OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - General > Events
Warpstock Europe 2024 Follow Up
Andrew Stephenson:
I watched the WarpStock broadcasts (some of them, at least) and was grateful that the team are working to keep OS/2's technology up-to-date. These days, there seem to be many reasons to worry about the future of OSes that do not follow the latest fashion, such as "AI", which seem designed more to put money into the pockets of a few large corporations than to serve the needs of little people. I also fear there may soon be a change in what is regarded as normal computer hardware, typified by descendants of the IBM PC. Must we soon keep our systems on-line, talking to massive servers owned by folks who demand regular rent from us? Look at the legal trouble Adobe got themselves into recently by doing this; and they were once the Good Guys, supplying free Acrobat PDF readers suited to many OSes.
I am an AOS-5.1 (ex-Warp since the 1980s) End User, not a Developer. My system has humble needs. I do not need a "cloud" to store data. I use my own Intelligence, not somebody else's grandiose Artificial aids to thinking. My work can be done at clock speeds far slower than modern multi-gigahertz marvels. That said, if a m/c runs at super-whizzy speed and its extra RAM does not get in my way and its USB-variant connectors actually connect usefully, I am content to allow them onto my desk.
What it comes down to: are we on the threshold of an evolutionary step? A few years hence, will there be one design of m/cs for Power Users ("all hail the Great AI!") and another set for traditional Practical Modest Users loyal to the likes of OS/2 and Linux (and maybe even DOS)?
To pick up on some comments...
--- Quote from: Sigurd Fastenrath on June 19, 2024, 01:39:37 pm ---After 7 (!) years, to still come and say how difficult a German translation is (even though almost all tools are available in German translation) is now just ridiculous.
The community here in Germany is more or less dead.
--- End quote ---
The WarpStock claims that German causes problems when translating from English puzzled me. After all, those two languages are cousins; and, indeed, European languages have become cross-connected over the centuries, through processes like commerce, invasion, tourism, science and literature. Words and phrases get borrowed ("loan words" like "le parking" in French, which apparently annoy the French Academy). Is it the structure of formal German (eg, verb at the end of a sentence) which causes trouble? (FWIW, I know a joke about that.) As some of our pseudo-English-speaking USian friends say: go figure.
One thing I REALLY want to see: AOS software packaged so nobody must download supportive software or make special tweaks to the system before it will work. I wasted >EUR25 on OpenOffice and have yet to install it -- yet OO is promoted as the great saviour of modern computer-based clerical work, which it could be if packaged conveniently and was not so hugely clumsy and... and... and... (You get the idea?)
Martin Iturbide:
Hello
--- Quote from: Andrew Stephenson on June 19, 2024, 04:56:05 pm ---The WarpStock claims that German causes problems when translating from English puzzled me.
--- End quote ---
About this, what I understood is that German, just like Spanish, has some very long words that may not look right in the GUI, since elements like tabs, buttons, label text are visual designed in English and when you put longer text it breaks how the GUI looks (or just looks bad). I had been told that German have very long words too, even longer than Spanish.
Regards
Martin Iturbide:
Hello
I think that Sigurd has very good points.
UEFI is very important since if ArcaOS does not boot, the rest it is just secondary, and now newer machines does not come with BIOS compatibility mode, just plain UEFI. It is not just for people that want to dual boot.
But, yes, what about the web browser, better audio driver and wifi drivers?
In my opinion, the priority should be the browser (now), since we are lacking some applications, a solid browser can help us to work out some lack of native applications with web apps.
I feel like the effort to translate ArcaOS, at the level of high quality that Arca Noae wants, it is taking too much resources. Arca Noae should focus now on the browser with all that it involves like Qt6, the javascript engine, etc. Why Arca Noae? They are the only ones with a commercial product that generates income on this community.
Regards
Sigurd Fastenrath:
--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on June 19, 2024, 09:16:26 pm ---In my opinion, the priority should be the browser (now), since we are lacking some applications, a solid browser can help us to work out some lack of native applications with web apps.
I feel like the effort to translate ArcaOS, at the level of high quality that Arca Noae wants, it is taking too much resources. Arca Noae should focus now on the browser with all that it involves like Qt6, the javascript engine, etc. Why Arca Noae? They are the only ones with a commercial product that generates income on this community.
Regards
--- End quote ---
Hi Martin,
but here comes the main hopeless problem with ArcaOS:
On allmost all modern system (later than Intel Core i6 Generation) ArcaOS can only adress between 1 and 1.5GB of RAM, due to the fact that more and more Hardware manufactors reserve adress space below 4GB in BIOS for drivers.
And for every new browser to come, it will rely on QT6, and for this, one need at least 2 to 2.5GB of RAM. I tested Dooble on "modern" Hardware with only 1.25GB visible RAM, and it simply do not start, the same goes for Open Office.
As David A. told me some years ago there is no way to overcome this "Memory hole problem" for ArcaOS simply due to tecnical Limitations of the 32 BIT Operating System.
So, from an end users Perspective: No more RAM - no Browser nor Open Office.
As long as the RAM problem is not solved, UEFI and GPT are practical useless on real hardware, and so is ArcaOS.
Inside a Virtualization you can acess the full 3.5 to 4 GB of RAM, but UEFI and GPT are useless there, so is ArcaOS as you can simply achieve the same with an OS/2 Warp 4.52 or even 4 with FP 15.
ivan:
Hi Sigurd,
I am not seeing what you are here. I can run OpenOffice without problems and I have enough memory free to do other things.
mem -v gives
Total physical memory: 7,906 MB
Accessible to system: 3,311 MB
Additional (PAE) memory: 4,595 MB
Resident memory: 202 MB
Available virtual memory: 2,449 MB
Available process memory:
Private low memory: 224 MB
Private high memory: 2,240 MB
Shared low memory: 24 MB
Shared high memory: 2,181 MB
I don't know if the fact I am using AMD Ryzen 3 processors with built in graphics has anything to do with it (I gave up using Intel processors years ago in the days of the 486).
For a browser I use Firefox on Linux Mint and transfer anything I want to OS/2 via the network.
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