Arca Noae’s making it happen • The Register

Retro Tech Week Though the creator of OS/2 now owns Crimson Hat and has different fish to attempt, OS/2 lives on. The Reg spoke with Arca Noae’s Lewis Rosenthal concerning the problems with updating OS/2 Warp for contemporary PCs in 2023 – and past.

OS/2 has had a protracted and generally troubled historical past, which The Register looked at in depth when the OS turned 25. IBM stopped promoting OS/2 Warp again in the early part of this century, however that wasn’t the tip of the road for this indomitable OS.

After IBM stopped promoting even the server model, eComStation continued support, and later supplied their very own up to date model, and had plans for further modernization.

After that, Arca Noae picked up the baton with what was initially codenamed Blue Lion. It went on to offer it for sale as Arca OS 5.

The present model, Arca OS 5.0.7, can boot instantly and set up from a USB key, which is a primary for the OS/2 household – and a big assist.

On 64-bit {hardware}, Arca OS can use PAE to show reminiscence over 4GB into a big, very quick RAMdisk. Model 5.1 is at present in beta testing, and can help set up on UEFI-only machines and onto GPT disks – which means that it may well help media over 2TB in dimension.

For Retro Tech Week, The Reg FOSS desk spoke with Rosenthal about what the corporate was doing with OS/2 in the present day. He advised us about what Arca Noae needed to do as a way to enable this 32-bit OS to put in and run on current-generation {hardware}, together with fashionable browsers, Open Workplace, Samba for SMB networking over TCP/IP, and extra.

He additionally advised us about what sort of prospects want Arca OS in the present day, and the way helpful it may be to DOS and 16-bit Home windows software program instantly on fashionable {hardware}. ®