Category Archives: Community

Community related news

Adding Let’s Encrypt’s new root and intermediate certificates to Mozilla applications

On September 30, 2021, Let’s Encrypt’s DST Root CA X3 cross-sign expired, leaving many web browsers to report that sites using Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates were “untrusted” or “unknown.”

Let’s Encrypt did, in fact, implement a new root and intermediate certificates some time ago, but after the built-in certificate stores in the Mozilla applications shipped with all versions of ArcaOS 5.0 to date (5.0 through 5.0.6) were configured. Thus, these new certificates were not included in those builds, and as a result, the new root certificate is indeed unknown.

The fix is relatively simple, and a rather common procedure for all browsers and email clients. To bring your Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey certificate stores up to date, and learn how to do this for other new certificates as they become available, we’ve added a new wiki page, here.

Edited to add links to further information (off-site):

Let’s Encrypt – Chain of Trust
Let’s Encrypt – DST Root CA X3 Expiration (September 2021)

Tune in to Warpstock 2021 Online

Warpstock 2021 will happen online at 12:00pm EDT (16:00 UTC) this Saturday, September 18.

Sessions will be a mix of live and prerecorded presentations, in 45-50-minute slots, scheduled to start on the hour.

David Azarewicz, Lewis Rosenthal, and Alex Taylor will be among those presenting this year on a variety of topics of interest concerning ArcaOS 5.0 and 5.1, device drivers, UEFI, GPT, and more.

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 Channel field).

The conference is entirely free this year, and no registration is necessary.

Join us for Warpstock Europe 2021 Online

Warpstock Europe 2021 will begin online at 14:00 UTC this coming Saturday, June 5. (For quick reference, that’s 10am EDT/7am PDT in the US and Canada, and 16:00 CET.)

Sessions will be a mix of live and prerecorded presentations, with the presenters available to answer questions in realtime, submitted during the event via IRC. See the Warpstock Europe website for details.

The Warpstock Europe YouTube channel is the place to watch the event stream. This channel should be viewable with any ArcaOS release, using Firefox or SeaMonkey, or any other device or OS you might want to use.

IRC Channel on Freenode: #WSE2021.

The conference is entirely free this year, and no registration is necessary.

Both Lewis Rosenthal and Alex Taylor will be among those presenting this year.

Arca Noae Package Manager version 1.0.6 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. (1.0.6)

This is update includes an array of substantial enhancements:

Fixed several errors in storing and retrieving credentials for secure repositories.
Added unresolvable RPMs to deferred-package logic.
Identify secure repositories in repository manager even when disabled.
Prevent duplicate yum repository names.
Added support for updating PKGPROC.LST.
Downgrading a package now incorporates PKGPROC.LST logic.
Various UI fixes and tweaks.

Arca Noae Package Manager is available in English with Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Swedish language packs.

ANPM 1.0.6 requires WarpIN 1.0.24 or higher for installation. This WarpIN package is available from Hobbes.

This open source utility is available to everyone, free of charge, regardless whether you have an Arca Noae software subscription or an ArcaOS license.

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

Tune in to Warpstock 2020 Online

Warpstock 2020 will happen online at 9:00am EST (14:00 UTC) this Saturday, November 7, for those in North America and western Europe, and sessions will repeat in a second block beginning at 8:00pm EST (01:00 UTC, Sunday, November 8) for those in the Asia/Pacific region and eastern Europe. Each block should only be 3-4 hours in length.

Sessions will be a mix of live and prerecorded presentations, with the presenters available to answer questions in realtime, submitted during the event via IRC or YouTube chat.

The WarpEvents YouTube channel is the place to watch the event stream. This channel should be viewable with any ArcaOS release, using Firefox or SeaMonkey, or any other device or OS you might want to use.

IRC Channel: irc://freenode/warpstock

The conference is entirely free this year, and no registration is necessary.

Both David Azarewicz and Lewis Rosenthal will be among those presenting this year.

A brief, but very heartfelt thank-you to all of our friends

I don’t often post personal notes on the Arca Noae blog, but as I have been spending some time reviewing our sales over the past couple of months, I noticed something important, and I didn’t want this to go unmentioned.

While the world has been turned upside down for many of us, and for still others, finding new and different ways to work and to put food on the table has been challenging (not to mention staying healthy and well-distanced from COVID-19). Yet somehow, some way, quite a few ArcaOS, eCS, and OS/2 users have managed to not only renew support but to purchase additional licenses and – perhaps most importantly – purchase sponsoring units for our friends and hard-working developers.

Make no mistake, the whole Arca Noae team will come through this just fine. However, we’ll come through just a little better off, though, with friends like you out there. I — we — greatly appreciate everything you do for our hard-working developers, customer service staff, and admins striving to make our computing platform of choice even better.

So, from all of us, THANK YOU. Stay safe and healthy as we continue to weather this storm together. There truly are better days ahead, and we have some great things in store for 2020 (and we’re still working hard on them).

Lewis Rosenthal
Managing Member
Arca Noae, LLC

Join Us at Warpstock 2019 in Orlando

Warpstock 2019 will be held November 8-10 at the Country Inn & Suites, Orlando Airport. Arca Noae staff and developers will be there with the latest ArcaOS news and how-to sessions, as well as a host of other OS/2 experts ready and willing to share their knowledge and expertise.

Register in the next 24 hours (before June 1) and receive a $30 Early Bird discount on a full conference registration or $20 on a daily conference registration! Spouses/family members/guests/office mates attending sessions also receive great discounts, and non-attending guests are FREE. Students with valid student ID are welcome to attend sessions at no charge, with full benefits! (This is a great opportunity for Computer Science majors and aspiring young developers and engineers to gain some exposure to a platform which is still in use in the manufacturing, finance, and insurance sectors around the globe today.)

Arca Noae Package Manager version 1.0.4 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. (1.0.4)

While this is technically a minor update, it includes an array of substantial enhancements:

Implemented editing of secure repositories.
Implemented passing of long (>900 char) parameter lists by pipe instead of going through CMD (for package export).
Install from file now goes through yum engine, thereby enabling dependencies and update/downgrade/reinstall.
Ensured that special characters in encrypt/decrypt commands are not intercepted by CMD.
Make sure reinstall, update, and downgrade also enable DLL conflict checking.
Even more improved message formatting.
Expanded help guide.
Updated included libraries.
Various bug fixes and other minor improvements.

Arca Noae Package Manager is available in English with Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Swedish language packs.

This open source utility is available to everyone, free of charge, regardless whether you have an Arca Noae software subscription or an ArcaOS license.

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

Warpstock Europe 2019 is this weekend!

This weekend, May 18-19, Stichting VOICE International (the Dutch OS/2 VOICE foundation) will present Warpstock Europe 2019 at the Ibis Hotel in Utrecht, Netherlands. For program and travel details, visit http://www.warpstock.eu.

Ticket sales will close Wednesday afternoon, Dutch local time, so visit http://www.warpstock.eu now to purchase your ticket for this exciting event.

Unable to attend? Live audio and video streams will be made available. To ask questions remotely during the conference, use IRC. For details concerning both streams and IRC participation, see http://www.warpstock.eu/2019/58-videostream2019.

Members of the Arca Noae team will be presenting on the latest application, device driver, and ArcsOS development. Alex Taylor, Arca Noae’s Chief UI Architect, will be there live to present and to answer your questions. In addition, the developers at bww bitwiseworks will be on hand to discuss their latest projects for the OS/2 platform, including Qt5 progress.

Remember that the audio and video streams will be in real time, so be sure to account for any local time difference from Central European Summer Time (CEST), which is GMT +0200.

Videos will be available from the Warpstock Europe YouTube channel after the conference. See http://www.warpstock.eu/2019/58-videostream2019 for the link.

If you want to support the activities of VOICE, please consider making a donation:

http://www.os2voice.org/membership.html

Arca Noae at Warpstock 2018 in Calgary…and an ArcaOS Sale

This year’s Warpstock event is scheduled for September 14-16 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.There will be several sessions devoted to getting the most out of ArcaOS and OS/2, in general.

To celebrate this year’s event, Arca Noae will be running a sale on ArcaOS personal and commercial licenses for the duration of Warpstock, Friday through Sunday. This is a great time to get in on this fresh and exciting OS/2 release or to pick up additional licenses for more stations. ArcaOS 5.0.3 was recently released, and the first beta for 5.0.4 is already in testing. Version 5.1 is scheduled for release in 2019, with a host of new features planned, including NLVs for several popular languages.

More information about Warpstock, its history, past speakers and presentations, and this year’s event may be found on the Warpstock site.

If you can’t join us in Calgary, be sure to watch the live feed on the WarpEvents page on YouTube.

Once there, locate the WarpStock 2018 Live Stream URL.

Users with OS/2 can watch the stream in two ways:

Firefox with Flash pointing to the WarpEvents site; or
Grab the YouTube URL and play it in VLC (preferred; get the latest VLC, ported by KO Myung-Hun, from Hobbes).

To ask questions during the live event, use the #netlabs channel on IRC.

There will be up to date information on OS/2 World and the following social networks: