kjellsbells
8 days ago
Since this is commercial and has been rolling along for a few years now I infer that there are still customers out there, who in some incredible fashion, cannot get off of OS/2. And, based on what features ArcaOS concentrates on, they must be stuck on 32bit with pretty old, yet hard to emulate well, services: SCSI for example.
I envisage a 1996-era Gateway PC in the bowels of Madison Square Garden controlling the light show for Aerosmith or something. But then my mind goes, really? There's no path to Windows, or Linux, after 30 years?
I can understand people staying on z/OS, or even AS/400, but OS/2?
smackeyacky
8 days ago
Lost the source code to your elevator control app? Stuck on OS/2. Guy who wrote it is dead, never used source control, you don’t use it in new installations but those old elevators still have to run and the PC hardware has long died and is irreplaceable? Then you have no choice but call ArcaOS.
I’ve seen more than one place where that scenario or something similar has occurred.
kjellsbells
8 days ago
Sure, but you'd think that after 30 years, someone would have completed a migration. ie use Arca as a transition step while you figure out how to get onto something else.
I guess software lifetimes are longer than a generation now, even for PC-class workloads.
smackeyacky
7 days ago
You would think so but working software is hard to replace. The last two places I worked for still had code running on DEC VMS!
pjmlp
8 days ago
SOM components they cannot rewrite. :)
doener
8 days ago
Old ATMs are part of it, I think.