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QNX: When an OS Really, Really Has to Work
An anonymous reader writes "Fortune has this article about how QNX's OS has found a niche and is doing well. Especially after 1996 when Microsoft executives said they would crush them in 2 years. When your software absolutely positively needs to work!"
Wow. Do they still have the web-browser-on-a-bootfloppy offer?
Neutrino being the QNX-based PC OS.
/. is the unstoppable force, will this cause the universe to end?
This should prove to be interesting in several ways:
1) hands on experience with an "never-crash" OS
2) if QNX is the inmmoveable object, and
p.s. specialized OS don't crash because it's exactly that - specialized. I think windows crash so much because (part of the reason) it runs on so many kinds of hardware, for one. As much as I will get flamed, in OEM applications, like, say, most of the new fancy I-will-never-be-able-to-affort oscilloscopes and the likes, windows usually don't crash.
software and hardware goes together - you can't ALWAYS blame on the software; i am not saying MS writes good code, it's just that I don't think is 100% their fault.
maybe 98%...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Just picture Bill Gates with a fro, runnning amok on the street of Canada fully armed with thumb and index finger yelling: "I will crush your little precocious head!"
WinCE a good embedded system? Hmm.. Isn't that the WinCE that is at the heart of PocketPC? The embedded OS that brought blue screens of death (well, ok, depending on your color scheme a light khaki screen of death) to PDAs? Yeah. I trust WinCE to run my heart monitor if I ever end up in an Intensive Care Unit... *cough*
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
They couldn't possibly have reliable code without stealing from Unix. I mean look at the only operating system that hasn't ->Windows. It runs like crap. And don't say that BSD never stole from Unix. AT&T just had crappy lawyers. They should have won that case. IBM and Linux are going down and QNX will soon follow. As soon as SCO wins the IBM case they will go after QNX. The discontent of many companies will then follow. IP thieves will pay!!!
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
I read Slashdot using QNX, on an Audrey. I almost bought another one at a garage sale today for $20, but it had no power supply. Plus the keyboard was Lime.
1. Crush your enemies 2. See them driven before you 3. Hear the lamentations of their women 4. ? 5. Profit!!
"I'm not high, just stupid" --JY
I'm pretty sure AOL, RealPlayer, and Bonzi Buddy will find a way to crash QNX.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I give it a six-and-a-half overall. It *sounds* like you know what you're talking about to anyone just skimming the comments, that's good. Relevence to the topic is spot-on. You spell and punctuate too well to be a regular slashdotter, but that takes a careful reader to notice anyway. You lose a few marks for abuse of "scare quotes", but that's no big deal. The signature is what keeps you from trolling with the big boys though; it blows your apparent credibility right out the window. Nice try though.
0 1 - just my two bits
Last time I checked Microsoft is always crush mood. Microsoft doesn't have to utter the words, it is always implied.
If it was legal, they'd have âoeKicking Devisionâ who's whole objective is to kick the competition in the gonads.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Waiting for the inevitable joke comparing Bill Gates to Khrushchev...
No. There's no comparison. One was the head of an evil empire, the other is the head of the Evil Empire.
-twb
I haven't seen Microsoft send patches to BSD even though they used to use the TCP/IP stack and other stuff in Windows
you really want microsoft code in BSD?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Does that mean it crashes on leap years ?
Just imagine a Beowolf cluster of these.
Doh! Wait! QNX doesn't do that.
Never mind.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
! Garbage collection interrupt
! Garbage collection complete
* Now where was I...
I'm not saying WinCE couldn't do it, mostly, but Microsoft usually hangs too much stuff in the OS for me to trust it. (There's a reason for that "not to be used in medical uses" legal weasel disclaimer on lots of software.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Good thing the FAA uses QNX, cause if they ran MS software, it would go something like this:
Air Traffic Boss: How's it going?
Air Traffic Controller: Fine.
Boss: What's That? (Points to blue screen)
Controller: Oh, that happens when we try to track more than three planes.
Boss: Why does it do that?
Controller: We only purchased a 3-plane license. If we try to track 4, Palladium kicks in, and the whole thing locks up.
Boss: Doesn't that sound, you know, dangerous?
Controller: Not as dangerous as this! (plays an illegal mp3, sirens blow, and all machines are shut down, power is cut off, forcing runway lights to turn off, while planes crash like crazy.)
Hey! I read the article. It's something about SCO being naughty, right?
About a year ago, I was called out to do field service. When I got to the lady's house and was let in, the first thing I noticed was the smell of gunpowder. The second, the double barreled 12-gauge shotgun lying on the couch. Third, the big gaping hole in the side of her computer. (It was one of those Macs where the CPU and monitor are in the same housing.)
I looked at her. She was a little grey haired woman, around 60 or so. Had she? Not possible. Still, I had to ask.
I mumbled something about not being a Mac tech and told her I would send one out as soon as I could. Then I burned rubber out of there.
About a month later, my boss called me in; he had the woman on hold. She had apparently complained that I was not competent and that I had lied when I said I would send out a competent Mac tech -- or perhaps I just hadn't been able to find anyone competent working for us. I filled him in. He paused for a second, picked up the phone, and said, "Ma'am? Did you put a shotshell into your computer? ... Uh huh...I'm sorry, ma'am, we really can't...well, no.... I'll try to send one out.... Nice doing business with you...." He hung up, looked at me, and said, "You think any of our Mac techs will go?" I shook my head. "Me neither."
We heard from her again last week, when my boss told me that the woman had called up to cuss me out, saying not only was I a "young whippersnapper" but also a liar, since one of our competitors had fixed her computer just fine, even fixing the little scratches and stuff on the monitor glass. That sounded fishy, so I went over and talked with the techs. After a case of canned drinks and a few bags of junk food, I wormed the whole story out of them. Apparently, about the only salvagable part was the hard drive (which the buckshot had missed), so they took it out, went out and bought a whole new computer, slapped the hard drive in, and presented it to the lady as her repaired computer -- of course charging her an arm and a leg.
~Idarubicin
QNX is great, no doubt by far one of my favourite OS's but I have crashed it. Although it crashed on my p166, it was probably my machine. The again QNX is more or less made for embedded devices'. The bootdisk was the best tho, you can always count on it when your machine gets fux0red, you always have access to pr0n!!!!!!
It does, however, provide a familar GUI for embedded devices...
I think it is reaching to call WinCE's interface familiar. My first reaction upon using a PocketPC was, "wtf is going on?!"
I guess it is more familiar than, I dunno, cattle prod torture, but that isn't saying much.
I love my iPAQ anyway though.
Zzzzot!
Most companies using BSD software don't contribute anything back - usually, it's just an extra layer of process that's not worth the hassle. I haven't seen Microsoft send patches to BSD even though they used to use the TCP/IP stack and other stuff in Windows.
Yeah, well, you're talking about Microsoft. Obviously they are a special case. Compare to Apple/Darwin. Or Apple/KHTML. Or IBM/Apache. It only makes sense to let someone else maintain your patches for you rather than do it yourself!
According to Microsoft sworn testimony, the OS has the browser so tightly intigrated into it that it can't be removed. That's hardly a microkernel.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This reminds me of the time when at COMDEX, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.
In response to Gates' comments, General Motors issued the following press release (by Mr. Welch himself, the GM CEO).
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.
5. Amiga would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
6. Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.
9. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft gas and all auto fluids but the packaging would be superb.
10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
11. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
13. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.
14. There would be an "Engium Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.
15. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes. Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.
16. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own any roads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free, including IBM!
17. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11), then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive much faster, and on more roads!
18. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it.
19. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganise the ignition for a few days before it worked.
20. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.