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Get QNX For Free

Posted by jamie on from the no-PIII-required dept.

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.

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. More development for QNX? by mind21_98 · · Score: 5

    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
  2. Finally, QNX gets it. by Animats · · Score: 5
    QNX tried, in the 1980s, to compete with Microsoft. Despite a much better product (they were competing with DOS, after all), they had a terrible time selling the thing. So they retreated to the real-time market, where people care if the OS works reliably, and did quite well. They went to a pricing model that discouraged individual developers (it was something like $20K for the development system, $1 for each shipped system.) Now they seem to be coming out of their niche. That's encouraging.

    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.