Oddly Swift appears to support QNX but there’s not much information about it. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-testing/issues/868
Does this mean QNX supports at least some of the Apple software?
Not at all. Swift is just a programming language.
QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
61–70 of 174 posts
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their main website is a black page. No idea if someone bought the brand or if it is the original people behind this 40 year old project. Both the wikipedia and the website only mention "canada" in passing but no information is given on company and people behind it. Nothing that can be verified.
It's developed by BlackBerry, is it not? Has been for years now.
It was bought by RIM (Research in Motion) which were the developers of BlackBerry.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#63Did 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.
There are tons of proprietary RTOS/microkernel products on the market. It's not so much hiding as it is crowded-out.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like QNX was hiding in plain sight as a car os and a mission critical os for other devices.
There are tons of proprietary RTOS/microkernel products on the market. It's not so much hiding as it is crowded-out.
And none of them can hold a candle to QnX. I've used a whole raft of them and QnX stands heads and shoulders above the competition. The consistency of the implementation is extremely impressive.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#65I'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?
Hard real time (so latency guarantees), microkernel (and they actually mean it, so your device drivers can't hose your system), standardized networked IPC including network transparency for all services, ISRs at the application level.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
QNX is running on bare metal in a lot of cars.
It’s also running virtualized in a lot of cars! Although I’ve seen more and more US car companies switching from QNX to Linux. Chinese car companies I’ve worked with all use Linux instead of QNX, so perhaps that is the future.
QnX is expensive for commercial use, that's most likely the driver for this.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
People in the industry would know that QNX has been around since the 90s (or 80s?) as a very solid embedded GUI platform. They're a company that doesn't need to prove their credentials. I'd agree using qnx.software rather than qnx.com is kinda dumb though.
Sure, it's been around 40 years, but it's not like old companies haven't changed owners many times. So, for instance, QNX is now part of Harman which is part of Samsung.
So it's an elaborate front by South Korea instead.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
QNX is running on bare metal in a lot of cars.
It’s also running virtualized in a lot of cars! Although I’ve seen more and more US car companies switching from QNX to Linux. Chinese car companies I’ve worked with all use Linux instead of QNX, so perhaps that is the future.
Linux now supports real time too, even mainline. And there are open source RTOSes for smaller chips and critical applications like FreeRTOS.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Photon was what I was hoping for before I clicked the link. One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE. Photon or not, I hated the period where they sort of moved to canned BSP deployment only, where in 6.5 I could just develop on a live system. This is nice.
Me too, although it's been a long time since Photon. "This environment runs as a virtual machine, using QEMU on Ubuntu. To try the image, you'll need: Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04." So it doesn't boot on bare metal? Maybe they're trying to get away from needing Windows. The previous recommended development environment was cross-compilation from Windows. The big news here is that they have a reasonable non-commercial license…
> QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine.
That sounds quite a bit harder to enforce for an OS designed to run inside, often not internet-connected, devices.
Re: QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
#70As someone who still uses a QNX phone, the Blackberry Q10 as my second phone, I’m not just optimistic for the return of the cross-platform and secure os, I’m rooting for it. Especially for portable Linux handhelds. If Blackberry were to release a phone tomorrow, it would instantly be the most secure android phone. I still run some of my favourite android apps on my BB10os via the android translation layer. Some comme…
Swift != SwiftUI. You need the latter to run modern iOS apps written in Swift.
It's great that Apple are pushing Swift out there a bit, but honestly if they want the World to catch fire with it, they need to give away the Crown Jewels and get SwiftUI out there as well.
Meanwhile, it's great that QNX is supporting modern languages. I can imagine having a bit of fun with this developer desktop and seeing how modern tooling plays nicely with it.