6 ms·

Back in the day QNX used to have advertisements about having the entire OS and a GUI on a 1.44 MB disk: * https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-runn

Back in the day QNX used to have advertisements about having the entire OS and a GUI on a 1.44 MB disk: * https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-running-144mb-floppy https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-running-144... * http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

fouc 5y ago
QNX had a Photon microGUI that is probably superior to X windows (Wayland). It's a shame it never got fully open sourced.
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  What is QNX's business model nowadays? I understand Ford Sync3 is based on it, but are there other consumer-visible products based on it?
  - detaro 5y ago
    Many other car brands (often just the instrument cluster though). Otherwise probably not much consumer stuff, way more industrial/medical/infrastructure fields.
  - nateguchi 5y ago
    BMW’s iDrive (used in all their production cars since around 2011) uses it
  - biggieshellz 5y ago
    Until recently, Cisco's IOS-XR was based on the QNX microkernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR
  - bluedino 5y ago
    195 million vehicles, and "We are the embedded OS of choice for ventilators, train controls, factory automation systems, medical robots and more."
  - kalleboo 5y ago
    The navigation/entertainment unit on our Suzuki uses it (I pulled apart the firmware update out of curiosity)
- danachow 5y ago
  Wayland is not related to the X Window System, it is a ground up redesign. And while Microgui is nice it purposely isn’t directly comparable to a compositing window manager.
sigzero 5y ago
I ran that! It was actually really good.
yesbabyyes 5y ago
I used to have such a floppy. It was mindblowing, even though at the time 2 floppies would be enough to bootstrap a Debian install (if you had a common network card, the drivers of which were included). Debian would just show the old curses-like installer, and pull the rest of the system from the repo, while QNX had a full GUI, network card/modem drivers, and a friggin web browser in 1.44 MB.
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  That browser (which can be seen on the page linked by GP) is astounding for its size. Out of curiosity, what are currently the most minimal, "graphic" (i.e. not Links-like), browsers available today? Any Open Source ones?
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    I loved Dillo but its development seems stuck. As a replacement I use netsurf.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    Probably NetSurf. https://www.netsurf-browser.org https://www.netsurf-browser.org
    - gregsadetsky 5y ago
      NetSurf's great, thank you! I'd be curious to try porting it to another "frontend" i.e. OS/device. I don't know how difficult that would be. The development documentation seems good: http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      NetSurf is a great project, since unlike Dillo (another minimal web browser) it can handle a lot of sites out there while requiring very few resources. I use it often on a Raspberry Pi 2 i have next to me together with Dillo, but Dillo really only works with very very simple sites and mainly use it for reading HTML-based documentation.
drewzero1 5y ago
QNX, Floppix (2 diskettes)[0], MenuetOS[1], and Kolibri[2] were all very exciting to me in the early '00s. Eventually I got a USB drive (128MB!) and more or less gave up on the floppy life, but I do still appreciate the idea of running froim a floppy. [0] https://www.floppix.com/ https://www.floppix.com/ [1] http://menuetos.net/ http://menuetos.net/ [2] http://www.kolibrios.org/en/ http://www.kolibrios.org/en/
- tcbawo 5y ago
  I understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss!
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss! I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-of-29-different-types-of-usb-attacks/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-...
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      > I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. It's entirely possible for a floppy-disk to be an attack-vector. After all, viruses were a thing in DOS days and they spread via floppy disks: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot-sector-virus https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot... But a modern Trojan-horse style computer-hidden-inside-an-innocuous-looking-peripheral in a floppy disk should be possible, considering what Sony fit into a floppy-disk's dimensions back in 2000: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95 http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95
      - 5y ago
wslh 5y ago
With a friend and stimulated by the QNX demo we ported a Squeak Smalltalk graphical environment to one 1.44mb disk: http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ Basically we use a base Linux and modified Squeak to use SVGAlib instead of X-Windows. Later on some friends created a whole OS in Squeak (e.g. you could browse the TCP/IP protocol as a class in Smalltalk): https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762
- ta988 5y ago
  Still existing and getting developed: http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1 http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1
  - exikyut 5y ago
    (Most recent file modified in 2011: https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeaknos/files/SqueakNOS/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeaknos/files/SqueakNOS/)
    - ta988 5y ago
      Oh... sorry about that. I read 2021 somehow.
- jonjacky 5y ago
  The nopsys/CogNOS project is more recent (commits in 2018): "CogNOS is actually a third iteration of the orginal SqueakNOS project ..." https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS There is a conference paper about it, also from 2018: https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf
jrootabega 5y ago
In the mid-2000s I was using a nice single-floppy router distribution called freesco. I thought it worked pretty well, but I didn't put it under any stress. I don't know if the project still has the same soul as it did then, but here it is: https://www.freesco.org/ https://www.freesco.org/
- bluedino 5y ago
  I found a small Pentium 100MHz desktop in the trash back then, stuck a spare pair of 3com NICs in it, and loaded up Turbolinux that I got with a Linux magazine. Followed the Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO (http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m.html http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m....), and I soon had it running the network in my apartment building with a cable modem and 100mb SMC hub (also from a dumpster) A couple weeks later I came home to find the internet "not working", it got hacked (I never applied updates), and I replaced it with Freesco and never looked back.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  I had to click the link to find out it's not FreeSCO (i.e. Not a free version of SCO Unix), which would have been quite... surprising. Buried deep into SCO's FTP server there still is a bootable single-floppy demo of SCO OpenServer intended for POS devices or so, but it's lacking any kind of GUI and most command line utilities...
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    not even that deep: ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/pos/demo/demofloppy
  - jrootabega 5y ago
    Yeah, I seem to remember there being a steady amount of confusion over that at all times. I think it was supposed to be "free Cisco."
robotresearcher 5y ago
The original Macintosh was 64KB of ROM plus a 400KB floppy. Snug.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Yeah, even if you include the stuff in ROM, Macs and Amigas had full GUI environments using much less space back in the 80's. With that in mind, having an antique version of X running from a floppy isn't that impressive. It's still really cool though. :D

fouc 5y ago

QNX had a Photon microGUI that is probably superior to X windows (Wayland). It's a shame it never got fully open sourced.

AceJohnny2 5y ago
What is QNX's business model nowadays? I understand Ford Sync3 is based on it, but are there other consumer-visible products based on it?
- detaro 5y ago
  Many other car brands (often just the instrument cluster though). Otherwise probably not much consumer stuff, way more industrial/medical/infrastructure fields.
- nateguchi 5y ago
  BMW’s iDrive (used in all their production cars since around 2011) uses it
- biggieshellz 5y ago
  Until recently, Cisco's IOS-XR was based on the QNX microkernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR
- bluedino 5y ago
  195 million vehicles, and "We are the embedded OS of choice for ventilators, train controls, factory automation systems, medical robots and more."
- kalleboo 5y ago
  The navigation/entertainment unit on our Suzuki uses it (I pulled apart the firmware update out of curiosity)
danachow 5y ago
Wayland is not related to the X Window System, it is a ground up redesign. And while Microgui is nice it purposely isn’t directly comparable to a compositing window manager.

sigzero 5y ago

I ran that! It was actually really good.

yesbabyyes 5y ago

I used to have such a floppy. It was mindblowing, even though at the time 2 floppies would be enough to bootstrap a Debian install (if you had a common network card, the drivers of which were included). Debian would just show the old curses-like installer, and pull the rest of the system from the repo, while QNX had a full GUI, network card/modem drivers, and a friggin web browser in 1.44 MB.

gregsadetsky 5y ago
That browser (which can be seen on the page linked by GP) is astounding for its size. Out of curiosity, what are currently the most minimal, "graphic" (i.e. not Links-like), browsers available today? Any Open Source ones?
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I loved Dillo but its development seems stuck. As a replacement I use netsurf.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Probably NetSurf. https://www.netsurf-browser.org https://www.netsurf-browser.org
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    NetSurf's great, thank you! I'd be curious to try porting it to another "frontend" i.e. OS/device. I don't know how difficult that would be. The development documentation seems good: http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    NetSurf is a great project, since unlike Dillo (another minimal web browser) it can handle a lot of sites out there while requiring very few resources. I use it often on a Raspberry Pi 2 i have next to me together with Dillo, but Dillo really only works with very very simple sites and mainly use it for reading HTML-based documentation.

drewzero1 5y ago

QNX, Floppix (2 diskettes)[0], MenuetOS[1], and Kolibri[2] were all very exciting to me in the early '00s. Eventually I got a USB drive (128MB!) and more or less gave up on the floppy life, but I do still appreciate the idea of running froim a floppy. [0] https://www.floppix.com/ https://www.floppix.com/ [1] http://menuetos.net/ http://menuetos.net/ [2] http://www.kolibrios.org/en/ http://www.kolibrios.org/en/

tcbawo 5y ago
I understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss!
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss! I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-of-29-different-types-of-usb-attacks/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-...
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. It's entirely possible for a floppy-disk to be an attack-vector. After all, viruses were a thing in DOS days and they spread via floppy disks: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot-sector-virus https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot... But a modern Trojan-horse style computer-hidden-inside-an-innocuous-looking-peripheral in a floppy disk should be possible, considering what Sony fit into a floppy-disk's dimensions back in 2000: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95 http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95
    - 5y ago

wslh 5y ago

With a friend and stimulated by the QNX demo we ported a Squeak Smalltalk graphical environment to one 1.44mb disk: http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ Basically we use a base Linux and modified Squeak to use SVGAlib instead of X-Windows. Later on some friends created a whole OS in Squeak (e.g. you could browse the TCP/IP protocol as a class in Smalltalk): https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762

ta988 5y ago
Still existing and getting developed: http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1 http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1
- exikyut 5y ago
  (Most recent file modified in 2011: https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeaknos/files/SqueakNOS/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeaknos/files/SqueakNOS/)
  - ta988 5y ago
    Oh... sorry about that. I read 2021 somehow.
jonjacky 5y ago
The nopsys/CogNOS project is more recent (commits in 2018): "CogNOS is actually a third iteration of the orginal SqueakNOS project ..." https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS There is a conference paper about it, also from 2018: https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf

jrootabega 5y ago

In the mid-2000s I was using a nice single-floppy router distribution called freesco. I thought it worked pretty well, but I didn't put it under any stress. I don't know if the project still has the same soul as it did then, but here it is: https://www.freesco.org/ https://www.freesco.org/

bluedino 5y ago
I found a small Pentium 100MHz desktop in the trash back then, stuck a spare pair of 3com NICs in it, and loaded up Turbolinux that I got with a Linux magazine. Followed the Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO (http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m.html http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m....), and I soon had it running the network in my apartment building with a cable modem and 100mb SMC hub (also from a dumpster) A couple weeks later I came home to find the internet "not working", it got hacked (I never applied updates), and I replaced it with Freesco and never looked back.
gattilorenz 5y ago
I had to click the link to find out it's not FreeSCO (i.e. Not a free version of SCO Unix), which would have been quite... surprising. Buried deep into SCO's FTP server there still is a bootable single-floppy demo of SCO OpenServer intended for POS devices or so, but it's lacking any kind of GUI and most command line utilities...
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  not even that deep: ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/pos/demo/demofloppy
- jrootabega 5y ago
  Yeah, I seem to remember there being a steady amount of confusion over that at all times. I think it was supposed to be "free Cisco."

robotresearcher 5y ago

The original Macintosh was 64KB of ROM plus a 400KB floppy. Snug.

fogihujy 5y ago
Yeah, even if you include the stuff in ROM, Macs and Amigas had full GUI environments using much less space back in the 80's. With that in mind, having an antique version of X running from a floppy isn't that impressive. It's still really cool though. :D