Submitted by QNX Software has posted a page for its 30th anniversary, noting 30 ways that QNX touches your life (whether you know about it or not. It includes QNX’s use in high capacity routers, power generation systems, emergency dispatch systems, OnStar, navigation systems, warehouse automation, television broadcasting systems, trains and planes, and many more.It’s food for thought. Here at OSNews, we get caught up in desktop PC and mobile computing OSes, because we work with them intimately, and, more importantly, we choose them, install them, and control them. But our lives are surrounded by technology, and we’re exposed to operating systems every day that were chosen and configured by someone else. Sometimes that results in a seamless, pleasant experience, when everything works the way it should. In other cases, we’re frustrated at the limitations and bad decisions that other people made that affect us.
For my part, I’ve often been frustrated that I don’t have more fine-grained control over the configuration of my car’s systems, in particular the accessories such as audio and trip computers. For example, I have a six-disk CD changer in one car, and it automatically changes disks when one is over. I’d prefer that it just stop the current disk and give me a beep or something to alert me, or re-start playing the same disk. But it’s not possible to make that change. Even though there’s an OS in there somewhere, I have no access to it. Similarly, my DVR has an OS. I’m pretty sure it’s Linux, but the proprietary application running on top of it doesn’t allow me to configure it or use it the way I’d like.
There’s a whole underworld of mysterious operating systems and custom apps that we interact with everyday. Though the engineers that install and configure them may make decisions that frustrate us, we can take comfort that their raw material, such as QNX, has become feature-rich and reliable.
It was a little demo floppy released by the QNX folks that contained a demo copy of QNX complete with a full GUI desktop (Photon?), networking, a browser, and a bunch of other basic tools. Rather cool, I thought.
I do. It’s amazing what the people working on QNX have been able to do with it.
Yup. That was prtty amazing. I remember at the time that Be, Inc. had come up with something similar, just before they announced their focus-shift to internet appliances.
The QNX demo was awesome. I think I still have an old floppy with a copy on it; don’t have a computer with a floppy anymore, ironically.
Looks like you guys forgot the link:
http://www.qnx.com/company/30ways/index.html
Edited 2010-06-29 18:28 UTC
Oops, thanks!
It should be noted that licencing changed recently, access to the kernel and user-land source code is not longer as straightforward as creating a myQNX account, going to Foundry27 and checking it out with a SVN client.
To gain access to the QNX source (..very little remains publicly available), you have to download, print, fill out, scan, and email a new document back to QNX before you can gain access, IF they approve your request.. and some components have been removed from the repositories.
This is quite unfortunate, the only things that are easily accessible now are basically some Foundry27 projects, some ported software, and NetBSD’s ported network stack.. and some drivers.
QNX 6.5.0 is also out now, and, the hobbyist non-commercial licence still exists.. no expiry.. but you can’t tinker with the source as easily now, without jumping through hoops.
https://www.qnx.com/account/login.html#showcreate
http://www.qnx.com/products/evaluation/non-commercial_developer.htm…
http://www.qnx.com/download/feature.html?programid=21040
Perhaps this should be mentioned here, because, it wasn’t anywhere else, not even on qnx.com.. it happened silently in April, apparently after the RIM acquisition. 🙁
http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.community/wik…
Edited 2010-06-29 20:50 UTC
it is closed, at least the x86 version should be available without registration, at least the hobbyist features.
Registration is unfortunate, and, a pain.. indeed.. but you do get a full copy of QNX6, it’s not crippled.
I don’t like the whole “filling out paperwork” for source code access now, that’s where I draw the line.
I’m Canadian and QNX has popped up in my life a few times over the years, and I do enjoy it, but the people running things are just irritating.. they effectively killed off a lot of their hobbyists, pretty much all they have is commerical users and some developers who remember it from past employment experiences.
It could have made a great desktop OS had they of marketed it better, but I digress.
Guess I’ll check back in another 10 years. 🙂
I remember demo of QNX by Dan Dodge, at Koeln, at Amiga exposition in 1998 or so. QNX was supposed to become new Amiga kernel, but then Amiga reps screwed the deal, what a pity, because it is really an awesome architecture ….
Edited 2010-07-01 09:23 UTC