QNX RtP 6.2 World Preview

Jason writes: "OSNews is running an exclusive preview of the brand new version 6.2 of the QNX realtime operating system. The article is going through the installation process, the Photon user interface (lots of screenshots included), the internals, and the advantages and disadvantages of the OS as a desktop system. QNX RtP 6.2 is expected to be released for free (for non commercial usage) before March."

Comments

Hello Point... you've missed it.

[MosesJones]

Its a real time operating system for embedded devices. The PC based platform is for development to help you rather than plugging directly into the RS232 port of your dev kit.

The questions you ask are nothing to do with an RTOS but looking at it from the perspective of "Oh look a Windows competitor" this is NOT in the same market as even WindowsCE, although there is some overlap. The PC based platform is to aid development, it can be stripped down to a delivery box but this is not for Joe Sixpack PC user.

The real question is "Can anything else run in a couple of Megs of RAM..... or less" and have guarenteed delivery times on tasks. The answer for Linux and MS-Windows is NOPE.

THIS IS NOT A DESKTOP OS.

Sorry for shouting but people should

a) Read the article

b) Understand that MS-Windows and bloatware are not the most interesting market in the world.

c) Realise that cut and paste on a VCR is a silly idea.

Re:Who is this reviewer?

[dhuff]

"He" is a she - Eugenia Loli-Queru. Eugenia is Editor-in-Chief of OSNews.com. Before moving to the U.S. she was a web-designer in the U.K., ported more than 80 Linux/Posix/DOS applications to BeOS and founded the BeUnited BeOS Development Movement in April 2000.

As for a background in embedded systems, I'm not sure - but she is certainly more qualified than you suggest, having experience with many OSes incl. BeOS, AtheOS and FreeBSD among others...

Amiga

[Snowfox]

A reminder that this was originally going to be the OS used for the new Amiga hardware, before Amiga up and went in a strange, new direction which didn't involve new hardware.

I guess this is a peek at what the new Amiga could have been. It doesn't look as nice as 3.9, though the underlying technology is pretty neat.

Desktop QNX

[fm6]

THIS IS NOT A DESKTOP OS.

Actually, that's not true. QNX has always had a lot of desktop features, and was originally sold to that market.

At one time QNX's realtime features worked in favor of its use on the desktop. That was 20 years ago, when processors were wimpy, and attempts to create GUIs based on DOS had pathetic results.

Of course, QNX's window of opportunity to compete with NT, or even Linux, has long since closed, So the development efforts and the marketing noise emphasize embedded and realtime apps. That's why the Photon GUI is so dated, and the interactive apps are starting to clash with the desktop apps. These are things that could be fixed, but never will be. The reasons are economic, not technical

I'm in love with RtP

[MSBob]

I played with RtP for quite a while. I love it. I learned so much about OS design just by reading the RtP manuals and I think it has a hell of a potential especially on internet appliances and web tablets etc.

The beauty of QNX and RtP is the microkernel design (let the flamewars begin). The OS is exteremly resilient because the core kernel just acts as a messaging bus for all other services that run in the user space. For example, should your filesystem crash you can just restart it like any other user space process!. Alternatively if you don't need multitasking capabilities but memory and hardware are at premium you simply don't run proc and don't have to put up with the overhead of a process scheduler. QNX is such a clean design it puts other microkernels to shame. Rock on QSSL.