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Added to this, it's a microkernel system. Big Iron doesn't need microkernels. They're a little bit slower by nature, but you get the advance of a small, configurable "mostly user-space" kernel. That's pretty cool for palmtops and everyday PC's but not Big Iron, I'd say. That's why QNX doesn't run on mainframes. Actually, a microkernel would be excellent for a huge massively parallel mainframe. The more elements of the system you spin off into seperate userland processes, the more you can run at once. Most of what a good microkernel does is pass messages between processes and processors and schedule things. This minimal overhead means less kernel blocking and more ability to spawn off tasks on seperate processors. There is less "critical code" to worry about. The overhead in a microkernel that everyone speaks about is mainly an issue for desktop, not mainframe systems. Oh, and QNX can run on SMP systems. Read about it here. It only seems to go up to 8 procs currently (wheee...), but it sounds as if it could potentially do more.

Please read the following to understand EXACTLY what I was trying to say:
SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing) is typically associated with high-end operating systems such as UNIX and NT running on high-end servers. These large monolithic systems tend to be quite complex, the result of many man-years of development. Since these large kernels contain the bulk of all OS services, the changes to support SMP are extensive, usually requiring large numbers of modifications and the use of specialized spinlocks throughout the code.
Neutrino, on the other hand, contains a very small microkernel surrounded by processes that act as resource mangers, providing services such as filesystems, character I/O, and networking. By modifying the microkernel alone, all other OS services will gain full advantage of SMP without the need for coding changes. If these service-providing processes are multi-threaded, their many threads will be scheduled among the available processors. Even a single-threaded server would also benefit from an SMP system, because its thread would be scheduled on the available processors beside other servers and client processes.
As a testament to this microkernel approach, the SMP version of Neutrino adds only a few kilobytes of additional code. This version, called procnto-smp, will boot on any system that conforms to the Intel MultiProcessor Specification (MP Spec) with up to 8 Pentium or Pentium Pro processors. The procnto-smp manager will also function on a single non-SMP system. With the cost of building a dual-processor Pentium motherboard very nearly the same as a single-processor motherboard, it's possible to deliver cost-effective solutions that can be scaled in the field by the simple addition of a second CPU. The fact that the OS itself is only a few kilobytes larger also allows SMP to be seriously considered for small CPU-intensive embedded systems, not just high-end servers.

And Please visit the link http://qdn.qnx.co m/s upport/docs/neutrino_qrp/sys_arch/smp.html
This would refute EVERYTHING that you said.
Thank You.

I was wondering if anybody had thought of using QNX to do this, and if perhaps QNX might have some sort of feature built in to do this seeing as it is a realtime OS designed for use in embedded devices. I dont know much about it but I thought I would throw the idea out for discussionwww.qnx.com

It looks like it runs neither PALM nor WINCE like everyone seems to be saying. Take a good look at the pictures. That looks like QNX
(http://www.qnx.xom)(http://get.qnx.com)

QNX is a unix clone and the company just released it into the 'free' domain, meaning the base OS is free, as well as some applications. If I recall, the netappliance i-opener that was released earlier this year also runs the qnx platform, and people managed to hack into it and use their own isp's, also people were able to install linux (the linux install required a hardware hack though).

That would mean that this handheld would run a client similar to xwindows. This is a dream come true. Perhaps it is an easily hackable unit also?

Oh, if anyone wants to see QNX, look here QNX website

QNX is a realtime OS also by the way, and I believe is posix compliant....

I work at QNX - anyone looking for official statements should look to the QNX web site and ignore what I have to say. That said:

The license agreement makes the lawyers happy but greatly overstates the case. Most of the core technology in the RTP as it stands today is released and fully supported by QNX both for development and runtime application (QNX Neutrino OS, core Photon GUI, compiler and libs, voyager web browser etc).

What is not released are some of the other components that make for a better installation experience or a more rounded desktop development environment but are probably not ready yet for commercial release. I say probably because there are bound to be people out there for whom the RTP just plain doesn't work. There will be some hardware, some way in which its used, that we just hadn't anticipated or seen before.

Given the number of people out there who will try it, there will probably be a whole lot of cases like that. There's only so much we can cover in the lab.

With useful feedback from the community to guide us hopefully we will be able to bring the remaining components to release quality in short order.

With risk of being redundant . . . QNX has a 1.44M Demodisk you can download for free. It's pretty sweet. It boots off a floppy, resides in flash RAM, has a GUI, a web browser, server (this is new), TCP/IP and a few applications. Yes, all on a 1.44M floppy. I used to play with this back when it first came out but it looks like they've really made some strides with it.

Might hold you over till the CDs come out. :-)

--

n/m . . . I found it. %-)

--

Why is the new QNX realtime platform big news?

Because it's the only solution that offers embedded developers the benefits of both a true realtime OS and a true platform OS. As a result, it's uniquely positioned to become a premier platform for embedded devices - just as Windows and Linux have become the platforms of choice for desktop and server applications.

Don't forget that QNX will release RTP on Monday, and Sun has released Solaris on both Sparc & Intel platforms (and source too).
Additionally Nortel has released FIPA-OS for agent based transactions.
Add these to Linux (don't forget HURD), BSD, Inferno, Plan 9, the traditional UNIXs, and of course the Windows family there are almost too many choices.
All we need now is for Palm & Microsoft to joint the open source crowd.
Any chance of Compaq releasing VMS? How about IBM releasing VM & MVS?

I'd order a copy of Intervideo's player today if they would just produce it. I'm also waiting to get a look at the DVD plugin for QNX when it is released too

Actually there's QNX in cisco router, so i guess it's standard x86? here's the press release on QNX web site. Maybe the visco router can be the next i-opener thinggy :)
--

As for "preemption", QNX takes this much further than Linux does. For one thing, networking and file systems are in preemptable processes already. Beyond this, in QNX, priority is preserved through calls to services. For example, if a high-priority process reads from a file system, its I/O request goes ahead of requests from low-priority processes. This falls out of the priority-oriented interprocess communication system. It's something needed for streaming media if the machine has other work to do as well.

A few points to note.

• QNX is not anything like UNIX. There's a POSIX emulator, but underneath, it's a message-passing microkernel. Almost everything runs in protected mode. You call services by passing messages to them, which is done very efficiently. If you're going to program for QNX, learn how to use its interprocess communication services; don't program it like it's a UNIX variant.
• It really is hard real-time. There's a defined maximum interrupt latency. This is a big win for streaming media and video.
• There's no paging. Everything has to fit in memory. This is probably good; memory is cheap enough today that paging is generally a lose. The performance hit when you have to page in from disk on Windows or UNIX is so huge you don't want to page anyway. QNX software tends to be much less bloated than Windows or UNIX, so memory consumption is less anyway. It's possible to do useful web browsing on a 386 machine with QNX, booting from a floppy and not using the hard disk. (QNX gives away a demo disk for this.) It's supposed to work. QNX is used mostly for hard real-time industrial control applications. There are nuclear reactors controlled by QNX. QNX users have a very low tolerance for crashing. The top priority at QNX Inc. is eliminating crashes, not adding features. Don't expect dancing paper clips.

We'll have to wait and see if Amiga screws RedHat like they did QNX. Few people had even heard of QNX outside of their still righteous demo disk. At least that ignorant puke from Gateway resigned shortly after that whole fiasco. This whole SDK sham sounds like a bunch of hooey IMHO. Who cares if it's fully buzzword compliant? I'm rather sick of hearing about the latest follies of this zombie company. I say let it die in peace instead of trying to make a half dozen shoddy sequels. It was sickening enough when Jack Tramiel and subsequent CEOs were running things into the ground back in the day at Commodore.

The Watcom compilers are the compilers of choice by the people at QNX.

So where's the QNX port?

Check out QNX. The floppy demo comes with a GUI, networking capability, and Web Browsing (although there aren't too many network drivers on the floppy version). Not bad.

Chris the MathFreak

Sorry but QNX's preferred graphical engine is not X, it is Photon.
There is an X port but it is based on X11R5 rather than X11R6.
I suggest you made a quick visit to this page in order to investigate both of these.
--

Okay. I know you will very well call me a stick in the mud for this one, but I must be a bit more pessimistic than the article or the general air for the IBM 405GP is.

I've followed the development of the for a while now, even having a few email conversations with Jonathon Thompson, Quong Ho Thoc, and Hagr Itstein (three lead developers). I told them about a few of my concerns but it looks like marketing prevailed :(

While yes, I am a fan of Linux and OSS (hell, I've used been running Slackware since version 2 and my firewalls run OpenBSD), I don't see Linux being the right tool for this. I don't want to see this product fail since I know IBM is a good company. By all means everything else they made was a success, but the IBM 405GP looks like it will be a flop.

Why?

(1) Security - This is a big concern for me. Imagine some evil hacker getting control of this baby...now imagine if this was used in your bank or a military instituion. See the problem? While I commend the design of Open Souce, perhaps allowing the innerworkings of this to be accessable by a hacker is not good, even more so when it's an embedded system.

Check out these sites, they explain why the needs for your desktop's security (which Linux can provide) are on the other end of the spectrum for bank/B2B/military security (which Linux cannot provide):
The CIA's spin
Military disablement
cpsr.org

(2) Expansion architecture - Check the specs on this thing. While a PCI slot is normally a good thing, wouldn't MCA or a propietary bus be better suited for this? Linux runs on the MCA fine, and I think it's low overhead and fault-tolerant properties are better than a run of the mill PCI slot for this. Or a new bus design could be implemented. IBM benefits with better performance, we as a comunity benefit from more GPL code being released. Sound good?

(3) Operating system - [flamesuit] I like Linux, but I don't think Linux is the best tool for this. IBM has made the decision to go with Linux, so I'll respect that. But I must say that WindowsCE or QNX would be better. We know who WindowsCE is backed by, but I must admit Mico$oft'$ embedded OS department knows thier stuff. Look at the recent Sharp handhelds - fine work and I think the same design could be applied to the IBM 405GP. If you don't want to recognize MS products though, I can understand. QNX would be just as valid (and in some ways such as power usage and latency) even better than WindowsCE and Linux. Scalibility and performance are key here, and QNX can deliver better than Linux. [/flamesuit]

Again, I don't like being negative but I don't think the IBM 405GP will do that well. I want to be proved wrong though, I want to see Linux progress and gain market share, and I want to see IBM be profitable....but Linux just ain't gonna cut it for this one my friends. Please tell me I'm wrong.

Okay. I know you will very well call me a stick in the mud for this one, but I must be a bit more pessimistic than the article or the general air for the IBM 405GP is.

I've followed the development of the for a while now, even having a few email conversations with Jonathon Thompson, Quong Ho Thoc, and Hagr Itstein (three lead developers). I told them about a few of my concerns but it looks like marketing prevailed :(

While yes, I am a fan of Linux and OSS (hell, I've used been running Slackware since version 2 and my firewalls run OpenBSD), I don't see Linux being the right tool for this. I don't want to see this product fail since I know IBM is a good company. By all means everything else they made was a success, but the IBM 405GP looks like it will be a flop.

Why?

(1) Security - This is a big concern for me. Imagine some evil hacker getting control of this baby...now imagine if this was used in your bank or a military instituion. See the problem? While I commend the design of Open Souce, perhaps allowing the innerworkings of this to be accessable by a hacker is not good, even more so when it's an embedded system.

Check out these sites, they explain why the needs for your desktop's security (which Linux can provide) are on the other end of the spectrum for bank/B2B/military security (which Linux cannot provide):
The CIA's spin
Military disablement
cpsr.org

(2) Expansion architecture - Check the specs on this thing. While a PCI slot is normally a good thing, wouldn't MCA or a propietary bus be better suited for this? Linux runs on the MCA fine, and I think it's low overhead and fault-tolerant properties are better than a run of the mill PCI slot for this. Or a new bus design could be implemented. IBM benefits with better performance, we as a comunity benefit from more GPL code being released. Sound good?

(3) Operating system - [flamesuit] I like Linux, but I don't think Linux is the best tool for this. IBM has made the decision to go with Linux, so I'll respect that. But I must say that WindowsCE or QNX would be better. We know who WindowsCE is backed by, but I must admit Mico$oft'$ embedded OS department knows thier stuff. Look at the recent Sharp handhelds - fine work and I think the same design could be applied to the IBM 405GP. If you don't want to recognize MS products though, I can understand. QNX would be just as valid (and in some ways such as power usage and latency) even better than WindowsCE and Linux. Scalibility and performance are key here, and QNX can deliver better than Linux. [/flamesuit]

Again, I don't like being negative but I don't think the IBM 405GP will do that well. I want to be proved wrong though, I want to see Linux progress and gain market share, and I want to see IBM be profitable....but Linux just ain't gonna cut it for this one my friends. Please tell me I'm wrong.

The StrongArm was mentioned.

This is particularly good, because many, many, applications for this chip have already been compiled for this chip by Rebel.Com for the NetWinder, including, of course, the Linux kernel.

The Netwinder is a very small and power unhungry device already, but I can imagine even smaller, more eficient devices.

Perhaps something that can run QNX? Or maybe Compaq could give more though to the ITSY?

Well, the future sure looks energy-efficient. Indeed.

I received a 1.44 mb floppy from a friend labeled "qnx realtime operating system demo (modem version)". He said it was bootable on x86 and I was curious, so I decided to give it a go.

It turned out to contain a contain an OS complete with windowing system and internet browser. Admittedly it didn't work first time, and I had to modify a couple of BIOS settings that it didn't like, but I was really impressed once I got it going. The windowing system took about twenty seconds to appear from the time the BIOS started the floppy going. It created a file system in RAM, and I was able to dial an ISP and surf. Some forms didn't work, and Java support is dubious, but you can't expect that much from something packed onto a 1.44 mb floppy.

The website has a boot floppy image which you can download. The latest version claims to allow additional driver and application installion via the network. Apparently they are downloaded (into the ram disk? - I'm not sure about hard disk support at this stage) and installed on the fly.

This OS looks cool, and would totally rock with a hard disk , as it would boot in about four seconds. I suppose having a hard disk would lead to complicated boot routines that loaded permenantly stored drivers and other processes though, so that argument might not hold up . . . .

Ok Ok, it would suck for many applications, and is mainly targeted at developers at this stage , but all you hard core "thin client, server based" computing enthusiasts should check it out if you haven't already heard of it.

I am one of the few developers to actually ship a commercial application, Spellswell from Working Software. I've kept Spellswell actively maintained over a couple of years, it is now at version 1.0.5.

So I didn't appreciate it when Be announced it was dropping active support for the desktop and "refocusing" on Internet Appliances.

Now promoting the system for Internet appliances is fine, but Be had spent years promoting its system as a platform for multimedia content creation, and in my view it is the best platform for desktop software. Check out, for instance, Gobe Software's Gobe Productive, one of the best integrated applications available.

While Be still has a desktop operating system and gives it away for free, it has made it clear that there will be no further desktop-specific development for the operating system; if a feature or bug-fix makes it into the system it will be because it is needed for Internet Appliances, and not because it is needed for the desktop.

I repeatedly tried to bring this failure to live up to its commitments on bedevtalk and beusertalk and while other professional developers supported my position, I was constantly shot down by the hobbyists and Be's own employees.

Finally I tried to point out the error of their ways in some detail by posting this to bedevtalk:

Some of Use Work For a Living

in which I pointed out that the appropriate response to criticism from developers like me would be for Be employees who subscribe to the list to communicate our concerns to senior management.

How did Be respond?

Tom Maddox, listmaster@be.com, unsubscribed me and asked the list if they'd prefer to have the entire list moderated.

Before you decide to devote time and energy to developing BeOS software, I ask you to consider whether you wish to take the risk to invest your time and money in a system that is only available from a company that has not only proved it cannot keep its commitments, it has stated repeatedly it does not want its dishonesty pointed out to it and will actively work to censor those who would work to correct its behaviour.

One of the reasons I am working to reorient my consulting business to take primarily Linux work is that I feel it is a mistake for any third party software developer to depend on any API, particularly an operating system, that they do not have the source code to.

If you feel you must support a closed-source operating system or API, I urge you to require the API vendor to sign a contract guaranteeing they will support the API forever - both in terms of maintainence and marketing - or else they will reimburse you for your lost revenue and opportunity cost if they fail to live up to their commitments.

I had much the same experience with Apple Computer which is why I became a BeOS developer.

BTW - My fiance told me that being unsubscribed from bedevtalk is like being kicked off the design committee for the Edsel. It's a beautiful OS and the engineering quality is excellent, but the sales prevention team there, uh, I mean the management, is determined to do everything they can to prevent the business from succeeding.

Perhaps Internet Appliances are a good idea, but after the galling lack of marketing cluefulness shown when they were on the desktop I seriously doubt they can get it together to succeed in the Internet Appliance arena either.

If you are an Internet Appliance manufacturer, think about whether you want to make your livelihood dependent on a company with a proven track record of failing to live up to its commitments. Consider that in many was QNX is a better OS for appliance and you can get a developer kit for free.

I don't think Linux is a very good platform either for the desktop or Internet Appliances but because it is free software that problem is capable of being addressed.

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

> In any case, thanks for drawing attention to an interesting virtual machine. Diversity is a good thing.

Actually Sun currently busy advises all it clients to stop developing other JVMs and concentrate on this new technology instead.

QSSL (QNX) has made this decision some time ago. QSSL`s very competent coders were busy doing a good JVM implementation untill Tao showed them the light.

Read their announcement.

It is rather interesting that both Tao/Amiga and QSSL are members of a consortium called "The phoenx platform consortium" which goal is to produce a new Amiga-like operation system.

My personal favorite to go against Microsoft is Amiga Inc. which is developing some remarkable software together with the Tao Group !

But then there`s also QNX Neutrino which is more like the traditional OSes but with a solid clean structure. Outsiders like BeOS and MacOS X look less promising but have more potential than the current Microsoft monopoly. And finally Linux won`t become a truly better desktop OS, but it will survive as it`s free and has it`s useful for being a good server or development tool.

What`s view upon for the future?

Their Java engine is already available for QNX though! Look here. :)

-james

The thought of BSD, any version, as "minimalist" is pushing it. But compared to the shovelware that's sold as operating systems today, I suppose it makes sense. Still, compare QNX.

And let's not forget the fungicide named UNIX (alas, www.novartis.com isn't responding, so I can't check to see whether the Novartis page cited in that item is still there).

Linux takes up a whole CD because it's a lot more than an operating system. The typical distribution has latex, and tex, and 12 editors and several wordprocessors and countless games and spreadsheets, and pretty much all the applications you need for scientific computing,and a server, and not one but 7 or 8 window managers, and on and on and on... I'll bet that most of that won't be on a PDA. Unlike WINCE and the kernel of QNX, you can take any little bits you want from the open source stuff: one line of code up to the whole thing. Linux can fit on a floppy, almost, if you don't want all the bells and whistles.

As far as standard and easy to use, Linux is non-standard only if windows is THE standard. So is the Mac, by that logic. Yes, there are many different user interfaces possible in Linux, and a typical distribution uses most of them. It doesn't have to be that way; you could create a distribution which uses a consistant interface. I gather that most folks haven't thought it worth while.
Then there's easy to use. I'm a user on a rather nice unix system (AIX, actually) right now, and that's easy. Everything works, no fiddling about with "can't install this because it's dlls conflict with that, and oh no, it corrupted my registry, and can't set preferences because you'll screw it up for the rest..." I find being a user on this system far less painful than being a user on a windows network. Part of the problem with the windows network that I could have access to is that it's poorly administered. I don't work in the field, but I gather that it's harder to find competent help who will work with windows. Part of that may be that windows is more difficult to administer well.
Back to the topic at hand, Linux on a PDA can be exactly what you decide to make it. It can have its config files in eeROM (probably not a good solution), and the user can point and click with abandon, or with his stylus. One of the characteristics of unix is that once set up, the user can't screw it up, and it just runs and runs and runs. That's why my children us a Linux system at home: they can screw up windows. I think Linux sounds pretty good for PDA's, too.

You mentioned GNOME. That isn't the GUi, of course. I prefer KDE, although I haven't tried GNOME lately. I find KDE to be astonishingly similar to windows. Most of the differences are for the better. It has a strong unix flavor, of course; I can use highlighting and the middle mouse button to cut and paste, and so on. I don't believe that windows is easy to use, and neither is KDE and GNOME. Most folks who use computers find windows devilishly difficult and counter-intuitive. Most folks who use computers have gotten over the steepest part of the hump with windows, so it seems easy, now. That's why I like KDE; I can use all the knowledge I gained from windows. There's also afterstep, based on nextstep. I liked the next desktop, and I may try switching back to afterstep this summer.

In summary, the flexibility of Linux (and the *BSD's) are probably the star attraction. You don't have a manufacturer breathing down your neck, insisting that you not screw up the purity of their style. I hear that Microsoft is bad, that way. You don't get manufacturer support and funding, either, I suppose, but the lack of licensing fees should go a long way to make up for that if your product is successful. And who would plan a product if they didn't think it would succeed?

Nels

QNX is different. Unlike MS Windows, MacOS, UNIX, BSD, or Linux, it's a real microkernel operating system. All the kernel does is manage memory, handle task switching, and pass messages between processes. Everything else is outside the kernel - file systems, networking, graphics, device drivers, windowing, and of course applications. Any of those can go down and restart without taking the kernel down. This is the way operating systems are supposed to be written. And QNX demonstrates it can be fast.

They're giving away QNX Neutrino, not classical QNX; this is their new OS. The old QNX kernel is rock-solid (I once read that the last kernel fix was made in 1992), but x86 only. Neutrino is available for x86, PPC, and MIPS, although the free version seems to be the x86 distribution only.

CodeWarrior is available for QNX Neutrino. The current version just invokes GCC from the CodeWarrior IDE, but the next release will use the usual CodeWarrior compilers. You can also cross-develop with CodeWarrior on MS Windows, targeting for QNX Neutrino.

The applications aren't yet available for QNX as a general-purpose desktop OS, but I think the intent of this free version is to encourage moves in that direction. Mozilla could probably be ported, for example.

Photon, their GUI, has a rather nice architecture from the programmer's perspective. If you're used to the uglyness of X or MS Windows, it's a relief.

All in all, it's a powerful, highly respected system.

Its nice to know the guy got an answer.
Hmm I wonder what the background material you were researching ?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that Criterion Software and QNX are trying to bring 3D Games to Embedded Platforms.

They opened a pile of source code at the same time they're giving away copies of QNX because they know the combination of the two will make life easier for many developers, and QNX will end up in more products.

Their older information was just vague promises of being open, and get.qnx.com was a teaser which did not mention their source code opening up. It wasn't until the day get.qnx.com started that they announced their new source code policy.

OK, here's something I don't understand: How do you get your network settings right if you do this?

I've tried this with PicoBSD (fits on floppy--only gives you terminal access, but it's better than nothing) and want to try it with the QNX-on-a-floppy (has gui & browser!) . However, I shove the floppy in a random machine at a public library, and it boots and then, since I'm not very networking literate, I don't know how to set things like my IP and routing info. Advice?

Ok First off this mother board is ment to be mounted in a backplane chassis for industrial application such as motion control for CNC machines (but usually FANUC controlers are used) or robotics setups, as well as data aquisition. Look in the back of any Design News magazine and youll see all of thoes cards that are supposed to be shoved into the backplanes. As far as being used in servers, they were never ment for such use. They are basicly for industrial embedded systems running QNX perhaps to run a machine shop or plant. Another thing that simply isnt possible to do with these bords it to issert them into other computers as an upgrade or put multiple cards in one unit for sort of super computer because youll just fry the card and computer. The card is a mother board and can you take the pci bus of one mother board and lets say pulg it directly into anothers? That would easily spell disaster. If you want to see other good industrial and embedded computers and solid state disks go here to Advantech , they have a great line of sold state disks that range from 3.5" solid state IDE disks to a little 32MB solid disk that plugs right into the motherboards ide port and just sticks out about an inch from the connector. great for building embedded Linux, BeIA , or QNX devices. Hey anyone here ever think of a pocket sized linux server check out this Advantech device :) Holds 144MB flash cards for bootstrap has 10/100 ethernet, 32 MB ram and 4MB vga and ide in a 2.5 hdd form factor. Definaly some awesome linux potential as a micro server that can whoop ass!

Hmmm... major QNX/Linux announcement... you mean other than QSSL joining the RT Linux committee? (Since that has already been announced on the QNX Homepage

If I'd written a piss poor encryption scheme, I wouldn't post the source http://www.qnx.com/ cgi-bin/dir_find.cgi?/usr/free/qnx4/os/libs/

security through obscurity would do me nicely.

Straight off, I get the message that this user is not in the appropriate group to su to root.

This is pretty common behavior on non-Linux machines and certainly did not originate with OpenBSD. In order to su root, you must be in the wheel group.

Linux does not require this because it uses the GNU version of su, which is intended specifically not to have this requirement. Here is an explanation for this decision:

Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)

Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.

--

remember my first time on Unix, I was in grade 9 in high school. The OS was actually called QNX on a 8086 machine called the Icon that was made here in Canada.

Am I senile or maybe mixing this up with something else, but is this not the same, but updated QNX that sits on a flash card on the i-opener made by Netappliance...

Interesting how OSs hang on over time...

but I haven't seen much UI innovation recently

That's because you didn't go look for it.

Morphic
Native Oberon
Bricks
Merlin
Photon

There's more...

you forgot:

and one for playing games

Read: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/

But yes, IMHO, Win9x and NT both have their places in our multi-os world =). That place is, of course, in the dumpster (tounge-in-cheek).

Serriously, Win9x is the platform for which a distressing number of games are targeted. I don't know that this is because it's particularly well tailored for this purpose, or if it's the result of driver availablity and that ubiquitous DirectX standard.

-rt
======
Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS
and CRUISE for ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING!!

QNX Demo disk Two version of the 1.44MB disk LAN/Modem

There's a real need for an open-source real-time protected-mode operating system, but Linux, or any UNIX variant, isn't it. L4 has real potential, but it's not finished yet. Already you can run Linux on top of L4. If you're into embedded open-source real-time, get behind L4 and push.

What do you think about EROS then?
Unfinished. As the authors put it, it's at the "hello world" stage. The primary author got his degree and graduated.

I was looking seriously at EROS and L4 for some real-time work, but neither is really usable yet. QNX is fast, elegant, reliable, and successful, but it's sold only on terms that make sense if you're building it into something; there's a big up-front cost. There's no clean, usable, secure open-source solution that doesn't have a bloated kernel. (RT/Linux isn't the answer; it's a hack that allows you to add your real-time application to the kernel.)

One very real problem is that very few people know how to write for a message-passing system. You have to divide up your program into isolated communicating processes with different security and timing properties. These processes communicate only by message passing, but the message passing is much faster than UNIX programmers are used to. UNIX and Windows programmers aren't used to designing this way. It's as big a change as going to object-oriented programming.

EROS has the additional problem that the capability crowd tends to be incomprehensible. Norm Hardy, the creator of KeyKos, was known for his impenetrable talks. (He used to have an "explainer", Susan Rajunas) What's needed is something like a well-documented secure web server using a capability-based OS. Then people might pay attention. But EROS isn't finished enough to even start that project.

UNIX/Linux isn't getting more secure. The CERT advisories look about the same as they did ten years ago. Holes in Sendmail. Holes in BIND. Holes in "rsh". Set-UID-to-root problems. No amount of hacking on the UNIX architecture will help. You've got to have a system with far less trusted code. It's possible. Multics did it.

I appreciate the free OS' as much as the next guy, and I also appreciate "perfecting" the wheel, as opposed to reinventing it. But I haven't seen anyone suggest QNX on the Transmeta yet...

I could be very mistaken here, but I think the two would go together nicely. QNX is small and fairly feature-complete. Photon MicroGUI looks like a nice embedded GUI, and for folks requiring X, R5 is there (although 40MB), and I'm guessing R6 could be, with a little more effort.

To continue my wishlist, I'd love to see said supersupermini with (obviously) PCMCIA support, DEFINITELY a LAN/Modem combo built in, and dare I say USB support? I'd love to see it use LS-120's or optionally the new MiniDisks, as well.

Then, I may be more open to the idea of a hybrid laptop/organizer...

And, if it came with a C++ compiler, I'd be hooked. I can't stand coding in this stupid room!

What about QNX OS for small embedded applications...

There is already the demo disk, with several intressting apps...

Ever used QNX Photon microGUI? Damn fast on a 286! Get the demo disk, it has a full graphical OS and web-borswer in 1.4 megs... qnx.com

QNX

Now there's a *nix for chips. And it scales too.
Nice GUI, and pretty *nix for a *nix. :)

Not as friendly as Linux, IMO, but the OS fits into what (?) 300K or something ridiculous like that. Oh, and it's real-time too boot. (no pun int)

http://qnx.com/literature /whitepapers/photonmicrogui.html

Looks interesting. Is QNX's photon design sort of comparable to what they're trying to do with XFree86 4.0? Kind of interested in the approach they take here, interested in hearing various GUI experts take on it.