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Get QNX For Free
TomRitchford writes: "QNX is about to start distributing their real-time OS for free downloads for non-commercial use at
get.qnx.com.
Right now it's 'Real Soon Now,' but you can sign up and they'll send a free CD to the first 5000 to request it." The
operating system's
concepts will look familiar to anyone who knows unix, but its design makes it better for older (Intel-compatible) CPUs, and situations where stability and predictability are more important than unix's cornucopia of applications and features.
OK, now that you can get Be for free, and now QNX, has anyone seen any results from this? These aren't the only free but commercial packages out there, but what's noteworthy is they come from commercial roots. Anyone have anything quantitative on these "free" releases in regards to their market expanding? Any rush of developers or users?
Hmm...
I think this would allow more development on QNX, at least for the first 5000 who get a CD for free.
If this has IP Masquerating support, I might wipe out Linux on my other box to try QNX out.
Actually, this is also good for people who want to make handheld devices, as this has a very small footprint in terms of RAM and storage space. IMO, this would have been a better choice for TiVO.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Talking about the cracked crypt() function is absolutely ridiculous. For starters, it was fixed internally a week before the posting on Slashdot (i.e. the developers found out about it and started fixing it - forget the conspiracy theory). It was only the crypt() function for QNX4 that was cracked. The flavour of QNX that is being given away it Neutrino, with a different type of crypt that isn't cracked. On a side note, having a way to crack the crypt doesn't do a damn load of good on an ATM, or almost any sort of machine that has QNX on it. On the other hand, if you *do* see an ATM, or heart monitor that has an exposed floppy drive and keyboard, feel free to haxor that thing for all it's worth.
FWIW, I see this is a bit more dramatic than what happened with BeOS. Earlier versions of BeOS were pretty inexpensive anyway, you could just call up many mail order stores and get a copy for less than a hundred bucks. By the time BeOS 5 PE came out, most developers who were interested in BeOS, probably already had tried 4.5. What's $69?
With QNX and Neutrino, it didn't appear to be widely available; I think they only sold direct and you had to call them to get a price. Combine that with all the hubbub about high licensing fees in previous versions of QNX, and it was a real turn-off for small-time developers who don't want to make a big committment.
I think this new strategy is a huge change from what QSSL was doing before, so it's going to have a more noticable effect than BeOS 5 PE did. A lot of developers are about to try out Neutrino for their first time.
Oh, and one more difference here. BeOS was always marketed as a "media OS" and still is, so BeOS 5 PE doesn't really have much potential for bringing in new blood. But with Neutrino, there's something else going on behind the scenes: the movement to change the target of Neutrino. QNX and Neutrino have traditionally been seen as just being for embedded work. But now there's the Phoenix Consortium (Amiga refugees) who intend to turn Neutrino into the base for a new general-purpose platform. This could make Neutrino a lot more interesting to people who previously wouldn't have given it a second thought. (Like me, for example.)
I guess what I'm say is: don't try to predict the volume of Neutrino's developer rush by looking at BeOS's. The situations are different.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And they had the "Towers of Hanoi" game on there, and any OS that comes with that can't be all bad. *grin*
-B/W/
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.
Let's see now... There's QNX, BeOS and a few other real-time OS' that are free->beer.
For the OSS side, there's ExoPC (exokernels are fun!), L4/OSKit, L4Linux, Mach, Hurd, vanilla Linux, Real-Time Linux, *BSD, FreeDOS, etc.
What's interesting is that development and take-up does NOT appear related to price, quality, licence or source availability. ExoPC, for example, has a decent licence, the code's available via CVS, it's very well-designed and VERY fast, costs nothing, yet next to nobody uses it.
On the other hand, the Mach microkernel is notoriously slow, bulky, bloated and deserves to be the first against the wall when the high-power magnet comes. Yet it's used by several microkernel OS' today, including some Linux ports.
I'll bet there are more active BeOS 4 developers than there are people who've ever even looked at L4 or the OSKit.
Is this to say that the suits are right, that freedom isn't worth it? Not at all! What it DOES say, IMHO, is that enough people are conditioned to believe that paying is, in and of itself, proof of goodness that alternatives are invisible.
IMHO, I would like to see an "Alternative OS Day", in which OSS users actively make use of the lower-profile OS' during the day.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just so there's clarity; this isn't a slightly crippled version.
It'll be the complete development toolset which we use. The only occasion where we may seperate out portions of our OS is where we have royalty (or ownership) considerations. In those cases we'll either allow the owner of the product to bundle the package or we'll sell the component for a nominal fee to cover the royalty cost. (More than likely we'll bundle these into suites of packages which you can buy as a set...but nothing has been officially decided.)
All in all, it's our intent to give the development community at large the ability to use what we use everyday. All of it, nothing sneaky or tricky, our money is made from OEM's and commercial development seats: Not free development.
-William Bull
I used to develop on QNX. I used to admin and support $BIGNUM QNX production servers, and until a recent employment change, I remember the struggle to bring our systems and our QNX-based software into the 90's (no points for spotting the irony). I may be biased, because I left hoping I'd never have to struggle with QNX again.
If you happen to be thinking about setting up your house server with QNX, because it's so cute and tiny, allow me to provide the following arguments against doing so:
QNX has one of the smallest array of available applications on it. The situation is better than it once was, however, you will have to face the fact that even with GNU or other open-source tools, you either port it yourself, or you remain a few versions behind.
My servers, especially my own house server, ends up being a swiss-army-knife (sorry, leatherman) system providing more than an internet gateway, but also a miriad of different services internally. Linux is a wonderful choice for this, because it has some of the most flexible networking tools in it, most sources compile very nicely for it, etc. etc. QNX... can fit on a floppy (or a handful, for a full install with its (cough) optional TCP/IP module). Forget IPMasq, forget tcpwrappers, forget it all. Unless, of course, you port/find someone who's ported something more recently than '98.
If you happen to be thinking about using QNX commercially: QNX is expensive. Actually, QNX was always expensive. It's even more expensive if you don't want thousands of licences - I think in terms of features per dollar, it's sucking pretty hard.
Finally: if you happen to be thinking about using QNX in a realtime or timing-critical application/environment, GO FOR IT. That's QNX's specialty. It's a niche OS designed for this role, and it also has a nice fit for embedded uses (like iOpener). It is not, however, a general purpose OS.
In the end, free QNX is kinda like free llama-skin pajamas. It doesn't cost any money, but I don't see it meeting any of my needs. And it might just cause me to itch.
Here endeth my rant.
>and situations where stability and predictability
:)
f -the-trademark' flamewar, you know what I mean) but UNIX has been pretty good for me in terms of "stability" and "predictability".
>are more important than unix's cornucopia of >applications and features.
Is this to lead us to believe that UNIX isn't stable or predictable?
Well, certainly, you can set it up that way, but UNIX has been pretty stable for me for a long time. Of course 'UNIX' is kinda vague, (and please don't start a 'linux-is-not-really-unix-because-it-isn't-part-o
Kinda sounds marketing fluffish. But if you're going to go that path, go all out.
QNX provides a world-class enterprise server based information technology solutions enabling people in all teirs of applications development rapid access to empowering decision making information in an Object Oriented (TM) framework built to provide the ultimate in flexibility.
So what if it's nothing but absurd lies? It moves product, particularly to PHB's.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Has always been it's real-time capabilities... In some processes (such as a backup monitoring system for a nuclear reactor) you need a predictable, and assurable interval for monitoring.
So when interrupt driven events just aren't good enough... QNX does the job admirably.
BlackNova Traders
Also, before you guys get to work programming, I ask that you please read the on-line manuals on the functions Send() Receive() and Reply() and that you actually use those functions (along with qnx_register_name() and qnx_name_locate()) together those functions form the basis of the best inter-process communication i've seen to date.
Anyway, I'm rambling now
-- Jon Olson