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The Rise Of QNX
QNX might not be new, but SirTimbly is right about it making a stir. Max von H. writes: "Audrey, the household net appliance from 3Com/ergo has been officially released, and there's even an official site on which you can smile at the design. The beast runs QNX/Neutrino, as stated in this ZDNet story. The sweet thing is it can sync with two PalmOS devices, which can make a geek couple's life much easier without having to fumble with a real PC. Say what you want, but Audrey could possibly be successful since anybody can use it, and 3Com has shown a simple system rules when it comes to do simple things."
And no mention of QNX is complete without a reference to the QNX demo disk, which packs a pretty amazing set of features onto a floppy. Here too, it's free, but not Free.
"It's also really efficiently written, and almost completely modular (as opposed to Linux' monolithic-plus-kitchen-sink approach)."
I don't suppose you've ever used Linux, since lsmod, rmmod, insmod, depmod, modprobe are all parts of the wonderful world of mapping things dynamically into kernele space. With it, I can have hot plug PCMCIA, USB, and other devices without having to have this monolitihic kernel you decry. There's even a Microkernel Linux which adds the features that the HURD and QNX have, that Linux doesn't.
QNX is targetted at embedded devices. That tight focus lets it get away with not having support for 64gb of ram, scaling to 8-way SMP, NUMA, swap space, implementation of device drivers for PC and non-PC hardware of all kinds, and other requirements of being a kernel that can be embedded in devices lacking a memory controller, to massive SMP systems, to computing clusters.
"QNX is much more suitable for PDAs and otehr small systems than is Linux."
Ever heard the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none?" Linux is the swiss-army knife kernel. It may not be as good for skinning as a proper hunting knife, but it also has a saw, a can opener, a magnifying glass, and many other useful tools that you might need some day. Think about it.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Firstly, QNX is pronounced Queue-nicks, not Queue-nucks.
Secondly, it was developed at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and then spun off into a company.
Thirdly, it is not *just* an embedded OS, its most prominant use (atleast to Ontario and Quebec elemenrtary and secondary school students some 10 years ago) was on the PC powering that evil Unisys companies line of diskless 80186 based network computers called the Icon of which our schools had ungodly amounts of. QNX is also used quite extensively in the Canadian Armed Forces and can be used as a desktop OS.
-- iCEBaLM
I used QNX about twelve years ago. It used to power an educational computer called the Icon. It was actually a decent Unix-like system.
Anyway, it's definately not developed by 3COM. I think the real developer was Quantum Systems in Waterloo Ontario Canada.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
QNX was NOT developped by 3com, and I quote: &The Ontario, Canada-based company was founded 20 years ago as a real-time operating system vendor."
At least get you facts straight and make it look like you actually read and understood the article before you post.
I also gave it a try. I downloaded the ISO image, burned it, booted it, installed it, and I must say - the install was flawless. The photon microgui is not X-based and is very fast. The OS itself is also very fast. I may use the floppy demo to setup an internet terminal on my LAN. I have to agree with you regarding the confusing file system layout.
You mentioned BeOS only now getting support from vendors and this is in fact mentioned on benews.com or one of the other beos sites. I am impressed with qnx overall as it has been a good embedded OS for many years now. It probably has more viability controlling robots in a high tech assembly plant than as a full blown desktop OS though. We'll just have to wait and see what comes of it.
Hum.. if this machine is called Audrey, then presumably the next version of it will be the Audrey 2, at which point we really need to start wondering about 3Com's plans for world domination.
In 1982, I ported one of the earliest MUDS (Scepter, 1979) from a Cyber 6000 mainframe to a PC using QNX. It supported sixteen users on an IBM PC XT (4Mhz 8-bit 8088 CPU). And no stinking 16650 FIFOs. With 1-character-per-interrupt, 16 users merrily MUD'ed away at 2400 baud.
In addition to the MUD we offered chat rooms, e-mail, and two other multi-player games (Diplomacy and Space Combat). We charged $2.99 an hour. It paid my way through college.
Don't believe it? Telnet to drscape.com. To this day it still runs on a 4Mhz PC XT with QNX 1.14.
Alan Klietz
Author, Scepter of Goth on QNX
alank@algintech.NOSPAM.com
No one has mentioned the coolest things about QNX -- notably its architecture. QNX is a highly reliable, real-time OS based on message passing. It really is a microkernel OS. Even device and filesystem drivers run in userspace. This makes it incredibly stable, as you can actually crash a driver, restart it, and keep going. You can also upgrade subsystems without taking the machine offline. QNX is used in systems that cannot fail, such as heart monitors.
It's also really efficiently written, and almost completely modular (as opposed to Linux' monolithic-plus-kitchen-sink approach). Their 1.44MB Floppy demo contains the bootloader and kernel, a GUI, a web wrowser, tcp/ip and PPP. No other OS can do that, because they're too bloated. Linux can be put in a floppy, but there's no way to fit a GUI and a web browser as well. YOu might be able to chuck out things like the shell and libc, and include a statically-linked version of lynx, but nothing as good as the QNX demo can be achieved.
QNX is much more suitable for PDAs and otehr small systems than is Linux. It's loads more reliable, more easily upgradable, and much more compact. Just look at the iOpener; into 16MB they fit the OS, a custom GUI built on top of the QNX GUI, web browser, email, telnet server, and other things, and hadspace left over to store files. The only other OS that could do that is WinCE, and it's much more limited than QNX (such as a limit of 32 processes, 22 of which are consumed by the system itself).
QNX rocks!
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'm sure that when I tried out QNX RTP it had GNU development tools (gcc etc.) with it. There's also a largr number of everyone's fav. Linux apps ported..
I tried out RTP when it came out, they had ports for (but not limited to)
- gtk
- x11amp
- gimp
- ssh
- mc
- vi
- (maybe emacs..)
- abiword
- a Mozilla port that I couldn't find
- many, many others.
Overall, the OS was smokin' fast, they're going to be using IBM's JDK (actually developed in Ottawa too by one of the object* companies.) They also had good 3D support for my Voodoo 3, and had demos of Q3 to prove it..
The browser was pretty good, the photon interface was good (but not as nice as the DE's for Linux.) Anyway, I was quite imoressed. Maybe you should give it a spin...
Ben
The original ICON was built by a firm called CEMCORP, Canadian Educational Microprocessors (or Microcomputers, but I think it was the former) specifically for the Canadian educational market. IIRC they were 8086's with about 512K or 640K of RAM, and CGA graphics but done in an unusual configuration, not PC standard. They were the large square chassis built with military grade steel and had an integrated keyboard with a trackball on the right, with an "Action" key for the mouse button. They were ridiculously overbuilt. The ICON's were workstations running over Arcnet (ICONNET) IIRC, into a fileserver called the Lexicon, which carried a 30MByte hard disk interfaced via ESDI or ST506 MFM.
The next-gen ICON was the ICON2, built by Unisys using an 80186, in the grey single piece monitor/CPU and the detachable keyboard/trackball unit. Some ICON2's integrated SCSI IIRC to host an LMSI single speed CDRom reader. Apparently there was an ICON3 which was a 80386, but IIRC it was a basic Unisys clone PC. The Unisys icons eventually allowed for emulation of MSDOS but it was painfully slow.
The ICON system ran QNX on both the ICON and LEXICON in a full multiuser configuration. There was a graphical layer, called Ambience, and a number of nifty programs (I really like the paint package, it made me buy an Amiga later on) mostly written by the Ontario government and University of Waterloo.
The machines were ridiculously slow-because of the reliance on the LEXICON and the slow 2MBps network. If the Lexicon crashed (and it did regularily) the entire system needed to rebooted, which took 15 minutes plus. Needless to say this wasn't popular with teachers with only 30 minute class periods. The hardware, at least mechanically, was extremely well designed. The machines were obviously designed for the classroom, and I can't remember a machine being damaged physically-they knew the target market well-the keyboards had oversized areas to get to the trackball, they were relatively indestructable, and they had headphone jacks up front for quiet use.
ICONS were very far ahead in concept (each student was suppsoed to have their own workspace, true multiuser, each teacher could look at each student) but poorly implemented (poor training, not enough time to set everything up properly). Improper administrator (usually the school librarian or a really bright kid) and/or teacher training made it even worse. I remember learning all about it when the school VP let me (at age 12) read all the QNX manuals.
Calum The ICON's were
It's NOT LINUX!!
It's good to have choice. That's why we have a bazillion window managers and theming skinnable apps that give you a billion ways to dump core. >:(
But aside from the bland "choice is good" mantra, QNX has definite good qualities of its own - it's very lightweight, very fast, has a decent GUI system going for it (despite not having DND, which I deem a semi-serious flaw, but one that could be tackled), and it could teach other people a thing or two yet with the way it does stuff. And even if it doesn't even have anything to teach, it's still a potentially very useful OS to run on one's computer. Time will tell. Time and apps.
Don't dump on it (yet).
GAIN EVERLASTING LIFE!
QNX never suffered from a lack of technical merits. Its main problem was a certain marketing arrogance on the side of the parent company. They simply were never terribly interested in selling QNX to mere mortals. If a prospective licensee wasn't going to embed it in at least 10 million units or what have you, they simply didn't show any interest. My previous company wanted to use it in an embedded networked device for industrial control. But since the projected volume was very low (hundreds of units a year max), the prices quoted for QNX were stratospheric, so we went with PharLap instead. Can't say I was happy with the choice--Linux would have been much more flexible, albeit more bloated--but for a device selling for $500 it doesn't make any sense to pay half that just for OS royalties.
While I've heard all the arguments from QNX fans as to why this marketing model makes sense, it doesn't change the fact that an OS copy not sold is money lost, either way you look at it. How could they possibly be better off not selling me the OS at all, versus licensing it at $50 or so a pop? They should simply introduce a layered support mechanism, giving more support to those who pay more, and less (mailing lists, FAQs, KBs etc) to those who pay less.
Worth mentioning that QNX RTP is available for download from their site. Gave it a try about a week ago, and it does have its good points - i went from booting the CD to being up and running in about 10-15 minutes, with network and graphics configs as well. Nice. They have a nifty little web browser, and REALLY nice package management - Linux could learn a thing or two from it. They have a reasonable amount of software, the interface is pretty responsive, and it's pretty easy to use.
The downsides - I hate the filesystem layout - it's really confusing, moreso than other unices. The interface is allright, but it's not as well designed as other ones I've tried. It'll be cool for embedded applications, but as a desktop OS, which is more what RTP is, it doesn't beat *BSD/Linux or BeOS. What's frustrating is that they've been able to garner a lot of support from other vendors, having a JVM and Flash and RealPlayer, Quake III (!) and lots of hardware support, compared to BeOS which is just now getting these things and has had lots of problems with hardware vendors.
All in all, I reccomend giving it a try, but I don't think I'd use it regularly. Between BeOS and FreeBSD, all my needs are pretty much satisfied. Well, cept for when I need to boot Windows to play Counter-Strike.
-lx