QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#111

Post by JohnAtQNX » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

Quessy wrote: post #36

Glad to see QNX still progressing. I worked there as an intern twice in Ottawa and they're pretty damn good. Great place to work imo. I met some of the kernel devs there. Had the priviledge of working with one and he taught and demoed some of the kernel features to me. They gave us interns a full summer course on kernels, C programming, OS and some hardware. Fun times.

We still do that! In fact, the _QNX From The Board Up_ series on the developer blog is a small rip from that training content, adapted by Mr Brown. I hope we'll get all of it out there for everyone to benefit from in 2026 :)

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#112

Post by JohnAtQNX » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #49

Quessy wrote: post #36

Glad to see QNX still progressing. I worked there as an intern twice in Ottawa and they're pretty damn good. Great place to work imo. I met some of the kernel devs there. Had the priviledge of working with one and he taught and demoed some of the kernel features to me. They gave us interns a full summer course on kernels, C programming, OS and some hardware. Fun times.

Sometimes I wish I could do this for mid career sabbatical.

Well hey, we're hiring! qnx.com/careers!

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#113

Post by JohnAtQNX » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

harhargange wrote: post #52

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #4

Did I just wake up from a coma? QNX desktop? Wayland XFCE? What is going on here

Seems like QNX was hiding in plain sight as a car os and a mission critical os for other devices.

We're definitely a secret ingredient brand... hiding in products you use every day!

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#114

Post by JohnAtQNX » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #81

Is GTK their go to GUI toolkit nowadays? (mentioned in the examples)

GTK support for sure, but also Qt, Godot, and others. Commercially, also support for Unity & Unreal.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#115

Post by JohnAtQNX » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #77

m132 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>IPC including network transparency Sadly not anymore, Qnet was removed in 8.0

Oh! I only worked with it commercially prior to that so I never got the memo. What an insanely stupid move. That was one of their USPs. In general QnX was commercially mismanaged and technically excellent. I'm imagining a world where they clued in early on that an open source real time OS would have run circles around the rest of the offerings and they'd have cleaned up on commercial licensing. Since the 80's they've…

There's been talk about this on Reddit too, where our chief architect of QNX 8 broke down the decision. He mentioned it was ultimately a tough decision, but that in the end the cons outweighed the pros.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#116

Post by fouc » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

sedatk wrote: post #59

fouc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He meant with X & web browser and so on. The QNX disk had gui + browser and a few other gui apps.

No I meant the base system. A system with X would take at least 20 floppies or so with Slackware 3. The whole setup was 80 floppies in total. I’m sure it’s better now, it wasn’t so when QNX had come out.

Oh huh, I forgot about that. I guess I downloaded X after the base system was installed.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#117

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

JohnAtQNX wrote: post #115

jacquesm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh! I only worked with it commercially prior to that so I never got the memo. What an insanely stupid move. That was one of their USPs. In general QnX was commercially mismanaged and technically excellent. I'm imagining a world where they clued in early on that an open source real time OS would have run circles around the rest of the offerings and they'd have cleaned up on commercial licensing. Since the 80's they've…

There's been talk about this on Reddit too, where our chief architect of QNX 8 broke down the decision. He mentioned it was ultimately a tough decision, but that in the end the cons outweighed the pros.

Such decisions should always involve the customers. A chief architect that knocks one of the foundation stones out from under a building isn't doing the bureau they work for any favors.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#118

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #32

tombert wrote: post #23

I've only ever used QNX in the form of Blackberry products (mostly the Playbook), so I am afraid I don't what the advantages of it would be compared to Linux or something. I know it's a microkernel which is inherently cool to me, but I don't know what else it buys you. Can anyone here give me a high-level overview of why QNX is cool?

QNX is hard realtime. At one point, its kernel had O(1) guarantees for message passing and process switching. It could have been rewritten without any loops. I'm not sure if that's still true. It's also really compact. This used to be a great selling point for underpowered car infotainment systems. Some cars had around 1Mb of RAM for their infotainment, yet they were able to run fairly complex media systems. QNX is a…

I think it is mostly used for non-UI stuff. I could be wrong but outside of car infotainment I've never seen it used for UI stuff. Mostly it just sits headless quietly running some branch of industry that we all depend on. The joke used to be that if QnX had a y2k bug that had been missed civilization would end and never mind windows because you won't have any water, food, energy or transportation anymore.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#119

Post by krylon » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:33 PM UTC

insin wrote: post #102

xvilka wrote: post #27

I always liked their original UI - Photon[1][2]. Very lightweight and fast. Also a distinct and consistent style. I understand why they dropped it in favor of Qt and later Web technologies, but it's still a big loss. [1] https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx.... [2] https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/momentics_nc_docs/photon/prog...

I was expecting to see that, I ended up looking up some old LiteStep themes [1][2] for my fix [1] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/6/ [2] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/292/

Oooooh, that's a blast from the past! I used to use LiteStep for about 6-9 months in 2000, before I started using GNU/Linux.

At the end, I had really beautiful (to my eyes, back then) and very functional desktop, but something went wrong when I made backup before installing SuSE Linux 7.0, so months of vigorous customizing were lost. :-(

But it was fun while it lasted. There were a number of alternative desktop shells in the Windows 95/98 era.

Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

#120

Post by krylon » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #89

sedatk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux was like that in 1995 (Slackware 3.1 or so). I believe QNX live was introduced in 1997.

QNX was introduced in 1980.

Yes, but the single-floppy live system with a desktop and a browser came much later. ;-)