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Messages - Ibrahim Hakeem

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1
Applications / Re: themes
« on: February 19, 2024, 09:27:04 am »
What were your steps to migrate eSchemes from eCS to ArcaOS?

Hi David. If I recall correctly, all that I had to do was copy over the eSchemes/ThemeMGR folder from eCS, under the same directory structure as it's found in eCS.

2
Applications / Re: themes
« on: February 05, 2024, 04:15:13 am »
I'd just like to comment:

I bought eComstation 2.1 before some couple of years before ArcaOS. When I eventually got ArcaOS, the first thing I did was migrate eSchemes and a few other programs that came with ECS - although if I recall correctly, it's called ThemeMGR in the installation files. For any who may be curious, it's worked perfectly for me across multiple releases of 5.0.x and now 5.1.

I believe AN is making use of a restricted version of eSchemes/ThemeMGR in order to get the look and feel that we have in ArcaOS, the dependencies are all there and usage of this program in the ArcaOS environment is way too simple for me to assume otherwise.

With all this being said, I don't think ECS can be bought anymore and even if it could be, it's probably not worth spending upwards of 100USD for a theme manager.


Quote
I tried to update my NeoWPS registration from Mensys.  Everytime it said an email was sent, I never received it.  I beginning to wonder if the US government is blocking it.  Buying software from Russia is becoming impossible.

The Mensys website has been gradually decaying for some time, I wouldn't be surprised if their mailer is acting up at this point.

3
Quote from: Martin Iturbide

Hi Ibrahim

The Warpstock quote was from 2021-06-03. This is an old thread, I also got confused.

FYI: The Warpstock board is currently discussing the venue for Warpstock 2023.

Regards

Hi Martin, thank you for clearing that up. I'm glad to see that the Warpstock board is talking about venues, I was concerned that there just might not be an event this year. If 5.1's not public by then, it'll be a chance for us to get some much-needed answers!

4
when will version 5.1 of ArcaOS be released?

When it's ready? Should be some more information at Warpstock on Saturday.

Pardon me, but I haven't seen any promotions or adverts for a Warpstock event in 2023 in neither the EU nor US sites, let alone that it is coming up on Saturday. Could someone share a link?

5
Off Topic discussions / Re: Car rides etc, was Re: Qt6 Development
« on: May 07, 2023, 08:44:23 am »
As far as long roadtrips go, I've got a Trusty Suzuki Hayabusa which is my go-to for anything interstate.

On the matter of vehicles which refuse to die... The bike I had previous to my current Busa was a 1998 Honda ST1100 which was still going strong at the time I sold it. The odometer had just ticked over 350,000Ks and the bloke buying it got it specifically for a Melbourne to Perth trip. It still lives on as a middle-finger to Honda Australia  ;D

6
Programming / Re: Compiling OpenJDK
« on: April 10, 2023, 06:08:27 am »
Apologies if this sounds silly, but has the possibility of porting a Linux release of OpenJDK been considered?

7
Programming / Re: Compiling OpenJDK
« on: April 08, 2023, 08:52:56 pm »
Well if nothing else, there is a b49 at https://github.com/openjdk/jdk6 (vs our current b27)

Edit: https://download.oracle.com/otn/java/jdk/6u45-b06/jdk-6u45-windows-i586.exe might help for the j2sdk-image directory

I see Oracle wants a login to download that :( Anyone all ready have one?

Dave, I have sent you a PM.

8
Quite a few ideas come to mind, but I'll list the ones I believe Arca Noae would be more likely to roadmap, at least in the long-term.

> A new release of OpenJDK: 1.6's time came and went some time ago, with it's LTS period ending just over 4 years ago. Given how many times it's been mentioned in Warpstock events since 2021, I'm somewhat optimistic that we will see this raised as a priority sooner than later.

> Improved memory management: As Neil has mentioned, a big peril of running ArcaOS on modern hardware is the increasing shortage of RAM which the user has access to. Having PAE would be a godsend and a half, but any kind of improved memory management is much welcome.

> An updated version of SNAP with support for more video chipsets: Moving away from VESA(Panorama) would not only help with performance/stability issues related to video playback and 3D rendering - it would resurrect an expansive library of software which hasn't been usable in quite some years due to being only GRADD-compatible. The last item in this list is an example directly affected by this.

> QEMU (or similar): Yes, I'm bringing this up once again. AN has stated their intentions on multiple occasions to address retro x86 gamers as a target demographic - even stating it to be the focus of a subsequent 5.1 update. Since we have WINOS/2 and DOS, adding the ability to run Windows 9x and maybe even early Linux distros would do quite well.

9
Games / Re: Minecraft
« on: February 08, 2023, 02:35:00 am »
From personal memory, even the releases of Minecraft which can run under OpenJDK 6 will not start due to the OpenGL requirements.

The only 3D Java game I was ever able to run was Oldschool RS (Version of Runescape from 2007) until they increased the Java requirements a few years back. Keep in mind, that game runs entirely off a software renderer.

10
General Discussion / Re: ArcaOS on Youtube @MichaelMJD
« on: February 03, 2023, 09:43:13 am »
I am glad we now have answers in regards to what happened. With increasing public attention - I believe it would strongly benefit AN to hire someone who can more capably investigate license theft/piracy, a public relations manager couldn't possibly hurt either. This case highlights a dire need for both.

It's well understood at this point that Arca Noae's primary focus is on their corporate clientele, but for their sake, I believe they'd best be hiring the expected faculties for a business which is focused on selling a software product in this day and age.

Regardless, a public statement from Arca Noae wrapping up this situation in addition to a guided interview with Michael would greatly benefit both sides of this problem, at least from a PR perspective.

Personally, I had been planning on starting a Youtube channel highlighting my day-to-day experiences upon the release of 5.1. At this point, I'm highly unsure of this being a good idea - at least until AN fixes up their act. I'm certain already established channels who may have had the idea of creating any content regarding AOS are feeling the same.


Lastly, to quote a comment from from the video:
Quote
If they believed that imposter email imagine how easy it would be to trick them into handing over all you data that was collected when purchasing this software lmao

There are some severe implications to such a haphazard approach to license management.

11
General Discussion / Re: ArcaOS on Youtube @MichaelMJD
« on: February 01, 2023, 02:18:56 pm »
MichaelMJD's review was not only one of the best production value videos regarding OS/2 in a long time... His channel has a wide-reach of enthusiasts who would be the most likely to spend money on ArcaOS licenses. This is simply unacceptable on Arca Noae's part. As far as I'm aware, Michael was pretty forthright and honest with his review and in spite of all the flaws, still came off with highly positive feelings regarding our platform.

I'm astounded that a company with virtually no competition on the OS/2 platform would go to such an extent. What are potential buyers gonna do, go to Ecomstation? Install Warp 4.52?

Most of Michael's viewers are within the age bracket of 20 to 30. With this action, all that AN has done at this point is further stifle their hopes of market viability for their 5.1.x "retro gamer release". My personal theory is that they want to try to suppress coverage until 5.1 is out, this is not the way to go about it. I say this as someone who fits squarely in this demographic, if I saw this conduct with no prior history with the OS/2 platform, I would absolutely not drop the 129 USD on ArcaOS after witnessing this.

All in all; Arca Noae and Lewis in particular, you have taken down an overall positive review from one of the bigger retro enthusiasts on Youtube for no apparent reason. Please consider the implications of this action on an untapped market you have repeatedly stated you wish to target.

My personal recommendation: release a fully honest explanation as to why the video was taken down and perhaps conduct an interview/guided-tour with Michael regarding 5.1. I will also repeat this - his audience is a large portion of your target enthusiast market, do not anger your target market, especially this close to a major release.

12
Hardware / Multi-stream Audio - A Theory
« on: November 10, 2022, 01:38:44 pm »
I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not very familiar with OS/2's driver structure/methodology.
This idea might be completely moot from the get-go but I figured there's no harm in seeing where discussion regarding it's feasibility might lead; especially considering how essential multi-stream audio is for any desktop OS and in particular, nearing the release of a browser which is very liable to support multimedia playback in a way we haven't seen for quite a few years.

I was setting up a software audio mixer on Windows earlier today. Like a lot of audio mixers - it interfaces with programs using a driver which relays all audio streams to the mixer program, the mixer program then sends the audio through to the hardware driver as a single combined stream.

It's worth noting a lot of Linux distros which use ALSA, from which Uniaud is based, run PulseAudio as a middleware audio mixer much in the way I have described in the above paragraph. I'm unsure if this concept has ever been toyed with in the OS/2 ecosystem, let alone if anything like it has existed in the past decade (accounting for the fact that some software designed for ECS no longer works in ArcaOS, i.e QEMU) .

Since ALSA(Uniaud) has already been ported to OS/2 with Paul Smedley to thank for the updated 32 bit builds, could there be any possibility for a PulseAudio port? Considering that the project has been active since 2004, perhaps an older build could be a candidate for this undertaking. Keeping in mind that ALSA and PulseAudio are often used in tandem as the two halves of the Linux audio package and it's prominence in being a go-to solution, I am hoping they would be able to cooperate as intended to a similar extent in OS/2.


Lastly, for what it's worth, I put together a rough diagram for how such a solution may possibly work - it does match quite closely to Pulseaudio's flow however.



- Ibrahim

13
Hardware / Re: Turn off Laptop Display
« on: October 18, 2022, 03:16:22 am »
Hi Neil, I just wanted to chime in as a T450S user.

Aside from closing the laptop, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn off the screen.
Dave raises a good point - however, the function keys for screen controls don't even seem to register in the BIOS as they should. I split the blame between our limited ACPI support and negligence from Lenovo.

Interesting note to add: I recall asking about brightness controls for the T450S in a previous Warpstock event. Forgive me for not remembering who it was, but someone from ArcaNoae responded in IRC saying it might be possible, but upon looking at a few tables/resources then recanted by stating it isn't feasible without some serious work.

I personally reckon it wouldn't hurt for there to be at least some research undertaken for improved ACPI support, that way it could perhaps be outsourced to a passionate enough developer or maybe even BitWise. I can't imagine AN themselves would be taking up writing the necessary drivers anytime soon as it seems they've already got a lot on their plate with the current roadmap.

14
Applications / Re: OpenSource WishList
« on: September 14, 2022, 12:41:36 pm »
Just throwing in my wish here, as per Martin's recommendation:

This quote is from a post I made on a new release of QEMU for ArcaOS on May 2021 - I've edited it to reflect my new views on the matter, chiefly that a good build of QEMU should be able to totally replace VirtualBox as our main virtualization solution.
My reasoning for QEMU is Arca Noae's desire to appeal to retro gamers. DOS and WINOS/2 may cover their bases fairly well, but without Windows 9x (and possibly Win2k/XP to a limited extent) - we're missing a lot of bases.

Note: A couple of QEMU builds for OS/2 and Ecomstation are floating around but do not work on ArcaOS

Quote
>Stable enough for everyday use
>Smooth Windows 95/98 emulation
>Audio, preferably SB16 compatible emulation
>3D acceleration support (Running something like Flight Simulator 98 at mid-high settings at around 50FPS should theoretically be easy to achieve, especially with 5.1's new VEFI driver)
>A reliable GUI for configuring and launching VMs
>Networking support

Effectively, something that's going to be solid for mid-high range Win9x gaming.

I have a hunch this will most likely be 2.4.x or earlier. Once again like others have said, there's no need to build a newer version that's going to have more compilation related headaches - especially when modern Linux distros are still going off 2.4.x code without any complaint. I understand this will require more effort than a simple compile n' go situation especially with the desired specifications listed, but I believe there to be very viable use-case for a new and reasonably stable release of Qemu for our platform

From what I've read - QEMU, especially the slightly older builds, should not be too difficult to port. My personal take on the matter is that Arca Noae could support it and could go as far as to make it a product. A lot of ArcaOS users could reasonably rely on the platform more if Windows emulation was improved.

15
Events / Re: Warpstock 2022 - Presentations
« on: September 13, 2022, 11:47:56 pm »
I don't mean to sound pushy, but I'd love for there to be some discussion regarding the viabiltiy of QEMU and perhaps any intentions of releasing a build - I think this would be suited more as a question rather than a presentation point however.

Optional reading spiel:
It's no secret - I'm a more than a bit passionate about having a working and stable QEMU build for ArcaOS (I've got a few posts discussing it). In addition to being a perfect fit for the 'retro gaming' front (namely anything from Windows 9x requiring DirectX) which Arca Noae wants to approach, QEMU would very much be a welcome replacement to the problematic, featureless, resource-intensive and ever-aging Virtualbox.

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