Hey friends and welcome to Nomadic Dmitry channel. I've already made a video about OS/2 and eComStation
and what was my motivation to try this kind of operating systems
And I also wanted to try ArcaOS since it's the most recent version of OS
I asked ArcaOS developers and haven't got a response for a few months
But I finally was able to get response from them and installed this Operating System to try it out
Today we are going to try it on the Virtual Machine and see how it looks in action
First, I've prepared a Virtual Machine to install it there
Let's start the installation. The screen resolution is not great here, but it's okay for now
First we select the boot options here and then it shows the license info (which you don't see, since I've hidden it)
Each copy of ArcaOS is licensed only for a specific user. This is an IBM policy starting from OS/2 times
And there is nothing we can do about it
policy and that's how it works there's no way around. Let's pick the default options here
License agreement part. You need to scroll down there to be able to accept the license
It also displays here that there are Personal and Commercial editions
I have the personal edition here and I'm pressing "Next"
There we have multiple installation types - do you remember how many install options we have before for older operating systems?
And this is technically still an OS/2, so it has this legacy approach as well
Next, we are selecting a target volume. And there is a bit confusing part because the wizard is not very helpful
So there is nothing in the list and we need to manually create a partition, make it bootable and format it
Let's save the changes and see how it works now
We will select JFS as a File System here
Let's enable some options there
Now we need to configure all the hardware options here
Manually picking all the stuff here is necessary, no automatic detection
I selected the Universal Audio driver (but I should have been selected SoundBlaster 16 since this is what Virtual Box set by default for me here)
There is also system profiles which you can select either a modern system profile here or a vintage system
I just pick whatever adapter is available here
Then I pick the username and Computer name here
Finally an installation part where is will start copying files
This remind me of Windows 95 or Windows 98 installation, but the wizard here is not advertising anything
Typically it describes what's new in the operating system and things like that
It mostly feels like an eComStation kind of installer, but a bit improved
There are many options for computer enthusiasts which might be good and bad at the same time
Memorizing your hardware configurations doesn't sound appealing
Okay, here is an ArcaOS logo and installation continues
creating objects and again this is just so similar to windows kind of installation
copying files again just continues copying the whole stuff like early versions of windows
Good to know that Firefox is shipped by default with ArcaOS and you can browser modern websites with it
This is one of the benefits of installing ArcaOS instead of eComStation or OS/2 because it already has everything
for you to start using it. It still feels maintained and this is great.
It also has Thunderbird mail there
It installs Windows 32 compatibility layer here which is called ODIN
This is important addition here and I think many users will like it
I should be able to install some of the Windows 32-bit applications here
It makes it feel like a modern system. It also includes QT Runtime libraries
Also includes Lucid document viewer
I hope this is a final phase
Now I'm rebooting system one more time
There is a config.sys complaining here since one of the drivers is invalid (or missing) and that is the part I didn't liked in Windows 95/98 systems
Everything finally loaded and the next step will be configuring everything
We will discuss it in the next videos about ArcaOS and OS/2
Let's start Firefox - it loads but with delay and it's confusing
Firefox 45 ESR is the version of Firefox (which is from 2016 and it means it's quite old too)
The buttons don't feel intuitive, but this is the case with using OS/2 in general
It loads modern websites as you can see
Overall, it looks very similar to eComStation, but with updated drivers and additional apps included
I didn't expected a new OS here, but I still expected it to be a little bit more updated for the modern times
There should be an automatic driver configuration option, but there is none so far
Thank you for watching and please subscribe for new videos. More videos coming up soon!
In the next video we will play around with the ArcaOS more
It has the potential to become a great operating system if there was more attention to it
Thank you, friends!