ArcaOS 5.1 - First Impressions

[Martin Iturbide]

Hello

I would like to know your first impressions since ArcaOS 5.1 was recently released. It would be great if the brave ones to try ArcaOS 5.1 first will share:
- Experience with the UEFI supporting, turning off any CSM (Compatibility Mode) and just running with UEFI mode in real hardware
- Report UEFI hardware, even if it was already reported, but now turning on the UEFI option.
- Report DOS VDM and Win-OS2 support with UEFI support turned.
- Any other thing you may experience or that you want to share.

Regards

Update: I will like to congratulate Arca Noae and the people involved on this release. Even that right now there are some server problems to get the software, I need to express my joy about this important milestone.

[Rick Smith]

Greetings,

Id love to test it as soon as it allows me to purchase, their servers are so slow the payment times out and I cannot purchase...

Regards,

Rick

[Pete]

Hi

Thinking of putting together a new system and will try 5.1.0 then.

No doubt de-selecting DOS support during install will result in some bits of DOS getting installed and need a manual cleanup after install.


Regards

Pete

[Eugene Tucker]

Just finished burning the DVD. Will report As soon as I can.

[Eugene Tucker]

My CSM upgrade went smoothly. I have tried to creat a USB stick for future attemps but it complain there is not enough room for ARCAINST.ISO.

[David McKenna]

 Did a fresh install from DVD on my desktop to an empty NVME drive, BIOS set to UEFI only. Everything went smoothly. After, I actually have a little more memory available (10MB) than when using the CSM. Also, now all DOS and Windows sessions work - first time in years!

 I don't like the little window at boot to choose the boot partition because there is only one choice. I set the time-out to 1 second, but I would really like to just get rid of it - is there a way? I will never put another OS on this computer.

 No obvious change in performance, but it is still early.

 The real test will be my Win11 laptop - will need to shrink the Win partition to create space for ArcaOS...

  For the curious, I attached the testlog for the new install...

Regards,

[Rick Smith]

Ok,

So I finally got 5.1 installed on the NUC5 (intel) and its pretty solid.  I had tried 5.07 on this machine and had all those dos window problems that we have all experienced.  This is a fresh install of 5.1 and so far everything is working that I have tested.  I have not been able to update yet I get some errors there but will keep working at it.. IF you want to know my specific HW setup let me know how to print that out for you...

Regards

Rick

[Dave Yeo]

Hi David, simplest is if you can go to your BIOS to change the boot from LAUNCHER.EFI to BOOTX64.EFI. Can do it at a UEFI shell and it seems there's an utility to do it, not sure if it was only a beta thing and I forget the name of it.

[Martin Iturbide]

.... IF you want to know my specific HW setup let me know how to print that out for you...

Hi Rick

Yes, please let me know the Intel NUC model and post the hardware report from PCI.EXE or using TestLog also gets the hardware report.

Regards

[Martin Iturbide]

Did a fresh install from DVD on my desktop to an empty NVME drive, BIOS set to UEFI only. Everything went smoothly. After, I actually have a little more memory available (10MB) than when using the CSM. Also, now all DOS and Windows sessions work - first time in years!

Thanks for sharing the report David.
Can you please let me know the computer brand and model that you are using. If it is custom computer please let me know the mainboard brand and model.

Regards

[Rich Walsh]

I don't like the little window at boot to choose the boot partition because there is only one choice. I set the time-out to 1 second, but I would really like to just get rid of it - is there a way? I will never put another OS on this computer.

What about other OS/2 installs? If you want to get rid of it, open MiniLVM and select System->Boot Menu->Remove. Be aware that if you have multiple OS/2 partitions, the bootloader (os2ldr.efi) may present you with its own menu and ask you to select one.

No obvious change in performance, but it is still early.

Very little has actually changed: just the bootloader, and the video's VESA emulation. GPT (which is "optional") probably has an overhead penalty of 2% but on an NVME drive you'd never notice the difference. I've been running UEFI/GPT/NVME/SecureBoot/etc exclusively since last November and it just works (except when it hangs at the boot logo).

The real test will be my Win11 laptop - will need to shrink the Win partition to create space for ArcaOS...

Warning!! If your Win drives are encrypted by Bitlocker, get your Bitlocker key before you do anything! There's an option to retrieve it in the old Control Panel app.

[Eugene Tucker]

I have a couple of observations in UEFI the ASRock B550M-HDV went as smooth as can be. The UEFI is simple and easy to navigate. Arca OS 5.08 will not install on this board in CSM and it was all installed to a fresh NVME drive. The MSI B550-A=Pro is still a no go for me.. It froze on the install just ofter the items selected claiming the there was no 32bit video address available. I will play with it some more but Ivan lucked out with this board. but it could be an Issue with the AM4 5700G. I did update the ASUS TUF Gaming X550-Plus (wi-fi) it went without a hitch. I will get around to trying it in UEFI mode soon. If you are looking for a AMD AM4 board I say the ASRock and the ASUS are both good bets. I can only offer a caution on the MSI. Oh yeah the ASRock has DVI, VGA and a HDMI port for video no display port.

[David McKenna]

 Hi Martin,

  It's all in the testlog - Gigabyte B365M DS3H motherboard with i5-9600 CPU and 16GB RAM. Always build my own...

Regards,

[David McKenna]

 Hi Rich,

 Now that you mention it, there was another OS/2 install on the E: drive (the original install on SSD) that I was using as my 'training wheel' in case something went wrong. Once I'm confident I won't wobble, I'll remove E: and do as you say and delete the bootloader thing.

 Also, I thought I read that secure boot should be disabled in BIOS - is that not true?

 I don't think my laptop uses the bitlocker, but thanks for bringing it up - I'll definitely check that.

Regards,

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Eugene, sounds like your MSI B550-A=Pro doesn't have the video framebuffer accessible under 4GB's so unless something can be changed in the BIOS or such, it will be a no go. Need access to the video framebuffer and some systems do not allow it to be accessible in the address range that 32 bit is limited to.

Hi David, there should be a secure boot key on the install media, if you can figure out how to install it on yor computer, secure boot will work, but generally it is unsupported and should be turned off. Sounds like a later 5.1.x release will have the means to install the key.