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The Rise Of QNX

Posted by timothy on from the we-need-an-o.s.-called-"dough" dept.

SirTimbly writes about QNX: "This little OS is making a big stir lately with big companies. The QNX operating system (pronounced Q-nux) has been rumored lately to be in favor of such companies as CISCO and Palm. This is an embedded OS currently used in Netpliance's i-Opener; it was developed by 3Com and is being used in their latest Internet appliance as well. Read more about this non open-source OS in a ZDNet story here."

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.

4 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Some factual errors.... by iCEBaLM · · Score: 5

    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

  2. QNX rocks by Huusker · · Score: 5

    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

  3. The coolest things about QNX by 1010011010 · · Score: 5

    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!

    ________________________________________

    --
    Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  4. This is NOT a waste of time by 198348726583297634 · · Score: 5
    No, despite the billion uses for Linux, how compact and trimmed you can get it, etc etc, QNX still has a very valuable place in the computer world.

    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!