It’s been two years since the release of ArcaOS 5.1, which was a hugely important release because it brought UEFI support to this continuation of IBM’s OS/2, ensuring longevity for the project for years to come. Since I don’t think much is known about what, exactly, Arca Noae, and eComStation before it, has access to within the licensing agreement with IBM, it’s difficult to ascertain just how much room they actually have to make changes to the code at the core of the old OS/2. Regardless, I tested ArcaOS 5.1 before and during its release, and the support for UEFI and GPT partition layouts was excellent on my machines.
Almost 18 months later comes the next release in the 5.1 branch, ArcaOS 5.1.1, and as the version number implies, this isn’t another major release on the scale of 5.1. Looking at the list of changes, it mostly contains a ton of upgraded versions of various programs and tools included in ArcaOS. After some digging into some of those upgraded versions, I think I can safely say we’re looking at a ton of small bugfixes, but there are also a few other things that stand out to me as welcome changes.
For instance, the changelog mentions various improvements to the installer and related tools, such as an improved method of determining the right screen resolution and font scaling during the installation. Considering I had to deal with some issues there – I think the installer UI elements were grossly oversized – this is a welcome fix. There are also “refreshed” Firefox and Thunderbird builds, although I don’t know if that means an update to the latest ESR releases, or just a rebuild of what was already shipping with ArcaOS 5.1.
I never found the time around the 5.1 release to do a proper review – I was knee-deep in baby and toddler care overload at the time – but if Arca Noae is willing to provide me with a 5.1.1 copy, I should be able to actually review it now that I’m only ankle-deep in baby and toddler care overload.
Hello Thom
Serenity System and later Mensys owned eComStation and had an OEM agreement with IBM.
Arca Noae has the ownership of ArcaOS and signed a different OEM agreement with IBM. Both products (ArcaOS and eComStation) are not related in terms of legal relationship with IBM as far as I know.
For what it had been talked informally at events like Warpstock, neither Mensys or Arca Noae had access to OS/2 source code from IBM. They had access to the normal IBM products of that time that provided some source code for drivers like the IBM Device Driver Kit.
The agreements with IBM are confidential between the companies, but what Arca Noae had told us, is that they have permission from IBM to change the binaries of some OS/2 components, like the kernel, in case of being needed. The level of detail or any exceptions to this are unknown to the public because of the private agreements.
But there is also not rule against fully replacing official IBM binaries of the OS with custom made alternatives, there was not a limitation on the OS/2 days and it was not a limitation with eComStation on it’s days.
Regards
4gb max ram WITH PAE! nah sorry a few frames would that ra mu like crazy. i am better off using 64x_hauku, linux or BSD.
> a few frames would that ra mu like crazy
I am not sure what you were trying to say. I can’t untangle that.
This is a 32-bit OS that aside from a few of its own 32-bit binaries mainly runs 16-bit DOS and Win16 ones.
There are a few Linux ports, but they are mostly CLI tools (e.g. `yum`). They don’t need much RAM either.
4GB is a lot. I reviewed ArcaOS and lack of RAM was not a problem.
Saying that, I’d love in-kernel PAE support for lots of apps with 2GB each. That would probably do everything I ever needed.