First, the ArcaOS image is delivered in a compressed format. It generally must be decompressed before burning to disc. See this wiki page for more information. The important thing to remember is that the compressed file cannot be directly burned, as this will not yield a bootable disc.

In a word, no.

HPFS386 is very old, and has not seen any maintenance or support for many years. Arca Noae has not licensed this component from IBM for distribution in Blue Lion, and would not be able to support it, in any case.

The 16-bit HPFS driver should be sufficient for anyone needing access to HPFS volumes, and this also works well for removable media, such as USB sticks.

We recommend that anyone who has needs which go beyond the limits of HPFS in terms of large volumes look to JFS. Like HPFS386, JFS supports long filenames, extended attributes, bad block relocation, direct inode-level support for ACLs (access control lists), and very large cache sizes. The maximum volume size for JFS is 2TB, vs just 64GB for HPFS386 (and 16-bit HPFS). The maximum file size is also 2TB, with a theoretical maximum number of files per directory of 4 billion.

JFS supports ‘sparse files’ (this allows, for example, large database structures to be created, but consume only the physical space required by the data actually stored in them).

JFS is a journaliing filesystem, so transactions (reads, writes, deletions, creations, moves, etc.) are logged in a (separate) “journal.” In the case of a crash, this data is used to ensure the integrity of the stored data. Generally, this leads to shorter times spent checking a JFS volume for errors than on a non-journaling filesystem, such as HPFS386 (assuming the journal itself has not been damaged and is readable).

Traditional JFS data (non-bootable) volumes support dynamic volume expansion. On-line expansion of an existing volume simply involves adding partitions to the existing volume, and the filesystem is automatically expanded.

While JFS still lacks some of HPFS386’s advanced features, such as RAID-1 fault tolerance, it is modern, maintainable, and robust; a good match for today’s larger disk drives.

In short, the last kernel (core of the operating system) for OS/2 had some remaining issues, several of which have been addressed in ArcaOS 5.0. Essentially, these issues involve running DOS windows, unloading modules which have been loaded into high memory, and some other areas affecting stability.

ArcaOS includes a new loader making it possible to run ArcaOS 5.0 on systems which might otherwise only see 512MB of memory instead of the full compliment of RAM installed. In addition, this new loader allows the configuration of memory above 4GB as a RAM disk and includes a handy utility for creating and managing such virtual disks.

Arca Noae is looking at additional ways of enhancing the OS/2 kernel, as well, so look for more improvements over time.

Generally, no.

ArcaOS (Blue Lion) is meant to be a replacement for an existing OS/2 or eComStation installation or where a customer desires to switch away from Windows, Linux, Mac, or some other platform. While Blue Lion fully supports running 16-bit MS Windows applications, we realize that these are becoming scarce, and that modern Windows apps are fully 32 or 64-bit (such as would run natively under Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, or 10).

With the use of Odin32, ArcaOS has some limited ability to run select 32-bit Windows applications, and with the use of VirtualBox running on ArcaOS, it is possible to run an entirely virtualized modern Windows implementation, however neither of these solutions is a true replacement for Windows running on bare metal or on a dedicated hypervisor, such as VMWare.

It should also be noted that ArcaOS is a 32-bit operating system.