Category Archives: Community

Community related news

Reminder: Warpstock Europe 2026, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, June 5-7

The OS/2 VOICE Foundation will be hosting Warpstock Europe 2026 June 5-7 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands.

VOICE is planning to provide a live video stream via YouTube, but the best Warpstock Europe experience is always in person.

Time is running short to register for Warpstock Europe, however! To register, use this link before May 25. For more information (travel, schedule of presentations, presenters, and more) please visit the Warpstock Europe website.

Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to see, hear, and meet with people directly and indirectly involved with shaping the design and focus of ArcaOS, and working to keep it connected to our ever-changing landscape of information technology. Connect with your peers. There is always great fun and conversation, as well as in-dpeth technical stuff and great user-to-user exchanges.

We hear there will be another fun social outing on Saturday this year, too!

Arca Noae Package Manager version 1.1.2 has been released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an updated Arca Noae Package Manager for ArcaOS, OS/2, and eComStation. (1.1.2)

This release addresses the following issues:

Replace DLL conflict check logic to avoid problems if an exception occurs in the DLL’s exit routine (requires included testdll.exe). (Previously, this condition could lead to a complete system hang during package installation or update.)
Redesigned UI presentation of available WarpIN packages.

Arca Noae Package Manager is available in English with Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian, and Swedish language packs. Language packs are on a rolling release cycle, with updates made available between program releases.

ANPM 1.1.2 requires WarpIN 1.0.24 or higher for installation. This WarpIN package is available from Hobbes Archive.

This utility is licensed under the GPLv3, and is available to everyone, free of charge. See the included documentation for instructions on how to access the source code.

Please review the wiki for important first-time installation and upgrade notes and other tips.

Warpstock hotel room block is closing

As reported here previously, Warpstock, the annual gathering of OS/2 users, developers, engineers, and enthusiasts is scheduled for Friday, November 7 through Sunday, November 9, 2025 at the Holiday Inn Little Rock Airport Conference Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.

Among those scheduled to present live are Arca Noae Managing Member, Lewis Rosenthal and Dmitriy Kuminov, CPO of bww bitwise works, GmbH, an Arca Noae strategic partner.

The hotel room block for this year’s event will be closing October 5, so be sure to register for the event and to book your hotel stay soon.

For more information regarding planned sessions and for details on the event, please visit the Warpstock 2025 event page.

Warpstock is an annual event hosted by Warpstock Corporation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization unaffiliated with Arca Noae, whose volunteers are dedicated to promoting education, information, and social opportunities to those persons interested in computer operating systems and related software.

Learn, share, contribute at Warpstock 2025

Warpstock, the annual gathering of OS/2 users, developers, engineers, and enthusiasts is scheduled for Friday, November 7 through Sunday, November 9, 2025 at the Holiday Inn Little Rock Airport Conference Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.

Arca Noae Managing Member, Lewis Rosenthal, will be on hand to present not only his annual roadmap update, sharing things planned for the next releases of ArcaOS, but also to moderate an OS/2 quiz to test the depth of knowledge of the audience. Of course, there are several other sessions scheduled, with likely more to come.

If you’ve never attended a Warpstock event, you’re in for a treat. In addition to knowledgeable speakers and the ability to take them aside to bend their ears about what you’d like to see in terms of improvements to the operating system or new applications, there is plenty of time to socialize with like-minded people, and put faces to names of people you may recognize from online interactions. You literally never know who may turn up at Warpstock!

Register now to take advantage of the early bird discount, and get an even better deal on this conference (which is already a great value for the information and opportunities it provides each year).

Warpstock Europe 2025: A Huge Success!

If you weren’t able to attend or watch the live stream of the sessions at this year’s Warpstock Europe event in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, you should soon be able to watch the polished, post-production videos linked from the site. There was a lot of great information presented, and of course, a good deal of audience participation and discussion. In all, the event was a tremendous success!

There are currently two annual Warpstock events, run by two separate though coordinating entities: Warpstock, the original event, typically held in North America in the fall, sponsored by Warpstock Corporation, a US 501(c)3 non-profit organization, dedicated to educating users about the use of alternative operating systems; and Warpstock Europe, typically held in central Europe in the spring, sponsored by Stichting VOICE International, a Dutch non-profit entity.

If you’ve never attended a Warpstock event, the experience is unique. You get to spend time one-on-one with not only like-minded users, but with the developers shaping the OS/2 landscape and the engineers supporting it. There is plenty of time outside of actual classroom sessions to relax and exchange ideas, request improvements and new features, and to break out into smaller groups for ad hoc discussions.

The next Warpstock event is scheduled for Friday, November 7 through Sunday, November 9, 2025, in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. Early registration is now open, providing a generous discount for those who register for the full conference before August 1. Once again, some of the Arca Noae staff will be on hand to present roadmap and how-to sessions, as well as others with various areas of expertise.

Come join us at Warpstock Europe 2025 this weekend!

If you’ve never attended a Warpstock or Warpstock Europe event, these are truly unique and enjoyable experiences. This weekend, in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, Arca Noae Managing Member, Lewis Rosenthal, and Chief UI Architect, Alex Taylor will be on hand to present and answer questions regarding ArcaOS past, present, and future.

It’s not too late to register for the event. Visit the Warpstock Europe homepage for more information and to purchase tickets.

Lewis will provide the latest roadmap for ArcaOS 5.1, including highlights of development and planning for the 5.1.2 release. Alex will be discussing what it takes to create a localized ArcaOS version, and for developers, how to write or update existing applications to take advantage of some of the newer dynamic font sizing support in ArcaOS.

Arca Noae Managing Member, Lewis Rosenthal, to speak at Warpstock Europe 2025

It’s official: Arca Noae’s Managing Member, Lewis Rosenthal, is scheduled be live and in person at Warpstock Europe 2025 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, May 16-18, to speak about Arca Noae, ArcaOS, new features in version 5.1.1, and future plans for the OS.

More information on this informative event is available on the Warpstock Europe website.

ArcaOS named Best Alternative OS of 2025 by TechRadar!

It is always gratifying to receive acclaim from our peers and the educated press. It seems that TechRadar has listed ArcaOS as #1 in their list of Best alternative operating systems of 2025, albeit with some slight misstatements in their overview (which we have brought to their attention).

One of the points which is specifically incorrect is the negative notion that ArcaOS is “for older PCs.” ArcaOS 5.1 should install on many or most new or recent Intel or AMD-based hardware. It is capable of booting on UEFI-only systems, without the aid of a CSM, using our proprietary 64-bit UEFI loader, and then booting ArcaOS (which itself is 32-bit) just as it would on a traditional BIOS system.

ArcaOS 5.1 also supports booting from GPT partitioned media, making it a great companion OS for multiboot configurations where the disk (or SSD) has already been partitioned this way and where it may be impractical to wipe and convert to MBR-style partitioning.

In fact, it is also something to note that ArcaOS is specifically not intended for use on “older” hardware, such as ISA, EISA, or MicroChannel, as most of the device drivers for those architectures were removed from ArcaOS prior to its initial release.

Another misstatement in the article pertained to pricing which quoted figures for licensing of the 5.0 release which itself is no longer available (though support for 5.0 continues with no stated EOL). Also, if you already have an ArcaOS 5.0 license, generous upgrade discounts apply should you want to move up to ArcaOS 5.1.

Couldn’t make it to Warpstock 2024 in Pittsburgh? Stream it live!

Warpstock 2024 begins this Friday, September 27, at 9am EDT.

Lewis Rosenthal and Alex Taylor will be among those presenting this year on a variety of topics of interest concerning ArcaOS. In addition, Lewis will be moderating a 2-part roundtable discussion focused on how people are using the OS/2 platform today, and how they see themselves using it in the future. For more details and for info on all sessions, please visit the event sessions page, and for the complete schedule, visit the event calendar.

Questions may be posed via YouTube Chat as well as IRC during the event.

The WarpEvents YouTube channel is the place to watch the event stream.

The URL for the #Warpstock IRC channel is: ircs://irc.libera.chat:6697/Warpstock (TLS encrypted),
or irc://irc.libera.chat/Warpstock (plain text), or https://web.libera.chat/ (web interface, type #Warpstock into the Channel field).

While visiting the Warpstock website, please consider donating. Warpstock Corporation is a recognized 501(c)3 non-profit organization promoting education, information, and social opportunities to those persons interested in computer operating systems and related software.

Reminder: Warpstock Europe 2024, Rheine, Germany, June 7-9

As we mentioned previously, the OS/2 VOICE Foundation will be hosting Warpstock Europe 2024 June 7-9 in Rheine, Germany.

VOICE is planning to provide a live video stream via YouTube, though the best Warpstock Europe experience is always in person.

Time is running out to register for Warpstock Europe, however! To register, use this link before May 24. For more information (travel, schedule of presentations, presenters, and more) please visit the Warpstock Europe website.