User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed

[nyao]

Very, very simple.
Why do we have ver5.0.7 which should not exist?
If the release is delayed, just give us the right information.
If it were me, I would say, "Sorry for the delay. Please wait a little longer.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Very, very simple:

5.0.7 (like 5.0.8 and possibly 5.0.9, 5.0.10, 5.0.20) is a fix rollup for ArcaOS 5.0. Who said it should not exist? People who paid for 5.0 support should get just that: 5.0 support.

If you watched and listened to my roadmap presentations and read the disclaimer slide (which is present in every single one of these I do), you would note that dates are approximate targets and never stated expectations of delivery. The work takes however long it takes to get a professional, commercial product to release. Without a crystal ball, there's no way to know how long that might be.

5.1 is not "delayed." It's simply not finished. There's a HUGE difference between those two states. "Delayed" implies that it was ready for release but had to be put on hold for some reason (like holding the countdown for a rocket on the launchpad). "Not finished" means just that: the rocket is not yet complete and ready for launch. We haven't even moved it to the launchpad. In fact, it's still in the hangar, being assembled.

Please be patient. 5.1 is coming soon. Really. We are literally down to documentation and last minute finishing and updating our delivery system to support spinning 5.0 and 5.1 ISOs, as well as 5.1 ISOs in various languages.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I know that Lewis and Arca Noae does not need a cheerleader, but since I'm on the ArcaOS tester mailing list, (and even that I don't contribuite much) I think that releasing 5.1 had been a hell of job. All the details and things that UEFI requires was too much for me to just to follow. Also, the translations efforts are a tedious thing. I tried to collaborate on the spanish version, but it was too much for me too. (I just left Alfredo with it, and he is doing a great job).

I'm really happy that version 5.1 can be released soon, and I'm exited that finally Arca Noae will reach the point to have ArcaOS running on UEFI and GTP drives. I hope that the strategy of "keeping OS/2 running on modern hardware" will fall short after some months of releasing 5.1 and I'm hoping that a new strategy will emerge about "Updating OS/2 and modernizing the OS with more libraries, software and improved UI".

I'm looking forward to create the "ArcaOS 5.1 First Impression" thread on this forum, once it is released.

Regards

[Lewis Rosenthal]

 

Please read "keeping OS/2 running" as "keeping OS/2 running and continuing to improve the user experience." (I didn't think the second part was necessary, but I should have stated it directly. Mea culpa.)

Edit: And thanks for your kind words and acknowledgement of the enormity of the task of getting ArcaOS booting and installing on UEFI, as well as being able to make use of GPT devices, my friend.

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Back to the topic:

It will definetly be the last OS/2 User Meeting in Cologne.

[Thomas M.]

Hello all,

let me please contribute to this discussion with my thoughts about it.
A lot has been said which I absolutely agree to. But there is one thing which has not been mentioned and which is the most important to me.

I am a long time user of all kinds of OS/2. And all that time I contributed to the different versions by sponsoring, supporting and ordering them. But all that time I am working with OS/2 Warp 4.52 thank Sigurd by an updated installation. I do my daily jobs as a teacher by using OpenOffice and other kind of well known software. I used and still have different kinds of laptops and PCs over the years. And I always installed the different kinds of OS/2-versions (OS/2 Warp 4.52, eCS and ArcaOS) but returned to Warp in the end.
So at least I wondered and asked myself why should I use ArcaOS. In the end it does its job not much better for me than Warp 4.52 does. There are still the same problems like always. There are no Wifi-drivers for example which support my latest Laptops (ThinkPad Yoga 12) at all or better than the already existing.
And I really do not want to install ArcaOS on any newer laptops because I do not intend to buy a new laptop each and every year. So I do not need the newer installation routins.
I just would expect my existing hardware to be supported better or at all. And this is not the case.
And as I do not see it changing I could stop it. I will use OS/2 Warp 4.52 as long as possible.

The meetings in cologne were an absolutely highlight to me. The visitors contributed by presentations and hints and every question by me was answered. And my questions were almost about any kind of software and quite seldom about OS.
But the visitors are getting less as Sigurd already stated. So at least it doesn't make sense any more. I will definitely miss it.

Thanks a lot to all the guys taking part in the past and taking part this year. Hope to you soon in Cologne.

Thomas Müller

[Andi B.]

So at least I wondered and asked myself why should I use ArcaOS.

Maybe that's a good topic we can talk about in Cologne. Your reply reminds me that we all (including me, I too use mainly an upgraded old installation) sometimes forget what new things we (at least I do) use every day although it still looks like the old Warp 4.52.

[Martin Iturbide]

So at least I wondered and asked myself why should I use ArcaOS.

Maybe that's a good topic we can talk about in Cologne. Your reply reminds me that we all (including me, I too use mainly an upgraded old installation) sometimes forget what new things we (at least I do) use every day although it still looks like the old Warp 4.52.

Hi

I respect the people that want to squeeze the value of Warp 4.52, but I'm not one of those. I prefer to use ArcaOS because I don't want to do all the work of patching it and including the drivers by hand. I even tried to draft the effort to theorise a Warp 4.53 just with IBM components on this wiki page. But the effort of creating a custom image with YUM, packages, software, etc. that will be different for each person that builds it, it is just an inconvenience to me.

It will be nice to discuss:
- ArcaOS vs Warp 4.52 with Patches
and
- ArcaOS vs Warp 4.52 with Patches + AN OS/2 & eCS Drivers & Software Subscription.

At the moment I prefer to have ArcaOS and the team on AN that is working on consolidating OS/2 Warp with all patches and drivers.
But I respect and I open the door to the people that has a different vision and want to try a other things, maybe on the future good things can came out of that too.

Regards

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Yes, it's probably not possible at all to run Warp 4.52 on almost modern hardware.

The same applies even for the latest eCS 2.2 beta 2. While eCS 2.2 beta 2 still works on some systems, version 2.1 doesn't. (At least I haven't found one.)

Warp 4.52 with newer drivers is not Warp 4.52. In most cases you need a (the newer the more recent) ACPI driver to run it at all.

One example: The ThinkPad T60 needs newer drivers to work stable. It's 15 years old. Most of Warp 4.52 is from even older times, so one should use it with old hardware only. Additionally ArcaOS patches the kernel to work around the wrong WPS behavior for multiple dots in a filename. I don't want to miss that anymore.

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Sigurd, my friend:

Hi Lewis, I still can not figure out whether or not this formulation is meant to be sarcastic or ironic in this context. I hope not. (That's what I mean when writing "english is not my mothertongue")

Yes, it's probably not possible at all to run Warp 4.52 on almost modern hardware.

That's a myth.

It depends on what you want to do or have. For sure it is easier to use ArcaOS for a fresh install than try to install "blank" Warp 4.52

But it is even much easier to install a pre build clone with DFSEE. And there is no difference between Warp 4.52 and ArcaOS when using this method, I am practising this method for years now.

With this method I am even able to install my Warp 4.52 clone on hardware, that is not installable with the latest ARcaOS USB Stick.

The work, that has to be done first, once you want to use this way, is to build the clone. That is in fact not that hard.

Once every two or three years I build a new Warp 4.52 from scratch.

The main steps are:

- Installing WSeB (The same goes for MCP 4.52, even a Warp 4 FP15 can be pimped up this way!)from DVD on my Packard Bell Easynote E5155 Intel Centrino based Laptop (with inbuild DVD where WSeB DVDs can boot from) on a 2GB Partition "C:"
- Apply the latest WSEB Fixpacs
- Apply AirbootMananger, QSINIT, VXRexx, WarpIN, Xworkplace, DFSEE and the ZIP File viewer from Alex Taylor (i.e.)
- Apply the ArcaOS Software Subscription drivers

-> Now I have got a working Clone that I can copy to any modern hardware, that still meets BIOS and so on requirements. The clone has ususally a size of 700MB. And, even if not interesting for the majority of you, it is in German.

Later on, once you copied the Clone with DFSEE for Windows on the partition you like, you can easily change the size of the partition and stretch the clone and adjust it to the new size, ususally I use 16GB.

I then install the applications I like to use, like Open Office 4.1.11, avoiding YUM/RPM or hat FOC thing. I do not have a "DLL hell" though.

And this way OS/2 still looks like, feels like, works like OS/2.

Once I am fine with the bigger installation I just clone this as well. So this clone already ran on an Thinkpad T480, with those memory limitations though.

I will demonstrate this at the User meeting in Cologne, if it is wanted.

Yes, I know, in the future there will be UEFI and GPT support that will not be available for Warp 4.52 as a driver supplement.

But this will make no difference to me, as on "real modern hardware" (later than 2016) there will still be the problem with the memory (preventing to use the new Browser and other "bigger" Applications in a stable way), no WLAN, no Bluetooth, no.... that I (!) (I can only repeat once again: I speak for myself) prefer to use Virtualbox or VMWare on this hardware. I would recommend VMWare for this, but I am still not able to get sound to work inside this virtualisation, otherwise it is perfect!

With this virtualisation I can even use Warp 3 or 4 and use all the attached hardware, bluetooth, wlan and so on, so there is no need for ArcaOS.

The attached picture shows my clone 4.52 system native on the Thinkpad X250 "peacefull" alongside Windows 8.1. and ArcaOS 5.0.7.

All the best.

[Paul Smedley]

Hi Sigurd,

Sigurd, my friend:

Hi Lewis, I still can not figure out whether or not this formulation is meant to be sarcastic or ironic in this context. I hope not. (That's what I mean when writing "english is not my mothertongue")

I'm not Lewis, but I think I know him well enough to guarantee that his use of 'my friend' is 100% genuine with no irony or sarcasm involved.

Email/forums are a terrible communication mechanism

Cheers,

Paul