Anyone using ArcaOS ?

[Ladyanne3]

It looks like an interesting OS.   I'm just wondering if it's worth trying out

[RobertX]

I've just heard of it. It's by IBM and it's based on OS/2.

I would try it on a virtual machine.

[Fant0men]

I used to be heavily into alternative OSes. I think it's cool that there's so many different ways to design things, both on a GUI level and the underlying system. And it helps the whole IT ecosystem to evolve when programmers try out different designs.

However, I quickly realized that if I'm going to actually use a system then it needs to have ample corporate backing. There needs to be enough users for companies to want to make programs, games and drivers for it. Linux is already minuscule enough when it comes to the user base. Mac is arguably just as bad (when it comes to the number of users), with the difference that it has more corporate backing and more software (like photo / video editing and music production software) that stretches back decades.

I think it's fun to explore other systems in virtual machines, but to actually install an OS on bare metal and daily drive it, you need to be sure it has everything you need. Nearly none of the systems even have enough drivers for you to make the most out of the performance you have available in your PC. Things like graphics and hardware acceleration will suffer. Nearly none of the systems have any active development going on. No software is released for those systems, and if it is, the versions are ancient and don't have some of the modern features you'd expect. That's especially the case with web browsers. Almost none of the alternative systems have a proper web browser that is even close to Firefox or Chrome, and if they do, they are extremely outdated.

Linux exists in that sweet spot where it's alternative enough to be interesting, not big enough to be fully mainstream, and not small enough to be irrelevant. I would argue Mac is in a similar position.

Using ArcaOS as an example. Maybe a couple of companies are buying it for OS/2 backwards compatibility, since they might have a bunch of old software they wrote decades ago and a bunch of old computers / servers that have been in use for decades. And switching out all the software and hardware is just too high of a cost. I think that's mainly the market for weird alternative systems like that. Then there's hobbyist open source systems that exist solely to try out different weird designs to see if they work or not.

No alternative system will ever overtake Windows, Mac or Linux. It's just not going to happen due to the massive resources required. An operating system consists of many millions of lines of code, and there's a whole ecosystem around it that needs to be active for it to survive.

The IT industry now is just not the same as it was in the 70s and 80s, when there was lots of experimentation. I think we're pretty much stuck with what we have, when it comes to the most popular systems.

You're not going to live a happy life daily driving an OS that has absolutely no support. I would go the virtual machine route in the case of ArcaOS, personally. But to each their own.

Sorry for my rambling. This was probably not helpful. But it's my 2 cents, anyway.