Explaining The Symbiosis Between QNX RtP & Linux

Thanks to Mike Bouma who put together a paper with the help from a number of the Phoenix project members which gives more information regarding what's going on with QNX and why it matters.

Explaining the Symbiosis between QNX RtP and Linux

The Linux community and its open source approach has huge potential and helps us greatly to realize our goal to make the QNX Realtime Platform a superior general purpose desktop and developer operating system. QNX RtP is fully compliant with the latest POSIX standards. This, together with a X11 compatibility layer for the Photon MicroGUI, means most Linux/Unix applications only need simple recompiles and modifications to be ported to this new platform. So whatever Linux/Unix gains the OS will gain as well! Currently QNXStart.com already has a nice software library and Tucows is busy building one. The freely available award winning Voyager browser is excellent and plug-ins like Flash 4 and RealPlayer 7 are already available. Also Amiga`s Digital Environment is being developed to support the QNX RtP and will not only provide us with a common binary identical application layer for Linux but most other operating systems as well. The Tao Group (Amiga`s OS partner) already provided QSSL with a wonderfully small and efficient Java VM implementation for its predecessor QNX4. In addition QSSL and IBM are working together on a real-time technology for Java applications under the QNX Realtime Platform.

Giving source code away freely for everyone to use does not make sense for everybody. Especially commercial companies would not be motivated to spend years on OS development and make the fruits of their work freely available for rival companies. With QSSL being the owner of this OS and offering all the relevant source code to developers, developers can invest their resources while still being protected from competitors. So QSSL offers prime advantages of both the open-source and commercial worlds! !

One month ago the pre-release developer version of the QNX Realtime Platform was freely released for public download freely for non-commercial use. Since its launch more than 400,000 downloads at http://get.qnx.com followed, while bringing even Tucow's servers to their knees. Additionally, QSSL has set up a developer's support network with weekly articles by QNX experts giving their insights on programming under the QNX Realtime Platform. There are very ambitious projects for this new OS and many exciting new developments will be announced when the time is right.

But what makes QNX RtP so special, you may ask?

QNX RtP is an excellent realtime operating system, which means that all programs are smoothly given CPU time (according to the priority they are given in the Scheduler). This gives developers or users the option to set high priorities for certain tasks, so that for instance a multimedia player will be quaranteed to respond and function optimally in any given situation. The stability and realtime abilities of QSSL`s OSs resulted in them being used heavily in fault intolerant and response critical systems, for instance nuclear reactors, medical equipment, space craft, traffic control systems , etc.

Within the embedded market, a small memory footprint and optimal efficiency are very important issues. QNX RtP is based on the modern and optimised QNX Neutrino microkernel. OS modules such as file systems, TCP/IP and even drivers run as normal memory protected user processes, allowing them to be plugged in and removed at any time without a reboot. This allows QNX RtP to be scaled down or up very easily for use in compact Internet Appliances as well as in full blown multi-processor servers (3Com`s Audrey IA has just been released and uses the QNX RtP at its core.). It also eliminates the need for special kernel APIs and debuggers, greatly simplifying driver development and debugging.

Although I could continue for hours telling you endlessly about other benefits I will end this by highlighting one other great feature which impressed most developers involved instantly, when we started our relationship with QSSL a couple of years ago. It truly offers superior flexible and transparent networking abilities. As an example of its flexibility; you could have a game running on one computer in a network, while it is being controlled by a joystick on another computer within the network, and its graphical output being displayed on a monitor of another machine again! One demonstration was of Doom running on two connected machines to begin with; it was running on one machine, then the window it was running in was dragged onto the display of the second machine, then it was partially dragged back, so the game was running synchronic and seamlessly with half a window on each screen!

Something wonderful is coming. Do you want to join the exciting battle to change computing and topple the choking monopolies within the industry? :)

Sincerely, Mike Bouma.

AmigaRing http://www.stormloader.com/amiga
Phoenix Developer Consortium http://www.phinixi.com

Comments

Are they riding coattails or have I misread this?

[A nonymous Coward]

They seem to be saying how wonderful that all this free source code is wonderful because it takes just a recompile to work on QNX, but Giving source code away freely for everyone to use does not make sense for everybody so they don't have to give anything back.

Is this what it says? Am I confoozed?

--

Why it *is* cool..

[iamsure]

They hit the nail on the head. QNX is interesting and good and cool because it will expand, yet again, the market for linux binaries!

Remember, the main reason SO many people code for windows is the simple fact that in doing so, they reach some 75% of the market (or whatever it is today).

Between Gnome becoming default on Sun stations, and QNX, and all the other places (dont forget BSD!), linux binaries are reaching a seriously larger audience.

Whether individually those things are in and of themselves cool (be nice if kde AND gnome were BOTH defaults.. ie, a choice), as a whole, they are increasing the market for programs for linux.

That is how to win the war to grab programmers. :)

(I know what you are thinking -- who wants windows programmers. We dont. We want programmers that HAPPEN to program for windows because of its HUGE installed base).

Eventually, linux will be the OBVIOUS choice.

I don't mean to sound rude, but ...

[dbarclay10]

I apologize if I sound rude, but his is nothing more than an advertisement. Only two or three lines has anything to do with "Open Source"(yeah, right, who here is gonna call THAT "Open Source"???), and the rest of it was them telling us how great QNX is, how well it scales, how easy it is to program for, etc., etc..

Now, if you want to review something, that's great by me - I like reviews. I don't even care if it's a review of an Evil Microsoft product, and I don't mind if you sing its praises.

But is this the forum for blatant advertising? Sure, banner ads are fine, whatever. Even "sponsorship messages" are cool - but LABEL THEM AS SUCH.

Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,

I have used QNX on serious projects

[OmniGeek]

I have a ten-years-old distributed system (small, just 3 nodes, but distributed) that uses an early version of QNX to remotely boot diskless front-end systems and operate them from a central computer (a 386-33MHz speed demon). The system IS nice, you can run programs on a remote system from the command line with trivial ease, and the networking (at least the Arcnet system we used for the network-boot architecture) was quite robust. (Of course, the lousy application program that we ran on top of QNX is cursed to the deepest pits, and the system has always been marginal as a result...) QNX itself is s fine OS.

On the minus side, QNX (at least then) did NOT let you create a bootable floppy, something that annoys me no end. We had sufficient licences for all nodes (at $hundreds per node), but ya still needed those double-damned fingerprinted floppies to make it work.

More recently, I had a brief fling with LynxOS 2 years ago; after several days of can't-get-it-to-install-even-with-tech-support-pho ne-calls, changing the NIC and video card 'cause LynxOS didn't like'em, and general difficulty using it, I went out and bought RedHat 5.0, and I'm never, ever going closed-source again unless forced. (BTW, the funny thing 'bout LynxOS was, all the primary development tools were GNU; gcc, gdb... Only the profiler and MetroX X server were proprietary. Now, tell me again why I paid $30K for this package?)

Yes, I MAY be able to get superior real-time performance out of a closed-source OS (unproven IMHO); but my systems, like MOST of those out there, do NOT stretch the boundaries of achievable performance. I'm running P5-200MHz front-end systems using VMEbus; if I need more performance, (which I haven't yet and probably won't), I'll just slap in a faster CPU card. So far, I've had to hack the NIC code once to eliminate a funky media-autosense problem, and the VME driver to accommodate the VMIC VME implementation (the latter has since fixed by VMIC; great people, I HIGHLY recommend them, AND they support Linux on their iron!); I could NOT have done this with LynxOS or QNX, and MY experience says there's every chance I would have needed to do so.

It's not ideology that moves me to say this, and not cheapness (the OS cost isn't an issue in my systems); it's Linux' better flexibility, equal or better reliability and hardware compatibility, and that source accessibility that make it my primary choice for an OS.

As a practical matter of getting my job done, Open Source wins for me. Period.

So, its another BeOS??

[Ars-Fartsica]

Aside from the real-time capabilities, which I presume are meaningless to almost all linux users, basically we've got another BeOS here.

My advice: learn the lesson that Be didn't - open source your OS if you want to survive. Regardless of whether it makes "strategic" sense for the company, the market for this type of product won't dedicate any mindshare to a closed source product. Without developer mindshare, you're toast.

Get over it.

[Siqnal 11]

I really don't see what you guys are getting so excited about. What sets QNX apart from all the other commercial RTOSes out there? It's a commercial endeavour! Yes, you can download a demo disk. But you don't get full source and you're not allowed to use it for any real work. Sounds pretty much like VxWorks or any one of the dozens of other competitors to me. Call them, they'll send you a free demo too!

Read the FAQ. Their opinions are stated in plain view:

Q: Why doesn't QNX provide source to the kernel and other core OS modules?
A: Because QNX developers don't need kernel source to extend the OS.

Anyone who's ever done serious work in embedded systems know the kernel source is absolutely essential for debugging, not only the application but also the kernel. All OSes contain kernel bugs. They're a pain to find and fix without source, and those of us who've been there are not going back lightheartedly. You all know this, that's why we're embracing open source. How come so many of you are now eager to jump back into the dark hole that is proprietary software?

For embedded work, there's ECOS already. It's Free Software and runs on a dozen different CPUs, with new ports coming all the time. If you want the 3D acceleration, anti-aliases graphics and macromedia player, you're probably not looking for embedded stuff in the first place.

Sure, QNX is fun. Play away. But it isn't the future.

--

New Mod Category

[skoda]

Perhaps a new moderation category would be helpful:

(Score: -1, Marketing Fluff)

:)
-----
D. Fischer