While OS/2 2.0 is great for hardware which supports it, Arca Noae’s focus is on being able to boot and run the OS on modern hardware. OS/2 2.0 has no ACPI support; we have an ACPI PSD available now and will include that with our OS distro. We have kernel updates, too, including support for loading and unloading dlls into/out of high memory, minimal PAE support (utilizing RAM above 4GB as a RAM disk for swap, and early GPT support. We will include a rich rescue and recovery environment, available from the installation media. Our current alpha provides networking support from the installation media boot. We plan to allow boot/installation from USB media, CD/DVD, as well as network install.

We still require a CSM in a UEFI system, but we are looking at EFI support for systems without a CSM.

Supporting newer video chips is another goal, as is support for newer NICs.

As for our licensing cost to IBM, suffice it to say that the key is quantity, and it takes a certain level of commitment for Big Blue to take notice. Once they did, they were very supportive and enthusiastic. We look forward to our continued relationship with IBM.

There are plenty of enterprises with entrenched OS/2 systems in need of hardware upgrades but limited by Warp 4 or eComStation. The side benefit is that smaller users will get to use that same technology which we are developing for the bigger customers.

Thanks for your post!

Lewis Rosenthal
Managing Member
Arca Noae, LLC