Category Archives: General

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.

About the future of the Hobbes archive

For over 30 years, the Hobbes repository at New Mexico State University has been a mainstay for OS/2 users to locate software for OS/2, whether freeware, open source, or commercial demos.

This month, Hobbes announced that it would be shutting down as of April 15 of this year. While this truly saddens those of us closely involved with software development for the platform, Arca Noae nevertheless understands the level of resources and commitment required to maintain an ever-growing archive. We applaud the Hobbes archiver and the entire team of faculty, students, and other volunteers who have come and gone over the years, all the while keeping Hobbes up and running for the benefit of all. We are also grateful to the University for its commitment to the archive, providing hardware, software, power, and bandwidth.

We are aware that discussions are underway in the OS/2 community to find a new home for Hobbes. There is a thread on the Warp mailing list at groups.io and another in the OS/2 World forums. You may also read a public announcement from OS/2 VOICE about this here.

At this time, Arca Noae urges caution and advises against more people volunteering to host the main Hobbes repository (though mirrors of a potential new site would likely be appreciated). We remain hopefully optimistic that Hobbes will indeed find a new long-term home and that the transition from New Mexico State University to that new home (wherever it might be) will be a smooth one.

Arca Noae main website back online and serving requests

We have resolved the issues we were experiencing with our main web server, and the Arca Noae store is again open for business. Thanks for everyone’s patience while we resolved our traffic problem.

Please feel free to either log into your account to visit your ArcaOS Download Center to upgrade your ArcaOS license or visit the Arca Noae products category in the store to purchase a new license for ArcaOS 5.1.

Arca Noae main website experiencing excessive traffic

Due to the overwhelming response to the release of ArcaOS 5.1, the Arca Noae main website, https://www.arcanoae.com, has been experiencing over one hundred times our normal daily traffic.This is resulting in periods of extremely slow response times or total unavailability of the site.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Know that we are doing what we can to mitigate the problems of heavy traffic. In the meantime, please continue to retry until you are able to get through to place your order.

Temporary workaround for PDF invoice/receipt

Update 2023-03-06: Selecting the Invoice button will currently generate an HTML version of the invoice without having to modify the URL.

Original post:

We are aware of an issue impacting our ability to generate PDF invoices (receipts) for new purchases, and working to resolve the problem. In the interim, it should be possible to generate an HTML invoice, and then use your browser’s print or save capability to either print a hard copy or save the HTML version to disk.

To generate the HTML version of the invoice, after receiving the error message or blank page when requesting the PDF invoice, simply append the following to the URL in the browser:

&output=html

and press <Enter>. The invoice should render in the browser window like any other page.

We appreciate your continued patience while we investigate the matter more fully and address the problem.

Beware of used ArcaOS licenses offered for sale

Happy New Year!

Recently, we’ve become aware of several ArcaOS licenses being offered for sale on various platforms. This post is a reminder to check the validity of any used license before paying for it.

All ArcaOS licenses are generated by Arca Noae. If you order through one of our authorized resellers, that reseller places an order for your software with us, and we provide the custom ISO for you, registered to an account in your name.

While it is entirely permissible to transfer a license (see paragraph 9 of the ArcaOS End User License Agreement ), such a transfer must include a hard copy of the license and proof of entitlement. Proof of entitlement means some documentation to prove that the company or individual transferring the license does indeed have the right to do so (it must indeed be registered to that company or individual).

Upon transfer, the transferor must notify Arca Noae of the transfer and provide contact information for the transferee. Without this, it will not be possible to renew support for that ArcaOS license – including a late renewal.

It is worth noting also that only the ArcaOS license is transferable. Support is not. Thus, when an unsuspecting user purchases an existing ArcaOS license and he or she wants to access related downloads for updates or even request an updated ISO, a new ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription will be required. The cost of the used license plus new support may be far more than a new license with included support and the ability to renew that support at a discount.

If you are considering the purchase of a used ArcaOS license, be sure to ask for a copy of the registrant’s name, email address, and serial number, and contact us first so that we may be able to determine whether the license is, in fact, legitimate. If it’s not, it will not be valid for purchasing a Support & Maintenance subscription, so technical support, updates, discounted upgrades, and bug fixes will never be available.

Cryptocurrency acceptance temporarily suspended

Pursuant to CoinPayment Inc’s recent decision to withdraw from the US market, we are temporarily unable to accept cryptocurrency for any store purchases while we evaluate a replacement platform. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause, and want to assure everyone that we are working hard to get our crypto gateway back up and running as soon as possible.

Resolving issues with GMail and OAuth 2.0 requirements

At the end of May, 2022, GMail discontinued use of standard authentication methods for POP3, IMAP, and SMTP connections. The available OAuth2 authentication mechanism in the latest SeaMonkey and Thunderbird for the OS/2 platform is unable to properly complete the authentication procedure with GMail, and will leave the application in a hung state.

There are several methods to work around this, but perhaps the easiest is simply to generate what Google calls an app password, which is, quite simply, a 16-digit passcode which gives a non-Google application or device permission to access your Google Account.

To generate the app password, follow the directions available here. Remember, that in order to do this, you must have 2-Step-Verification enabled for your account.

Once you have generated the app password, copy it to your clipboard. Open SeaMonkey Mail or Thunderbird, and access the server settings for your GMail account. Ensure that the authentication method is set for Normal password (Google will not accept encrypted passwords for this). Make the same change for the GMail SMTP server. Note that in both cases, SSL/TLS should be selected for the connection security, and specifically not STARTTLS. Close the settings dialog and attempt to access the account. You should be prompted for a new password. Paste the app password into the prompt.

To configure a second system to access the same account, simply paste (or type) the same app password. This technique should work for other mail clients, as well.

For questions, there is an informative discussion in the OS/2 World forum on this very topic.

Announcement concerning recently discovered vulnerabilities in the SolarWinds Orion platform

There have been multiple news reports about the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirming that malicious threat actors have been and are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in SolarWinds Orion products, primarily by leveraging the SUNBURST malware.

SolarWinds Orion is an IT monitoring solution.

Arca Noae does not now, nor have we ever used any SolarWinds products. As a result, our customers’ information is not vulnerable to these exploits.

We strongly advise our enterprise clients who may be using the Orion platform to review available firewall updates to keep your internal systems secure. As always, Arca Noae stands ready to assist in assessing the overall security of your OS/2 infrastructure.

More information (including CVE links) may be found on the CISA page.