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QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

blackberry.qnx.com

331–340 of 380 posts

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#331
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an OS meant for desktops.

There are many uses for graphical UIs outside general purpose desktops.

That's why I said it isn't meant for desktop [where you would play games via proton].

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#332
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an OS meant for desktops.

It used to be desktop-friendly enough to develop on. It's not a purely embedded OS.

I wouldn't call it desktop-friendly. Yeah, you could install and develop for QNX on it, but that was pretty much all you could do on it? Definitely won't be playing any video games on it.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#333
Awesome! I signed up for the BlackBerry PlayBook dev initiative at SXSW in 2012 and found the device and QNX to be amazing. It supported a bluetooth mouse YEARS before the iPad! But BB failed to capitalize and yet another great product failed to make it into the mainstream.

Looking forward to it! Espcially now that you guys are "inside" several EVs if the rumors are true. Sign me up!

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#334

Awesome! I signed up for the BlackBerry PlayBook dev initiative at SXSW in 2012 and found the device and QNX to be amazing. It supported a bluetooth mouse YEARS before the iPad! But BB failed to capitalize and yet another great product failed to make it into the mainstream. Looking forward to it! Espcially now that you guys are "inside" several EVs if the rumors are true. Sign me up!

>> BlackBerry reserves the right to change, modify, discontinue, or cancel any offer or program or any part thereof at any time and in its sole discretion, without notice to you. Oh. Never mind. I thought you guys were serious this time.

"As I once told a QNX sales rep, your problem isn't that you're being pirated. It's that you're being ignored." — https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Animats

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#335

QNX and BeOS were the only operating systems I tried in the early '00s that could make old single-core mid-90s Pentiums feel excellent and snappy to use. Far, far better than any Windows version, or Linux. I assume it's mostly scheduler stuff and much better multimedia stacks, in both cases. I always hoped the operating systems of the future would feel more like that. Closest we've got is probably iOS and it cheats b…

I non-ironically dream for the day that a modern computer is as snappy booting as my old Commodore 128, as fast to reset, and as responsive to all keystrokes.

Just install FreeDOS on it :)

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#336

QNX and BeOS were the only operating systems I tried in the early '00s that could make old single-core mid-90s Pentiums feel excellent and snappy to use. Far, far better than any Windows version, or Linux. I assume it's mostly scheduler stuff and much better multimedia stacks, in both cases. I always hoped the operating systems of the future would feel more like that. Closest we've got is probably iOS and it cheats b…

As someone also have used BeOS and OS/2 Warp, I miss the snappiness of old systems. (I never got my hands on QNX) What OS nowadays is the closest to that snappiness? Haiku OS? (I'm a happy M1 Macbook user, but it sometimes feel note nough.)

FreeDOS, KolibriOS, maybe ReactOS.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#337

My previous company, which made high-availability (Active/Standby) routers for mobile networks, used QNX as the OS. I remain impressed by its capabilities. My memory is rusty, but we ran QNX on the control-plane processors, and it natively allowed launching processes on remote processors over the internal network of the router. That is: their low-level IPC was IP-capable. QNX's IPC was essential for our HA failover f…

> it natively allowed launching processes on remote processors over the internal network of the router

This was already possible in CP/NET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP/M#CP/NET) or CP/J with JUNET [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUNET_(CP/J)].

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#338
post #238
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not the brightest future, but it's more than just a POSIX OS.

what are the extras? RT can also linux.

For starters, QNX has IPC that works over IP-capable networks, which makes things like High Availibility much easier to implement.

Drivers are in user-land and can be restarted at runtime. Probably more, but it's been awhile since I used it. A lot of it comes from QNX having a micro-kernel.

> RT can also linux.

PREEMPT_RT was merged in september of this year[1]. I terms of "hard real-time" with PREEMPT_RT scheduler still not completely deterministic like in QNX.

[1]: Note that you could have turned linux in "somewhat" hard real-time with or without PREEMPT_RT patches for user-land application.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#339
"... plus there's an RPi image"

Maybe. But there is no direct link to an RPi image. It's layer upon layer of agreements and consents. Not simple. Too much reading.

I think I still have a tarball of the QNX source code from circa 2008.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#340
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many uses for graphical UIs outside general purpose desktops.

That's why I said it isn't meant for desktop [where you would play games via proton].

Photon nonetheless made for an outstanding desktop.
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