Author Topic: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed  (Read 18861 times)

Sigurd Fastenrath

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User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« on: May 04, 2022, 03:48:35 pm »
Hi,

Thomas Müller and I paid for the meeting today. This ensures that it will actually take place in Cologne. Everyone who wants to come is welcome! A message to Thomas or me in advance of a planned participation would be nice and important. However, this can also be done at very short notice, there is no fixed date for a commitment. Cancellations are also possible at any time, since the premises etc. are already booked. If a room is required in the Cologne Riehl Youth Hostel, we recommend that you do this as soon as possible. For further inquiries, we are at your disposal. Thanks very much!
« Last Edit: May 04, 2022, 03:50:24 pm by Sigurd Fastenrath »

Remy

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2022, 05:54:13 pm »
Hi,

Do you plan remote video access ?
As you know, to travel between UE countries, a pass is now required until mid 2023.

Regards
Rémy

Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2022, 06:41:02 pm »
Hi Remy

we have not decided wether we will record the meeting on video or not. We will discuss a live stream as well, but Thomas and me are not experts in this case, we will have a look at this even though.

Please give us more information on the travel topic. I do not understand what you exactly mean, sorry for this, I have to apologize.
I guess you - if at all - would travel from France to Germany and I do not see any restrictions regarding this. Do you have a link for me where I can get further details? Thank you in Advance!!


Neil Waldhauer

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2022, 03:50:04 pm »
Warpstock is likely to meet the same weekend. I think it would be interesting to have a video link between the meetings for a get-together. Considering time zones, I think the first session for Warpstock and the last session for Cologne might work for this.

In person meetings are for people to have interactions, and I think this would make both meetings a little bit better.
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Roderick Klein

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2022, 05:34:28 pm »
Hi Remy

we have not decided wether we will record the meeting on video or not. We will discuss a live stream as well, but Thomas and me are not experts in this case, we will have a look at this even though.

Please give us more information on the travel topic. I do not understand what you exactly mean, sorry for this, I have to apologize.
I guess you - if at all - would travel from France to Germany and I do not see any restrictions regarding this. Do you have a link for me where I can get further details? Thank you in Advance!!

When I organized WSE in Cologne, it turned out the internet connection in the youth hostel a few years ago was REALLY bad. They said they would get a fibre optic internet connection. So a video stream would be very difficult. At the time they had they had a few stacked DSL lines. When a busload of students arrived the video stream was dead. I streamed the video stream in the end via my mobile phone. I can help with that if I am present.

Roderick

Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #6 on: July 06, 2022, 01:17:42 pm »
Hi,

Thomas Müller and me would like to inform, that the User Meeting in Cologne this year will be the last one we are going to organize.

Reasons for this are:

- The number of participants decreases due to the understandable general circumstances (Corona, Community getting older)

- that ArcaNoae ultimately no longer has any major interest in the remaining "private/end users". Neither a version 5.1 has been released, nor a German translation, nor WLAN drivers, nor would there be without the work of Paul Smedley, Wim Brul, Lars Erdmann etc. (to name just a few and please forgive those who we have not named here have) sound support or webcam drivers etc. for OS/2 - eCS - ArcaOS on "modern hardware"

- This is not - as allways in the past and now - to blame ArcaNoae, it is just the way it is. We don't take it personally or feel offended, quite the opposite.

Be that as it may: We would be happy to receive feedback and as many participants as possible, and we will try to find a nice conclusion to our relaxed series of events one way or the other!

Many thanks to everyone who has supported us so wonderfully over the past 10 years with their contributions, suggestions, criticism and participation!
We will savor it one last time to the full!

Martin Iturbide

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #7 on: July 06, 2022, 05:32:51 pm »
Hi Sigurd.

It's sad to hear that news, but I completely understand the situation. These pademic years had been hard for the humanity, for business and the economy. Now that we are back from a pandemic, economy got hit again with the worldwide issues.

I have my self a policy about the things I do with/for the community, when it stops being fun, it is time to end it.

I wish you the best for the last "User Meeting - Cologne" and let me know whatever I have in my power to promote the event. In case things change in the future, I hope this is not wrote in stone and eventually the "User Meeting - Cologne" can return.

Regards
« Last Edit: July 06, 2022, 09:48:40 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #8 on: July 06, 2022, 10:34:51 pm »
Thank you very much for your kind words, Martin!

Everything comes to an end.

All the best and thank you very much for your great work for the community!!

Lewis Rosenthal

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #9 on: July 07, 2022, 02:32:57 am »
- that ArcaNoae ultimately no longer has any major interest in the remaining "private/end users". Neither a version 5.1 has been released, nor a German translation, nor WLAN drivers, nor would there be without the work of Paul Smedley, Wim Brul, Lars Erdmann etc. (to name just a few and please forgive those who we have not named here have) sound support or webcam drivers etc. for OS/2 - eCS - ArcaOS on "modern hardware"

Sigurd, my friend, I wish that when you state your opinion or what you observe from the outside, you would make that clear in your statements.

Arca Noae does indeed have a major interest in individual and small business users. In fact, the entire 5.1 development cycle has been mainly about getting UEFI and GPT support into the finished product for these users, as our enterprise clients have not even requested this. We have spent the better part of two years on the 5.1 project, and we are within months of release.

ArcaOS 5.1 will indeed be released in EN, DE, ES, IT, NL, RU, and likely FR, with DBCS releases still in the works (CN, KO, JA, TW). Do you really think that we sit on our hands all day?  ;D

WLAN drivers are in development. Do you realize the scope of work involved in implementing the wireless protocol stack for the platform from scratch? GenMAC sort of cheated around this by wrapping a Windows driver, but MultiMac WLAN drivers do not take this approach. The first of these drivers is in development RIGHT NOW and has been for SEVERAL MONTHS, at least.

You mention Paul. Did you know that Paul is part of the ArcaOS development team? In fact, just a few days ago, Paul and I were discussing bringing the Samba server component up to the Samba 4.11 level to match the client, and how best we want to handle the server configuration utilities.

Just because you don't see things outside the Company doesn't mean that we aren't busy inside the Company.

I understand that what you wrote is your perception and opinion, and that's fine. Just please say that and don't presume to speak for Arca Noae. We remain committed to all OS/2 users, regardless of how many licenses they purchase. Our goal, however, is not to implement every single driver for every single device in every single computer so that it may be used under OS/2. Rather, we produce an operating system, and drivers necessary to get that OS up and running on as many new and recent systems as possible. Wim's webcam work is great, and we fully support his efforts and applaud him for making his drivers available to all. The same goes for Lars and other third party developers. You should not, however, feel that they do their work specifically because Arca Noae isn't doing ours.

Lastly, I understand the frustration of organizing an event for fewer and fewer people. I recall my late friend, Stan Sidlov, the former Warpstock treasurer, saying to me that the attendance was dropping to such a point that we should just have a barbeque in his backyard - and that was over a dozen years ago. All tech gatherings have struggled with this problem, and frankly, the technology itself is partly to blame (we seemed to be able to do virtual meetings during the COVID-19 disaster without the hassle of travel and hotels). I've also said many times that it takes the same amount of work to do a conference for 10 people as it does for 100. In the end, if you have stuff to discuss next year, I suspect you'll reconsider the merits of investing your time and effort in another meeting.
Lewis
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Mike Kölling

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #10 on: July 07, 2022, 10:00:51 am »
Hi Lewis,

I cannot speak for Sigurd. However I know him for a long time by now. We have seen us in Cologne and we have worked together to get our TP X200 and TP 250 working with OS/2 as best as possible. But I can understand his opinion about AN focusing on industry. I guess things might be different if you had brought up in your newsletter a continuous stream of progress updates about the new AOS5.1, the long time ago announced WiFi drivers and so on. Staying in the dark as an outsider leads to guess-working about whats going on. Better communication from AN might be the key to overcome such guessing.

By the way, I need to buy a new laptop in near future. May plan has been to buy it after AOS5.1 is in the open to be sure it will run it on this laptop (which shall replace my older X250). Any update to the release date?

Last but not least I personally do appreciate your work and efforts very much - Thanks for that. And I am sure making OS/2 ready to work on recent hardware is a hard task for a small company.

Greetings from Potsdam / Germany,
Mike

Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #11 on: July 07, 2022, 10:02:28 am »
Hi Lewis,

thanks for your words, I know that you are usually do not have the time to answer in a forum because you invest it in the work on ArcaOS.

Though I try to speak english for about 50 Years now, I still can not express my thougths in the same way as I am able to do this in my mother tongue, German.

What I worte is what Thomas Müller and me think about the current situation and what we concluded from this regarding organizing an event like we did.

It is as allways our personal view, in this case here I do now only speak for myself.

We just summed up what did happen to our personal situation regarding OS/2. As I wrote we did not take anything personal. We just looked from our point of view: what is the current situation, what would we have expected or wished to be it as of today.

I made it clear not only above but allways when I wrote about ArcaOS / ArcaNoae that I am not interested in nor in the position to make a judgement about the work that is going on or not at ArcaNoae. I am not entitled to that.

We looked from what we know and what we can have access to today. The things I mentioned above are things we would like to have had, may be "exaggerated expectiations" from both of us.

But the situation is for us the way it is.

It was a pleasure for us to organize the meetings, it was allways a great time! We are and have been allways gratefull that attenders took part even from far destinations like Austria or Holland, for some the journey to come took more time then the time we could spent together. That was a great honour for us.

So, we - Thomas Müller and me - both have a clue without knowing exactly how much work you and your team are investing in ArcaOS and the big milestones you already mastered (USB 3, ACPI ect. etc.) and you will master.

I wish you all the best, most - like to all the others here in the forums - I wish that all of you stay healthy, and in a secure and peacefull place!

Sigurd



« Last Edit: July 07, 2022, 10:04:13 am by Sigurd Fastenrath »

Lewis Rosenthal

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #12 on: July 09, 2022, 03:32:11 am »
Hi, Mike...

But I can understand his opinion about AN focusing on industry. I guess things might be different if you had brought up in your newsletter a continuous stream of progress updates about the new AOS5.1, the long time ago announced WiFi drivers and so on. Staying in the dark as an outsider leads to guess-working about whats going on. Better communication from AN might be the key to overcome such guessing.

Whenever the question arises about us not providing enough updates, I answer that with the question:

If we are still working on things, what should we say in a blog post?

In other words, we've said that we are working on ArcaOS 5.1, UEFI, GPT, WLAN drivers, and other things. Nothing has changed. We're still working on these things, and nothing has reached the point of us being able to release it as finished product. I could put that in a blog post every week, but then our blog posts would go from being few and informative to being frequent and redundant, saying nothing of any value.

We haven't gone out of business. We are processing new orders every day. We have released a steady stream of updates to USB, ACPI, and other things, including releasing a new NVMe driver (again, not for any commercial customer in particular, and not even prompted by a request from a commercial customer). I fail to see how or why anyone would get the impression that we had somehow shifted our focus from individual and small business users to large enterprises.

Again, to reassure everyone reading here:

Arca Noae remains committed to keeping OS/2 running on as many modern, bare metal systems as possible for as long as possible, whether those systems are owned by individuals at home or at school, or by businesses, small or large. Our driving force is just to keep OS/2 viable for those who need it or want an alternative to the ever-more-invasive mainstream OSes and the Powers behind them (Big Tech).

Sigurd, my friend:

We looked from what we know and what we can have access to today. The things I mentioned above are things we would like to have had, may be "exaggerated expectiations" from both of us.

I can understand about exaggerated expectations. Arca Noae's human development resources are limited. Whereas IBM could put a dozen or more engineers on a single task, we have a dozen or so tasks for a single engineer. This kind of flips the development cycle on its head. We have a queue of projects running in order to get to the next release. GPT was a major part of getting us off the ground (though GPT is by no means a requirement for UEFI - far from it). UEFI has been a monumental task, and then integrating that with the traditional BIOS install which we have had since ArcaOS 5.0, so that one ISO can boot under both environments and the installer can intelligently provide the correct options for the booted environment (correct options=ESP selection, as the ESP is necessary for UEFI boot, but makes no sense under traditional BIOS), has taken an enormous amount of time and effort. It is not easy to re-imagine the OS/2 installation process with UEFI involved, as it's decidedly un-OS/2-like.  :)

Somewhere in that work queue is continued USB3 development as tickets are submitted about this and that not working under a given controller (and USB technology itself - not the drivers we have on OS/2, but the specs and mis-application or ignorance of them by hardware manufacturers - continues to be an ongoing uphill slog). Behind that - and I do mean at the end of that list of priorities - is WLAN support, which really is moving along (though not ready for even a technology preview, yet).

The ordering is simple: First, be able to boot the machine. Next, be able to connect it to things, such as USB and LAN. If there are already supported drivers for wired networking, that's an acceptable workaround using bridge devices until such time as we can focus more attention on WLAN driver development. Otherwise, we'd be "all dressed up with nowhere to go," because who cares about a Wi-Fi driver when the computer can't boot or the display is black?

I understand that what's important to some may not be what's important to others or that on a scale of want-like-need-urgent, people will have many of the same things placed in different categories ("I have no working video, so video is urgent, while Wi-Fi is something which would be nice to have;" or, "My computer boots, video is fine, but I have no working keyboard or mouse - and only a single xHCI controller, so working USB is urgent.")...

Again, I fully understand the amount of work which goes into organizing a meeting of any type, and at a certain point, it's normal to stop and reassess the amount of time and energy vs the return on that human investment - for all concerned. I just don't know that ArcaOS 5.1 or Wi-Fi driver availability today would really make much of a difference in that picture (though it would give you more topics to cover, and considering that we really do anticipate 5.1 to be GA in the next couple of months - yes, we're that close - you may indeed have lots more to discuss by the time November rolls around).

ATB
Lewis
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Alfredo Fernández Díaz

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #13 on: July 09, 2022, 04:02:51 pm »
Whenever the question arises about us not providing enough updates, I answer that with the question:

If we are still working on things, what should we say in a blog post?
A good answer/question that deserves another on its own. If anything absolutely and fatally catastrophic happened, what would you say in a blog post? By definition, nothing. So how would people know what happened? Probably by poking around after a while, starting here -- oh, what a coincidence! ;)

It is good to hear that you are not dead (you owe me email replies -- will be glad to resend the messages if they got lost), but frankly it would be even better to hear signs of life every once in a while, "Still working hard pushing X/Y/Z <Last update on such-and-such>" would be more than enough for me. I agree that that is still not very informative, though, and thus no need to say it too often. But maybe you could spend literally two minutes on doing that every two months?

Please take this as a constructive criticism, for that is how it is intended -- I am guilty of exactly the same somewhere else, and I (hate to) admit that people are right when I am told so. It is incredible how much a simple, periodic 'still working on it, not quite there yet' spares me when I remember to issue one :)

Lewis Rosenthal

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Re: User Meeting Cologne November, 5th 2022 confirmed
« Reply #14 on: July 09, 2022, 10:54:04 pm »
Greetings...

you owe me email replies -- will be glad to resend the messages if they got lost

My friend, I sent you no less than five replies to your Yahoo! address on June 5, in response to your email to me of the same day from that same account, when I was recovering from cataract surgery and could barely see the screen. To date, I have no follow-ups from you, so...  ;)

I have another (much longer) one in draft which I'll finish one day soon (I hope).

As always, I am open to suggestions as to just what to say in such "we're still working on it; don't give up...there's still a pulse" posts which are not simply that. You're on the dev team, so if you ever feel that we've been sitting silent for too long, feel free to post something to the dev mailing list (substantive suggestions for verbiage always welcome and a plus), and I'll do my best to snap out of my doldrums to oblige.

You see, for me, in the thick of the forest, it's hard to tell what others might conjure...er...imagine...er...surmise left to their own devices. As I said to a consulting client a few years ago, in response to his comment to me about the age of most of the OS/2 code in his enterprise, "I see new OS/2 software every day."

Cheers
Lewis
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