4 ms·

I remember using the single disk QNX demo back in the day and being highly impressed with the functionality the crammed into that disk. Sad that it never went a

I remember using the single disk QNX demo back in the day and being highly impressed with the functionality the crammed into that disk. Sad that it never went anywhere as a desktop/server OS.

Animats 8y ago
I ran QNX as a desktop OS for three years when I was working on a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. The vehicle ran QNX, so the development systems did, too. It had an early version of Firefox, the Eclipse IDE, Thunderbird mail, and all the Gnu command line tools. Sadly, QNX under Blackberry no longer offers the desktop environment. And QNX's open source/closed source/open source/closed source transitions angered the development community so much that people stopped offering QNX versions of UNIX/Linux software. The most striking thing about running QNX on the desktop was the absolutely consistent response. It doesn't page, so everything is in memory. Going back to Linux felt so laggy. You pay about a 10%-20% overhead cost for all that interprocess communication. It's not a big deal on modern processors, because when you send a message, the receiving process is running on the same CPU and the data is usually in L1 cache since the sender just put it there. So copying is cheap. Incidentally, all the Boston Dynamics robots run QNX. They're coordinating all those limbs and valves from one CPU. It's not distributed; that would be too uncoordinated. Valve update is at 1KHz; balance update is at 100Hz.
- beagle3 8y ago
  > And QNX's open source/closed source/open source/closed source transitions angered the development community so much that people stopped offering QNX versions of UNIX/Linux software. Was it ever really open? I can't find copies of any version (regardless of how old)
  - Animats 8y ago
    Yes.[1] Source made available in 2007. Source closed without warning after the Blackberry acquisition in 2010. QNX is doing well in automotive.[2] QNX is the part of Blackberry that's making money. [1] http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html [2] http://canada.autonews.com/article/20180622/CANADA/180629921/blackberry-reports-q1-loss-but-qnx-auto-software-division-grows-31 http://canada.autonews.com/article/20180622/CANADA/180629921...
    - beagle3 8y ago
      IIRC I wanted to download a copy around 2007, but there was no way to do that unless you were already a licensee. I may not recall correctly, though.

I remember using the single disk QNX demo back in the day and being highly impressed with the functionality the crammed into that disk. Sad that it never went anywhere as a desktop/server OS.

Animats 8y ago

I ran QNX as a desktop OS for three years when I was working on a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. The vehicle ran QNX, so the development systems did, too. It had an early version of Firefox, the Eclipse IDE, Thunderbird mail, and all the Gnu command line tools. Sadly, QNX under Blackberry no longer offers the desktop environment. And QNX's open source/closed source/open source/closed source transitions angered the development community so much that people stopped offering QNX versions of UNIX/Linux software. The most striking thing about running QNX on the desktop was the absolutely consistent response. It doesn't page, so everything is in memory. Going back to Linux felt so laggy. You pay about a 10%-20% overhead cost for all that interprocess communication. It's not a big deal on modern processors, because when you send a message, the receiving process is running on the same CPU and the data is usually in L1 cache since the sender just put it there. So copying is cheap. Incidentally, all the Boston Dynamics robots run QNX. They're coordinating all those limbs and valves from one CPU. It's not distributed; that would be too uncoordinated. Valve update is at 1KHz; balance update is at 100Hz.

beagle3 8y ago
> And QNX's open source/closed source/open source/closed source transitions angered the development community so much that people stopped offering QNX versions of UNIX/Linux software. Was it ever really open? I can't find copies of any version (regardless of how old)
- Animats 8y ago
  Yes.[1] Source made available in 2007. Source closed without warning after the Blackberry acquisition in 2010. QNX is doing well in automotive.[2] QNX is the part of Blackberry that's making money. [1] http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html [2] http://canada.autonews.com/article/20180622/CANADA/180629921/blackberry-reports-q1-loss-but-qnx-auto-software-division-grows-31 http://canada.autonews.com/article/20180622/CANADA/180629921...
  - beagle3 8y ago
    IIRC I wanted to download a copy around 2007, but there was no way to do that unless you were already a licensee. I may not recall correctly, though.