2 Warp was not stillborn against Windows 95. But here we are.
All valid points. But also those are the reasons to keep it. I’ve spent many hours installing OS/2 on period hardware just to experience history, and historical purposes is a good reason to keep documentation and software.
> Why would anyone want to use OS/2 in this day and date?
Strong preferences for one’s OS?
Dislike of Windows? Dislike of Linux and Unix in general?
Having an old machine of which one is particularly fond that can’t run a modern OS?
Not wishing to learn a new UI and new apps, combined with satisfaction with existing tools?
It is very small and very fast by 21st century standards. Some very pleasant usable hardware, such as say vintage Thinkpad laptops with gorgeous keyboards, cannot run even low-end lightweight Linux distros at useful speed, but flies with ArcaOS. If this lets one keep using a much-loved machine, is that not legitimate?
Sukru: People that uses OS/2 today, uses it because it is their choice and their preference for an Operating System.
Check your things around and just find something you use and people don’t understand. Why do you use it?
Is it hard to respect people choices today? It is just our choice.
Install all software on a VM, distribute the VM image using bittorrent. Something like that.
That is an unrealistic proposal that seems to betray a lack of understanding of why people might want these things.
Secondly, it is a commercial, proprietary, licensed OS. Distributing free VMs is doable but problematic.
Even so, though, people want this software to install and run on their own computer, not to run in a VM on an alien OS.
I forgot about ArcaOS, but still, the day approaches that OS/2 will be abandonware.
Then, hardware support will be frozen in time.
A minimal virtualization layer could keep it running on tomorrow’s hardware without being much in the way.
Lets be honest, the target market for something like this is readers of OSNews, and probably not much else!
But following that thought along, could OSNews become an archive/mirror for this and maybe other “archived” repos? Its only about 60GB so the storage costs would be minimal (thinking on an S3 bucket or similar) and the traffic is hardly going to break the bank, so would cost about £15-20 per year to keep some computing history alive.
Well since ArcaOS is still being sold commercially, perhaps the vendor selling it should also host such a software repository.
There is a similar situation with other systems. As an OS falls out of regular use, the sites which formerly hosted download archives or documentation dry up, and for some older systems it can be increasingly difficult to find anything online.
Software for RCA MicroDOS is essentially non-existent, despite about a dozen software packages being released by RCA themselves.
Honestly, someone needs to just upload all of the software to archive.org and call it a day.
Exactly what I was going to say… also it would fit in a 100GB blueray image if someone wanted a “hardcopy” on M-DISC etc… there is also the issue if archive.org’s longevity as they sometimes host things that could potentially get them shutdown, so we should not rely on a single point of failure.
Honestly I would think they already have the infrastructure to host this themselves also right its only 60GB good grief thats nothing these days…. certainly the Haiku community has done very well in hosting due to your efforts as well as others.