For someone who isn't using OS/2 at the moment and you can say is rather new to the system anyways, (Did my brief look into it back in the 90's, but never really run it), but is going to get ArcaOS and install it and go from there I have found a bit hard to figure out software stuffs and such.
I do have killed my braincells with BSD and other Unix as well as toynixes 25+ years so I do have some understanding how things work and can be done very well or very badly. Brief relationships with BeOS and Commodore stuffs and such to mention some.
I really don't know how RPM is implemented in ArcaOS and such. But coming from FOSS world I can see big benefits in such thing. But of course if there is more than one way to do things, like I understood from the earlier posts, it will get messy. It has been tested back in the late 90's in the toynix-world. Anyway as I see it, it would be good, as a community, to achieve a consensus what would be "supported" way to do it and focus efforts to that. If someone want's to do it his/her way, then big boys/girls should take responsibility of their actions. Like there is different methods in use for different distros in toynix-world, but one can still go and break everything by doing stuff non-standard way.
About software one would benefit from the decent categorised list with some more details and comparison to software on other platforms Win/Mac/GNU/etc. than there is in the wiki at the moment. I don't say it's no use, but it's rather hard for someone who has no background to figure out what software would actually be something that one wants to check out. Some of those are nobrainers and need no explanation but there are some that would do with better description. Lists in the wiki are very good but just a bit not-so-new-user-friendly.
For example I tried to find, just now while writing this, Gopher client that I found but now cigar. Tried to search and no. Went through quite a lot, but didn't find it. Was going to point out that that is one of the things that made my day a bit better when I found it last year. And this isn't the first time I have tried to find it after my initial encounter. I came across of it when I just aimlessly wandered around, but since then it's been hiding. EDIT2: And this was it what I was looking for. I just happened to remember that I did bookmark it the second time I was looking for it.
https://ecsoft2.org/gopher Could be useful to link these from wiki?
Kinda "suggested programs" list and also split them into "Up-to-date" "obsolete" in order to help new users to find software that they are looking for without going through all of the stuff that are there more or less only because of nostalgia's sake.
All this said, I still want to point out that I shoot out of the dark here. All this might be all good and sound in the ArcaOs at the moment, since I do not know.
These are just my thought of the matter from my quick looks into this stuff.
Anyway, keep up the good work! It's wonderful to see such a dedicated community and sincere will to keep Good Stuff(tm) alive!
H/T
p.s. I will record and document my install on my ThinkPad X60s + UltraBase when I get to that.