4 ms·

Reminds me of QNX. It was an amazing OS and restarting display drivers over the network was just one of its amazing abilities.

mwcampbell 5y ago
No surprise, since Bryan Cantrill worked at QNX for a short time in the 90s.
hbbio 5y ago
There should be a retweet on HN! QNX was one the most impressive OS I've seen, especially for its time. From the full OS in a 1.44Mb floppy disk to restartable drivers, real-time, etc. IPC with messages is built in and most things ran in userland. It ended in the hands of BlackBerry which is probably not the best home for it... Edit: I googled out of curiosity, and despite being closed source, it seems to still be marketed by BlackBerry and is supposedly a market leader in embedded OSes! More than 20 years later, well deserved. https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/blackberry-qnx-software-now-embedded-in-more-than-175-million-vehicles/ https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/blackberry-qnx...
- Cyph0n 5y ago
  Most of Cisco's high-end service provider routers were running IOS-XR on top of QNX. They switched from QNX to a Linux kernel (specifically, Wind River) around 7 years back.
- rubylark 5y ago
  QNX is still going strong even with Blackberry. I worked at a company recently that heavily relied on QNX for safety critical embedded OS projects. It's Qt and QML integration made rapid prototyping a snap. Unfortunately it requires pretty (relatively) hefty processors so I never personally got to use it.
- detaro 5y ago
  Yes, it's still around. Sadly nowadays feels a bit neglected, and isn't quite keeping up. They have their markets that have little other choices and/or are very conservative in switching to something else, and will live of those for quite a while.
pjmlp 5y ago
It is an amazing OS, https://blackberry.qnx.com/en https://blackberry.qnx.com/en
bcantrill 5y ago
Not an accident. Cliff was influenced by QNX, Minix, L3 and L4 in his design (specifically, QNX proxies directly inspired Hubris notifications). And for me personally, QNX -- both the technology and the company -- played an outsized role in my own career, having worked there for two summers while an undergraduate.[0] (And even though it's been over 20 years since he passed, just recalling the great technology and people there makes me miss the late Dan Hildebrand[1] who had a singular influence on me, as well as so many others.) [0] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/11/08/dtrace-on-qnx/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/11/08/dtrace-on-qnx/ [1] https://openqnx.com/node/298 https://openqnx.com/node/298

mwcampbell 5y ago

No surprise, since Bryan Cantrill worked at QNX for a short time in the 90s.

hbbio 5y ago

There should be a retweet on HN! QNX was one the most impressive OS I've seen, especially for its time. From the full OS in a 1.44Mb floppy disk to restartable drivers, real-time, etc. IPC with messages is built in and most things ran in userland. It ended in the hands of BlackBerry which is probably not the best home for it... Edit: I googled out of curiosity, and despite being closed source, it seems to still be marketed by BlackBerry and is supposedly a market leader in embedded OSes! More than 20 years later, well deserved. https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/blackberry-qnx-software-now-embedded-in-more-than-175-million-vehicles/ https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/blackberry-qnx...

Cyph0n 5y ago
Most of Cisco's high-end service provider routers were running IOS-XR on top of QNX. They switched from QNX to a Linux kernel (specifically, Wind River) around 7 years back.
rubylark 5y ago
QNX is still going strong even with Blackberry. I worked at a company recently that heavily relied on QNX for safety critical embedded OS projects. It's Qt and QML integration made rapid prototyping a snap. Unfortunately it requires pretty (relatively) hefty processors so I never personally got to use it.
detaro 5y ago
Yes, it's still around. Sadly nowadays feels a bit neglected, and isn't quite keeping up. They have their markets that have little other choices and/or are very conservative in switching to something else, and will live of those for quite a while.

pjmlp 5y ago

It is an amazing OS, https://blackberry.qnx.com/en https://blackberry.qnx.com/en

bcantrill 5y ago

Not an accident. Cliff was influenced by QNX, Minix, L3 and L4 in his design (specifically, QNX proxies directly inspired Hubris notifications). And for me personally, QNX -- both the technology and the company -- played an outsized role in my own career, having worked there for two summers while an undergraduate.[0] (And even though it's been over 20 years since he passed, just recalling the great technology and people there makes me miss the late Dan Hildebrand[1] who had a singular influence on me, as well as so many others.) [0] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/11/08/dtrace-on-qnx/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/11/08/dtrace-on-qnx/ [1] https://openqnx.com/node/298 https://openqnx.com/node/298