1
Events / Warpstock 2025 USA - The end of my journey with ArcaOS
« on: November 08, 2025, 07:44:19 am »
Translated with Google from nativ German:
ArcaOS is dead to me.
The final nail in the coffin was Lewis's statement about the Wi-Fi driver in the latest Warpstock post. Of course, I knew it was unlikely to be released, but what really mattered was the way he explained and presented it.
The gist of it, as I understand it, is: "Who needs a Wi-Fi driver? We have LAN-to-Wi-Fi solutions, mini routers, etc. So what?"
I call that—excuse my language—pathetic!
ArcaNoae has been working independently on this for almost nine years. Drivers were developed for the eComstation even before that, and they've always pointed out, albeit with decreasing intensity each year, "We hear you, the Wi-Fi driver is on our list, etc., etc." It's perfectly legitimate for you to decide what you develop, but pretending for years about a development that was never seriously intended (there's no other conclusion to be drawn) and will never come to pass is one thing; quite another is that those who hoped for it are now being dismissed in an obsequious manner with a "What do you actually want?" attitude. Brilliant, it doesn't get any better or more customer-oriented than that!
Many laptops no longer even come with a LAN port, meaning that Wi-Fi might mean: USB to LAN to Wi-Fi, i.e., two or three adapters. In principle, this works, but practically speaking, such a solution is utterly worthless for "mobile use." Just try setting something like that up while traveling on a train or plane.
The same old arguments—that there are more important drivers, because the system has to run first before you can even use Wi-Fi—don't help here either. Because without a decent internet connection, I don't need native ArcaOS anyway, and in a VM I'm not interested in all the driver fuss around it.
Ultimately, this type of internet access is obsolete anyway, since there's no current browser for OS/2, and—Dimitry, please forgive me—probably never will be.
I'm just glad I didn't renew the subscription; not another cent is going there.
I'm also very happy with version 5.11 in German on my ASUS ROG Zephyrus. The only possible improvements would be a Wi-Fi driver (0% chance), a Bluetooth driver (0% chance), a decent SNAP graphics driver (0% chance), and—admittedly very specific to this notebook—an enhanced sound driver (0% chance—Paul Smedley has already done a great job here; the sound itself works, but only very quietly, since the six internal speakers are controlled by an additional chip that isn't supported by UNIAUD. But even Linux Mint needed a few kernel revisions before it worked). Likewise, the chances of utilizing more "lower RAM" are exactly 0%, but the 2.4GB available on the Zephyrus is sufficient for the fastest OS/2 I've seen so far. Since I don't have any use for it, I never have more than one memory-intensive application open anyway.
So, for me, ArcaOS is history, OS/2 is definitely dead, but I'll keep ArcaOS looking like OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 running in their current state as long as they still run natively on newer hardware, just for fun.
Otherwise, I can only recommend looking into Linux. To my surprise, I was able to recreate my entire private Windows environment relatively quickly with Linux Mint Cinnamon, and all for free. There's also a large community behind it that can help with almost any problem.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
ArcaOS is dead to me.
The final nail in the coffin was Lewis's statement about the Wi-Fi driver in the latest Warpstock post. Of course, I knew it was unlikely to be released, but what really mattered was the way he explained and presented it.
The gist of it, as I understand it, is: "Who needs a Wi-Fi driver? We have LAN-to-Wi-Fi solutions, mini routers, etc. So what?"
I call that—excuse my language—pathetic!
ArcaNoae has been working independently on this for almost nine years. Drivers were developed for the eComstation even before that, and they've always pointed out, albeit with decreasing intensity each year, "We hear you, the Wi-Fi driver is on our list, etc., etc." It's perfectly legitimate for you to decide what you develop, but pretending for years about a development that was never seriously intended (there's no other conclusion to be drawn) and will never come to pass is one thing; quite another is that those who hoped for it are now being dismissed in an obsequious manner with a "What do you actually want?" attitude. Brilliant, it doesn't get any better or more customer-oriented than that!
Many laptops no longer even come with a LAN port, meaning that Wi-Fi might mean: USB to LAN to Wi-Fi, i.e., two or three adapters. In principle, this works, but practically speaking, such a solution is utterly worthless for "mobile use." Just try setting something like that up while traveling on a train or plane.
The same old arguments—that there are more important drivers, because the system has to run first before you can even use Wi-Fi—don't help here either. Because without a decent internet connection, I don't need native ArcaOS anyway, and in a VM I'm not interested in all the driver fuss around it.
Ultimately, this type of internet access is obsolete anyway, since there's no current browser for OS/2, and—Dimitry, please forgive me—probably never will be.
I'm just glad I didn't renew the subscription; not another cent is going there.
I'm also very happy with version 5.11 in German on my ASUS ROG Zephyrus. The only possible improvements would be a Wi-Fi driver (0% chance), a Bluetooth driver (0% chance), a decent SNAP graphics driver (0% chance), and—admittedly very specific to this notebook—an enhanced sound driver (0% chance—Paul Smedley has already done a great job here; the sound itself works, but only very quietly, since the six internal speakers are controlled by an additional chip that isn't supported by UNIAUD. But even Linux Mint needed a few kernel revisions before it worked). Likewise, the chances of utilizing more "lower RAM" are exactly 0%, but the 2.4GB available on the Zephyrus is sufficient for the fastest OS/2 I've seen so far. Since I don't have any use for it, I never have more than one memory-intensive application open anyway.
So, for me, ArcaOS is history, OS/2 is definitely dead, but I'll keep ArcaOS looking like OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 running in their current state as long as they still run natively on newer hardware, just for fun.
Otherwise, I can only recommend looking into Linux. To my surprise, I was able to recreate my entire private Windows environment relatively quickly with Linux Mint Cinnamon, and all for free. There's also a large community behind it that can help with almost any problem.
Have a great weekend, everyone!

