Author Topic: Arca Noae should be directly involved in web browser development efforts  (Read 16777 times)

Dave Yeo

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The other side is financing. I don't know much about Arca Noae's internals, not even sure of how many people are involved though I have a better idea then most here. They have to pay IBM some amount for every copy of AOS sold or given away. No idea of how much but I'd imagine IBM wants enough that the profit margin on AOS isn't that high. I don't think they have many enterprise customers and the number of users has been steadily dropping. I think it is as much hobby and side hustle for the owners and not something that they are getting rich on and I doubt they have the resources to pay for browser development besides supplying a bit of infrastructure and similar. I also don't think the community is big enough to support much either.
All the above is my opinion as I don't know much about the internals of Arca Noae.

Michael

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What might be a better option would be a kind of XP Mode, like in Windows 7. A lean and fast virtual environment for running a modern browser. And as if that weren't dreamy enough, perhaps even seamless on the WPS.

Dave Yeo

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What might be a better option would be a kind of XP Mode, like in Windows 7. A lean and fast virtual environment for running a modern browser. And as if that weren't dreamy enough, perhaps even seamless on the WPS.

I don't know about a virtual machine. We do have Odin (think WINE). It hasn't been worked on in a while but you can run some Win32 programs, and can compile some Win32 programs to look native. In the past, Adobe Acrobat, OpenJDK for example have had their Win32 code recompiled on OS/2. Last time we went through this in the IE days, there was actually an official version of Opera built this way.
It would take syncing a recent version of WINE into Odin, probably a big job by skilled people, but a possibility.
Problem is that Win32 is going away. Less and less support it and I think Qt6 doesn't support it and not sure about others.

Michael

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I was thinking more along the lines of a lean Linux or BSD. And while I'm dreaming, I wanted it to run as a 64-bit system in the virtual environment and be able to use memory above the 4GB limit.

All of this is purely theoretical, of course, and without knowing whether it would even be technically possible.

Roderick Klein

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What might be a better option would be a kind of XP Mode, like in Windows 7. A lean and fast virtual environment for running a modern browser. And as if that weren't dreamy enough, perhaps even seamless on the WPS.

It can work, however the big issue is that if you look how much memory the VM needs, plus the memory to run the OS + the browser. With the limited memory ArcaOS has it will pretty quickly run out of gas.

All discussions about PAE memory is sadly a big fat none starter. Idea's to make any program on OS/2 use PAE memory is a pipe dream. Now the current ArcaOS loader enables you to put a ramdrive in PAE memory. However the amount of addressable memory is not increased. The PAE code is extremely cool bit of codingin the ArcaOS loader. However it has a hidden cost in terms of performance. When you want to access memory above the 4 GB address range (for the ram drive) the loader effectively holds the CPU, switched CPU to PAE mode safe stack again and switch back. I am not describing it technically 100% accurate but PAE support via the UEFI loader has performance cost. There is BTW no other way to implement this.

Patch the OS/2 kernel to support PAE would possibly take about 6 to 12 months of full time. It would be a gigantic job. But then the drivers  need to be updated for this.
I looked at this with Steve Levine years ago and its to much work that it will mostl likely never work.

One of the things that needs to be looked at is if the memory consumption of the QT webkit engine can be reduced. But this is currently under research. I will have more news on QT development. Tune into Warpstock Europe video stream, details on wwww.warpstock.eu.

Roderick

JTA

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OS/2 *is* dead ... too many problems in too many technical areas to really do what you want, unless lots of trade-offs are made ... in the "old days", we typically abandoned these OS's, and the user base went into decline. The trend of use is generally downward ...

But, with recent technology, all dead OS's can be revived now, and uses found for it that suit the interested end-user's goals of putting it to work again. With a HostOS (Windows/Linux), virtualization (Virtualbox), and Winflector (pipe 64-bit apps directly into OS/2), all running on a single modern hardware platform (laptop/desktop, i7, 32gb ram, ssd's), there are no OS/2 problems of any kind. The trend of use can be reversed, and made upward again ...

AN does their part, because generally ArcaOS is much better than Warp 4.52 ... use it standalone if you must, but it slots into AToF and improves many things over 4.52 use. Rather than beat up on AN to solve all those remaining problems with OS/2 in general, just use AToF to bypass every single one of them.

AToF just one of your modern laptops or dekstops (see the virtualization folder for the process), and you will be enabled to put OS/2 back to work again. You can use OS/2 and have all the modern ram, browsers, device support you can eat. I demonstrated AToF at Warpstock 2023 ... it just works, and I cannot see any other short-term solution to putting OS/2 back to work again (not without all those trade-offs).

It is very hard to get folks to try new things ... AToF languishes because (I think) there isn't a comparable solution to the Linux LiveCD/USB process. But, I think I've found all the pieces to build that, such that one can boot up a USB key and have a live AToF environment to test. Don't know if it'll be ready for Warpstock 2025.

Long-term, I think I even see a path for OS/2 to get to 64-bits (because it's been enabled in the past), but as the Beatles say ... "it's a long and winding road".

Getting back to the OP issue ... just AToF a box, and you are good to go with OS/2 or ArcaOS, and modern browsers.

Hope this helps ...
« Last Edit: April 27, 2025, 05:04:44 pm by JTA »

Dariusz Piatkowski

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JTA!

...With a HostOS (Windows/Linux), virtualization (Virtualbox), and Winflector (pipe 64-bit apps directly into OS/2), all running on a single modern hardware platform (laptop/desktop, i7, 32gb ram, ssd's), there are no OS/2 problems of any kind. The trend of use can be reversed, and made upward again...

Great post...I'm particularly interested in Winflector as I've been using Thinstuff for a while now which relies on the RDP protocol to share individual apps. On our end I use FreeRDP, and that works very well indeed.

Having said that, Thinstuff does not support Win10, and so there is a definite end-of-the-road there, and by the looks of it Winflector certainly does.

Looking at Winflector site though they talk about using "client" to connect to the hosted Apps, so what does that look like on our OS/2 platform? Is that RDP still?

Thanks,
-Dariusz

JTA

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Winflector has server running on the AToF HostOS (as a service), and the native client running on some other OS where you want the windows apps to be displayed, in a native OS window frame. Don't know what the internal protocol is, but it works very well on AToF solutions, whereas RDP implementations caused me varying levels of grief.

Where there isn't a dedicated OS native client, Winflector also supports any browser with minimal capabilities (html 5, iirc), and our old OS/2 firefox fits this need. So, you can send any Window app, even 64-bit, over to the OS/2 vm.

Luckily, Winflector offers a free license, so it's pretty much available to all. I've asked them to build an OS/2 native 32-bit client, via their forums. AN could possibly help with this, and I've asked unofficially for them to push from their side, but ... no visible progress at either end.

Craig Miller

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For whats it's worth, I have ArcaOS (5.1) running on an IBM T43 and for the first time in a long time, its running near flawlessly because of the upgrades Arca Noae have added over the years.

With that, the major issue I have is email and browser usage.

I think for a typical user, these two internet apps ARE the apps that have to work.

We are a small group and I know even if we got a new/updated browser, we will always have to live with compromises but that is ok.

What is not ok is I am almost to the point where I can't use Firefox  45.9.0 ESR for 80% of the sites I want to go to. I can't use email at all.

I don't expect miracles but I do hope there is a day to get these two apps working closer to where I don't have to look into remoting into another computer.

On a side note, I am REALLY hoping AI moves forward to the point it can help with programming. My bother is a programmer right now and uses it a bit to help him.

People that take their time to port/bring new apps to Arca OS are amazing but we have only have a few of them. I can't program, just don't have the mind set for it but if AI can help people like me contribute that would be a game changer.

I don't know if that will ever happen but I can dream =)

JTA

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AN does an amazing job with ArcaOS (AOS), and for me, running it in a VM, it is next to flawless (replacing Warp 4.52 in much of my OS/2 use).

Modern apps are indeed the only major remaining problem (*along with* 32-bit OS and certain device driver issues), but modern apps are a very intractable problem, as these have multiplied in various 64-bit code bases and feature sets. If you want to do something, there's a modern application for it ... but only if you are on a modern (64-bit) OS.

AN has said the "modern app" (browser) problem is not theirs to solve ... their focus is AOS. Their (commercial) base must not need a browser? And, their individual user base AOS sales aren't grossly impacted with the lack of such modern apps? They do their best to support those developers who are working on app availability in many ways, plus they've added ANPM to bring over more apps when available from porting. That's impressive ...

For those not wanting to run AOS in a VM, but rather directly on hardware, much of the entire set of modern apps will remain out of reach, unless you utilize RDP/RDC (to another machine), or Winflector (from another machine). Or wait for porting of a (dwindling?) small subset of all modern apps.

AToF is my solution to the modern app problem on OS/2, and running the entire AToF scheme on a laptop like your T43 should be no problem (if you can wrap your head around the AToF scheme). AToF is a simple combination of modern tools from our existing computing toolbox (beefy laptop/desktop, HostOS, Virtualbox, Winflector). As a bonus, you'll have little to no remaining 64-bit, device driver, or modern app problems, while booting into and working entirely in your ArcaOS desktop.

It must be quite the experience to run OS/2 (directly) on T43 hardware or similar, and perhaps it harkens back to the good ol' days, with IBM "suits" looking over both shoulders as we used their stuff, but I'd have to agree that you need a modern browser and email to live entirely in OS/2 on one machine in today's world. I personally can't live with most computing problems, and having experienced them just once, I immediately look for any solution that gets me out of said problems, vs the trade-off of "living with the problem(s)." Programming folks program their way out of problems, however long that takes, but us (old?) sysadmins (not being programmers) integrate thru or otherwise work around problems ... trying to get to a solution "now".

AFAIK, only AToF gets us 99% of the way there on a single machine like your laptop, potentially solving ALL problems. I hope to have an updated AToF at one of the upcoming Warpstock events ... I last presented it at Warpstock 2023.

But, you can try it right now ... wipe your machine (after backing up your data), load a HostOS, Virtualbox, and Winflector. Then put AOS into a vm ... done ... no more intractable problems; a modern browser and email app running on the AOS desktop, within the Winflector client. And, let me know what I can do to get AToF to 99.9% ...