Get QNX For Free 142
TomRitchford writes: "QNX is about to start distributing their real-time OS for free downloads for non-commercial use at
get.qnx.com.
Right now it's 'Real Soon Now,' but you can sign up and they'll send a free CD to the first 5000 to request it." The
operating system's
concepts will look familiar to anyone who knows unix, but its design makes it better for older (Intel-compatible) CPUs, and situations where stability and predictability are more important than unix's cornucopia of applications and features.
Pros and Cons (Score:2)
Good things: TOWERS OF HANOI!! Boo-ya!
No virtual memory? (Score:1)
Oh, and I like the icon you chose for QNX. Maybe the padlock should be open though.
Re:QNX under VMware (Score:1)
Tried QNX4 with VMWare. Doesn't work. Won't boot the install/boot disk.
Gotcha. Thanks.
Tried Win98 on VMWare Linux. Slow like a dog on my PIII 500 with 128M ram.
I only have a PII 465 (guess!) with the same RAM, and it's fine for me. Admitedly, I only use Quickbooks.
Re:hey palp (Score:1)
Re:Too much diversification (Score:1)
Like you said, I'm on internet time
Hell, you knew what I meant. Is spelling that important? I'm not writing a book here.
Re:Too much diversification (Score:1)
Anyway, it just ticks me off when someone posts a bunch of crap and try to sound like they know what they're talking about. Then again, you're right, they probably knew they were wrong, and were just being a troll.
QNX and distributed computing (Score:1)
jim nutt
Re:I thought it was GPL'ed (Score:1)
javajawa# sleep
Re:this is old news now (Score:1)
Sorry about that - I wasn't watching the bin. I do know that we had sat on this guy's submission for a while, because we were checking into some background material, so he may have actually beaten you to the punch - but if not, my apologies
I remember that (Score:2)
Re:More development for QNX? (Score:2)
.technomancer
Guaranteed Prosessing. (Score:2)
There are much to read on this out there... I'm sure.
In 99.999 % of cases it's ok to use, ans so we do... That's why Linux is soo cool etc.
Just some people still use Token Ring for the same reason... that 0.001% of the time that something get's delayed...
Re:package (Score:1)
Re:this is old news now (Score:1)
2000-04-20 14:14:20 QNX Relatime Platform to be free for personal use (articles,quickies) (declined)
The real conspiracy is that did
I've got my cd on the way...its a shame all you
Stability and Predictability (Score:1)
QNX's literature describes their products being used as the OS and GUI for software environments like nuclear reactors, hospitals, and (IIRC) the Space Shuttle. (Not flight control, but some other system, I forget what exactly.)
I think Linux is great too, orders of magnitude more stable than many other operating systems. But QNX's microkernel hasn't had a system call or a feature added for many years. Last I heard, it's all hand-tuned assembler that has been tested and checked over and over, for a decade or more.
If I'm living next to the nuclear reactor, or if I'm the one suited up to fly the Shuttle, that's the kind of code I want :-)
Jamie McCarthy
Re:what's the affect of these "free" distributions (Score:1)
Ha ha, was on BeNews first. (Score:1)
Re:QNX demo (Score:1)
Re:Yes there is a client (Score:1)
(OT: When I was working at MindSpring, we had USR Netservers, over a hundred and fifty scattered throughout the network, routing traffic from modems to the backbone... each one had a 200MHz Pentium chip, and I used to fantasize about the d.net client being ported to the Netserver...
Cheers -- Brian
Perfect Solution! (Score:1)
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^
Re:Just don't do anything secure with it! (Score:1)
Re:VSTa (Score:1)
Re:what's the affect of these "free" distributions (Score:2)
People may scream that it's not crippled, but to me it is. I don't like floppies, I never have. But because I want to use an OS, I have to have one? That stinks if you ask me.
Re:Hardware compatability (Score:1)
Re:No comparison.. (Score:1)
what's the affect of these "free" distributions? (Score:4)
Standards, the double-edged sword (Score:1)
It seems an open standard relies on one of three things:
(1) an organization that is dedicated to open standards reacting to an existing commercial standard;
(2) above organization founds the original standard;
(3) plain dumb luck involving an academic exercise emerging into a mature standard.
Since these open source entities and individuals lack marketing departments, they seldom know how to spin a project into becoming a standard. This leaves us with reacting to existing standards (e.g. GIF), or plain dumb luck. Sounds like GPL advocates need marketing deparments
The costs are very high when the standards are held by purely commercial entities like the Redmond Raiders.
-L
Encryption Help (Score:2)
Just don't do anything secure with it! (Score:2)
More development for QNX? (Score:5)
I think this would allow more development on QNX, at least for the first 5000 who get a CD for free.
If this has IP Masquerating support, I might wipe out Linux on my other box to try QNX out.
Actually, this is also good for people who want to make handheld devices, as this has a very small footprint in terms of RAM and storage space. IMO, this would have been a better choice for TiVO.
Problems and Alternatives. (Score:2)
It is notoriously difficult to get pricing information for QNX.
I have heard differing reports on comp.os.qnx, [os.qnx] including that it is "very expensive, hundreds of dollars per system," or, on the other hand, the vague answer of "you can license it reasonably economically." (With no definition of what "reasonably economical" means, of course.)
- VSTa [zendo.com]
- MIT Exokernel [mit.edu]
- EROS [eros-os.org]
- Possibly even Hurd [gnu.org]
- eCos [cygnus.com]
- RTEMS [rtems.com]
- Fiasco [tu-dresden.de]
- On Linux, people interested in QNX should almost certainly look at SRR -- QNX API compatible message passing for Linux [holoweb.net]
These are all interesting alternatives, albeit not all being of identical levels of interest.A copylefted system that "lifts" ideas from QNX and Plan 9 [bell-labs.com]
It looks like development has not been terribly active lately.
Again, not terribly active, but an interesting OS kernel.
Eric Raymond thinks it's mindblowing, [helsinki.fi] so the Eric Raymond Personality Cult should all be preparing to drop Linux in favor of EROS. (Of course, it isn't yet capable of self-hosting, which indicates that it's not all that useful at this point. But, to cultists, usefulness is irrelevant...)
It's different from the other options; certainly not a tiny OS option...
Which, like QNX, appears to be used in some reasonably critical system environments...
Which is a "lighter microkernel than Mach"...
This is the critical programming abstraction that QNX uses heavily which isn't all that widely used on traditional UNIXes, namely asynchronous messaging. [hex.net]
Re:What kind of framerates... (Score:1)
And a FREE compiler (Score:2)
a few moments it appears there will finally be a
version of gcc for QNX available for DL as well...
QNX has been available in one form or another
for free for awhile... Now that we can get dev
tools without shelling out $$$ the real fun should
begin.
.technomancer
Re:Just don't do anything secure with it! (Score:2)
Re:Too much diversification (Score:1)
For open source products to succeed it is imperative that:
1) There be one flavor of Linux - I vote for Red Hat because they are the most well known and they were one of the earliest companies to IPO. Customers like a well known name.
2) Competing brands does not benefit anyone - Microsoft revolutionized the world's use of computers and software by dominating the market. Now that Linux is such a buzzword, there needs to be a Linux company that does the same thing.
3) In order to ensure this plan to succeed, one of the companies needs to copyright the word Linux, all derivitives and any terms relating to open source. All competitors would be sued and therefore run out of business thereby streamlining this plan.
4) All persons installing, maintaining and selling Linux would have to have some sort of certification similar to MCSE. The cost of this certification should be prohibitively high to keep out the amateurs.
5) Once this happens, the only Linux company allowed to sell the Linux product should take steps to secure their code from prying eyes and dangerous competitors.
I am ready to jump on the bandwagon to make this work. I also believe that this country needs a professional IT consultant in the White House. As a full time employee that has spent years cleaning up after "professional" IT consultants, having one in the White House would give us all an excuse to have something further to bitch about.
Thanks!
The biggest MISSING feature. (Score:1)
True, it can be cut right back for a specifically targeted embedded application, and VM can ge bad for real-time, but the memory footprint for a desktop application tend to be VERY big due to the lack of VM (you need enough ram for EVERYTHING at once..), and you tend to end up with a lot of stuff loaded, we generally ended up using pretty highly speced machines for QNX development, much higher than we needed for Linux, for example
Also, it used to have VERY poor hardware support and a down right wierd networking layer below TCP, but hey, maybe these things have improved.
of course, YMMV, although there are now versions of Linux that are just as good at being used for embedded apps.
Re:How about comercial desktop usage ? (Score:1)
Why would you wanna use a RTOS for a desktop anyways. There will be a lack of applications and support for common desktop hardware. After all this is ment for embedded applications, not for playing quake3(although I do look forward to that feature) and chatting with your buddies(BitchX was a bitch to compile under 4.25). Now maybe if there was a remedy client and Xserver that ran with photon(for xterms), I could see it being used on a few workstations.
Re:No virtual memory? (Score:1)
"The fact the web site says it can be launched from any file-system would tend to support that"
This is not true for QNX4.x, It is a stand alone system. It requires its own partions(i forgot the types and numbers) but there are 3 to choose from.
One being qnx.4x only the the other 2 being legacy partitons from previous versions.
I have not used Neutrino so I'm not sure wether it will boot off of any partation type, or wether thats limited to this free version.
QNX from the trenches (Score:1)
However, the following must be kept in mind:
1) QNX is supported by QNX. If you have a problem, you have to talk to them. There are a few smart people in Kanata, Ontario, who have a heck of a lot to do, and not enough resources to do it, just like every software organization. So before you start comparing QNX to Linux, ask yourself what you're supposed to do when you hit a bug, and who's going to help. We got answers from QNX, but we were shipping loads of QNX licenses.
2) QNX is very proud of the fact that everything lives outside of proc. This is a very elegant design. Nevertheless, if the filesystem has a bug in it, it doesn't really matter whether it's running in kernel space or as a separate process. You're still screwed. You have to wait for Bill Flowers, or whoever is supporting fsys now, to fix it. At the end of the day, you're queueing on one guy, maybe two, and the kernel structure, except for bragging rights with your friends, doesn't help you much. Moral? Better design doesn't necessarily mean better support or a more reliable product. I'll take 4000 hackers swarming on the bloated Linux kernel over one Dan Dodge tweaking proc when he has time, any day.
3) QNX always claims they're more reliable than Linux. Maybe they are, these days. All I know is, back in QNX4 days, our death-screen ratio during development was about the same as the death-screen ratio I had on the last NT project I did (which is pretty good -- NT was relatively stable for us). But I've never crashed Linux. Even once.
I'm fond of QNX, and I'm glad it's being given away, even if they're keeping the code proprietary, and doing it only for non-commercial use. But QNX has a murky future. It's not clear whether anyone besides Microsoft is going to be able to get a license fee for an operating system for very much longer. Until the whole ball of wax is open-sourced, and QNX mutates into an applications house (like Spyglass), they'll be counting on OS revenue to keep the lights on during that dark Canadian winter. There are some darker winters in store, I fear.
Re:S & P : Not flight control (Score:1)
Re:Another one jumps on the free software wave. (Score:1)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Re:QNX demo (Score:1)
Since this new version has all the development stuff on it - can we make our own floppy boot disks - with custom setups for isp and tools etc included - say just an email and icq client - then I just need to find a computer with a floppy drive and I'm on the net - checking my email and icq!
hmm - I'll have to download the full version when it comes out and try it.
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
I-Opener Development? (Score:1)
Re:Oh right. Silly me (Score:1)
Lets say you write code that extends the OS's abilities.
Option A)
On QNX you write the resource manager (lets just call it that). Run it... opps, it crashed.
Run resource manager in debugger, and debug it.
Edit source. recompile. Run.
Don't want your resource manager anymore?
slay it off.
make more mods, run it again... you get the idea.
Option B)
On Linux. write the code. build the kernel with
your mods. reboot (ick). opps, it crashed (whole OS goes bye-bye). boot using alternate image.
Pull out *LOTS* of hair fixing the thing... you think.
rebuild kernel, reboot (and pray).
wash, rinse repeat...
Ok, you got it working the way you want. Don't want to use it right now... sorry - if you are going to use the sevices that code provides it must be omni-present. The only option is to boot between two versions of the kernel... one with one without the additional services.
Option C)
With QNX that piece of code is a seperate process which can be started and stopped as needed. It can also be watch dogged... if for ANY reason your resource manager (for want of a better name) terminates unexpectedly, it can be restarted and services restored quickly.
Option D)
Same code built into Linux kernel... if for any reason the code terminates unexpectedly (faults) --- BOOM!
So I'm curious... which options do you think are more friendly (pick any 2)
For stuff that you wouldn't link into the linux kernel, what does having the kernel source buy you? A deeper understanding of its inner workings? Which you shouldn't need if the kernel just works and does what it is supposed to do right?
Ok, I admit it -- I'm a little biased.
Nice try (Score:1)
In C:
#include
#include
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
while(1) fork();
}
Or how about in perl? How about a one liner???
perl -e 'while(1){ fork; }'
Can't beat that for space efficiency.
Oh, and BTW troll, it doesn't cause anything to segfault. Your machine just shits itself and runs out of resources unless you put ulimits on the user running that crap. You DID put ulimits on that user, didn't you?
Re:No virtual memory? (Score:1)
Be very careful when talking about virtual memory, because there are a couple details you have to be aware of. Virtual memory is actually the ability for a process to have its own address space. Older versions of QNX, and this new version DO support virtual memory. What you are talking about is swapping memory to disk. Most of us are used to Windoze thrashing away swapping pages to disk while we wait, and traditionally QNX doesn't support this because it's a RealTime OS, and you can't guarantee latency if you might have to swap a page in or out.
That having been said, I think this new version of QNX might be able to do page swapping, but don't quote me on that. I've been using QNX4 for a while now, and I've never run out of memory yet, and I have 64 megs.
how small can it be? incredible! (Score:1)
It autodetected my modem (cablemodem) and just asked 4 questions and i was on the internet; slashdot loaded fine and I'm typing this from within the voyager browser.
I used to hack boot floppies together:
* dos with minimal utilities with an absolute minimum win3.11, patience and wordpad!
on a 1.8 mb floppy (2mf 3.0).
* linux bootfloppies, but without X.
I have high hopes of the microwindows project and i think linux+microwindows will conquer this market.
But this is a very cute OS! The bootfloppy was FUN, try it out.
Hmm (Score:1)
---------------------------------
No comparison.. (Score:1)
...
Yes, I know I ramble and my spelling isn't quite up to scratch. If you wish to complain,
Re:Another one jumps on the free software wave. (Score:2)
From QNX page:
The popular command-line GNU development tools are included with the platform, as are graphical debuggers and third-party development tools
So, you can count on having at least GNU gcc.
Yes, I agree (Score:1)
we should all drive black Fords and be happy with it
The problem isn't all the choices for an OS, the problem is the lack of cross-compatibility of the DATA; after all, the DATA is what's important in the day-to-day world.
The reason the the Web took off so well for all OS platforms is because HTML is a standard, TCP/IP is a standard, and so on.
I think all us non-Windows users are extremely lucky that Gates & Co totally missed the coming of the Web. If they hadn't, you can bet a lot more Windows-only sites would exist today, and we'd have to fight a lot harder to get those sites to conform to industry standards.
The reason non-MS operating systems have such a hard time breaking into the office desktop is MS's proprietary and every changing office document formats. You can bet that MS would be screaming for open office document standards if they didn't have a stranglehold on the market, just like they have been screaming about AOL and their instant messaging format.
QNX 4 free (Score:1)
Don't worry about crypt() (Score:4)
Re:Finally, QNX gets it. (Score:1)
Re:And a FREE compiler (Score:1)
My post had nothing to do with libs it was about gcc. Linux is free isnt it? yet you still have to purchase/borrow/steal hardware to run it no?
Same situation.
So if what your saying is true, linux isn't even free.
I'm just in a mood to argue today for somereason.
BeOS is marvelous Re:Developer Rush (Score:1)
I'm using BeOS as I type and I must say, I absolutely love it. I donwloaded R5 a few days ago and I plan on trying to transfer my dad once I hack a bookmark porting script. The beauty of Be is that you get the ease of use of a magnificent GUI while still having the power of UNIX available when you need it.
You make a good point about design limiting use. Linux is my primary OS but I could never see my father, sister or anyone I know, for that matter, making the switch. Too much effort and understanding is required to 'get things done'. BeOS, on the other hand, is a breeze. A more feature-rich browser and better hardware support are the only two shortcomings as I see it. But It appears that BeZilla is in the works. Hooray!
DanielRe:Eh? (Score:1)
Unix isn't predictable at all. For example, if I calculate that I will require 60% of the system's CPU for 8 hours to complete a job, which I start before I go home, whether or not it's completed the next day depends largely on whether or not someone else kicked off a large batch job too.
On a VMS node, I could create a batch queue which ensured that I had enough of the CPU to complete my job, no matter what else was on the system at the time, by forcing other queues to use less of the available resources.
Unix is great for many things, but if I made my living in a "complete this processing by this time or don't get paid" environment (as many financial services and engineering users do) I would be hesitant to rely on multi-user Unix systems. Similarly, in a real-time application (for example, a telephone switch) I would not use Unix.
It's simply a matter of the right tool for the right job.
Re:No virtual memory? (Score:1)
Re:Developer Rush (Score:2)
"Within a week of the release of BeOS 5 Personal Edition, a record breaking 550,000 downloads were reported, and as of yesterday that total had increased to more than 870,000. These figures include all downloads from Be's web site, as well as from 18 reporting download partners. Be estimates that at least 39 other download sites have not yet reported."
Even if you figure that the remaining 39 FTP sites add only another 200,000 downloads and that none of the people who downloaded burned a CD or passed the file to a friend, this brings the BeOS userbase to about 11 times its pre-R5 release (i.e. 1.1 million).
Second, despite the marketing line that Be gave the world about being "the Media OS" (principly to avoid the wrath of Redmond) be has always been "a general purpose OS that does media really well", and not "a media OS that is not a good general purpose OS" as you seem to be implying. BeOS makes a truly great general desktop operating system (it still lacks on the server side but that is what we have Linux and BSD for).
QNX is not a general purpose OS and trying to hack it into one does not make a whole lot of sense (the same is true of Linux by the way). QNX & Linux make good embedded OSs. Linux makes a good server OS. Both are a mistake as a general purpose desktop OS, because it is not really what they are designed to do (THERE IS A REASON THEY ARE COMMAND LINE). Why re-invent the wheel when you have a GOOD desktop option already available in BeOS?
All of which brings me to something that I am truly curious about, what made the ex-Amiga people choose QNX over BeOS?
Re: Floppy Boots (Score:2)
Worth it, though...
Re:Guaranteed Prosessing. (Score:2)
Also QNX and Solaris too, But never NT too buggy. I must keeping very quiet about it but Linux works well, not real time but good enough for most aspect of the control. If you want more info please checking out our Linux nuclear saftey web site www.chernobyl.power.ru/~borisgretsky/docs/html/Lin ux-graphite cooler-control.htm [pokemon.com]
Apologizing for my poor english speaking is not first language. I hope this is useful, I don;t think is classified any more.
Re:I thought it was GPL'ed (Score:1)
"While e-device builders see the productivity benefits of open source, most have serious concerns about using open-source OS code in their products, citing threats to security, reliability, and potential loss of intellectual property due to GPL licensing.
The QNX Realtime Platform addresses these concerns through an "accessible source" model, where source code is publicly available for most modules, but not for those core components critical to the overall quality, security, and reliability of the OS.
"Open-source kernel code may have its advantages, but, for the majority of e-devices, it's the wrong model," said Bell. "Rather than burden embedded teams with the time-consuming - and expensive - task of modifying and maintaining kernel code, we offer a more productive approach: an OS architecture that can be extended using application-level tools and developers. It's friendlier, faster, more cost-effective - and much more reliable." "
QNX Demo Rocks! (Score:2)
The handy thing about this is if you're at a location which has the PC's under some sort of lock-down (like Crowd Control) that prevents you from accessing the net or whatever, you can just boot to that floppy instead. Blammo! Instant Net-Ready OS!
I thought I once recalled instructions somewhere on QNX's site about how to install the QNX demo images to a hard disk, but was unable to find them. Anybody ever try this?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I like QNX (Score:2)
hmmm (Score:1)
Re:what's the affect of these "free" distributions (Score:2)
We use QNX Neutrino everyday here; all of our products are developed on QNX Photon desktop environments. We read mail, run servers, do programming, debugging and just about all the things a linux person does on their computer. QNX's isn't trying to be a desktop, but it's also not enough for us to just *say* we're scalable. We're doing our best to prove it.
-William Bull
Re:Just don't do anything secure with it! (Score:1)
Do your research before you post.
Redcrap has hourly patches, yet nobody argues about it when a new version is available.
Re:More development for QNX? (Score:1)
eMusic's FreeAmp team are also interested in getting it up and running (possibly before the release).
We are going to opensource the media player. (Although I don't think the Real Audio codec is included in this.)
-William Bull
Re:I thought it was GPL'ed (Score:1)
-William Bull
Re:A word on Security in QNX, with qnx_crypt() (Score:1)
BTW if nobody noticed QSSL didn't even have a entry in security focus's database till last week.
I bet you can
Just another OS (Score:1)
He who dies with the most OS's wins!
Oh right. Silly me (Score:1)
they say
"Open-source kernel code may have its advantages, but, for the majority of e-devices, it's the wrong model," said Bell. "Rather than burden embedded teams with the time-consuming - and expensive - task of modifying and maintaining kernel code, we offer a more productive approach: an OS architecture that can be extended using application-level tools and developers. It's friendlier, faster, more cost-effective - and much more reliable."
If QNX itself (the kernel or whatever) was GPLed it's not time-consuming or anything. With Linux there's nothing stopping the extension of the OS using [proprietary] application-level tools.
How the hell is not opensourcing more friendly like Bell said?
------------------------------------------------ -
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
QNX bringing 3D games to embedded devices (Score:1)
Re:Hardware compatability (Score:2)
-William Bull
you mean microkernel then.. (Score:1)
I admit to nothing nothing about QNX - but you seem to be talking about microkernels (which I am in favour of BTW)
I wasn't arguing Linux vs. QNX, I was arguing closed vs. open source. Actually I was arguing with Gordon Bell of QNX!
I still don't understand:
"Open-source kernel code may have its advantages, but, for the majority of e-devices, it's the wrong model," said Bell. "Rather than burden embedded teams with the time-consuming - and expensive - task of modifying and maintaining kernel code"
He seems to think Open Source and monolithic kernels are mutually inclusive
------------------------------------------------ -
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
Re:Stallman is wrong... (Score:1)
Perhaps not most, but the core is. Think of all those shell commands you use all the time (ls, rm, mkdir, etc.). Try running them with a --version argument; they're taken from GNU. A Linux distro includes GNU fileutils, textutils, sh-utils, grep, sed, etc., not the BSD or UNIX® versions. The compiler and related binutils are also straight out of GNU, and so is libc.
Re:Developer Rush (Score:1)
Granted, BeOS is nice, but it still lacks a lot of important features (like multiuser) which is needed in a modern os (desktop or not).
Re:Eh? (Score:1)
world-class - we rushed this rather marginal prototype out to gain what meagre first-mover advantage we can
enterprise level - we wasted so much time on development and marketing hype we desparately need to find some clueless CTO's to buy enough of these suckers to avoid going under
empowering decision making - only if you're signing the cheque, then we'll empower you with all the 5-star meals you can gorge yourself on
object oriented - the only object is to orient you to forking out the dough (upfront of course) for this unmaintainable heap of junk
ultimate in flexibility - there are so many bugs we have to make a daily release
No reflection on QNX which I understand is a fine product in its category but I'm sure there are many other examples of PH(i)Bspeak people can come up with. :-). Perhaps we can judge the pain to gain ratio of a software company by measuring the number of salesdroids/lawyers vs engineers/scientists they employ. If we make it compulsary for product safety (and sanity) perhaps the quality of software will get a noticable lift? Oh well, we can all dream on.
LL
Those who do not understand QNX... (Score:1)
QNX also supports queued realtime signals (as does Linux), but because queued signals are unreliable, that's not how most messages are passed.
Re:what's the affect of these "free" distributions (Score:2)
I didn't know you could do that. It doesn't really change my original argument about this happening during INSATLL, but it's good to know that it's possible. thanks.
Developer Rush (Score:3)
FWIW, I see this is a bit more dramatic than what happened with BeOS. Earlier versions of BeOS were pretty inexpensive anyway, you could just call up many mail order stores and get a copy for less than a hundred bucks. By the time BeOS 5 PE came out, most developers who were interested in BeOS, probably already had tried 4.5. What's $69?
With QNX and Neutrino, it didn't appear to be widely available; I think they only sold direct and you had to call them to get a price. Combine that with all the hubbub about high licensing fees in previous versions of QNX, and it was a real turn-off for small-time developers who don't want to make a big committment.
I think this new strategy is a huge change from what QSSL was doing before, so it's going to have a more noticable effect than BeOS 5 PE did. A lot of developers are about to try out Neutrino for their first time.
Oh, and one more difference here. BeOS was always marketed as a "media OS" and still is, so BeOS 5 PE doesn't really have much potential for bringing in new blood. But with Neutrino, there's something else going on behind the scenes: the movement to change the target of Neutrino. QNX and Neutrino have traditionally been seen as just being for embedded work. But now there's the Phoenix Consortium [owlnet.net] (Amiga refugees) who intend to turn Neutrino into the base for a new general-purpose platform. This could make Neutrino a lot more interesting to people who previously wouldn't have given it a second thought. (Like me, for example.)
I guess what I'm say is: don't try to predict the volume of Neutrino's developer rush by looking at BeOS's. The situations are different.
---
The necessity of a Real-time OS (Score:2)
For the past several years I've been working in a couple of industries where the price of the computer hardware is insignificant, and the driving cost is actually the software development.
For the most part, these can be considered machines that are dedicated to one particular task, but we are using a general purpose computer as the platform to operate the system. That you can install MS Word and play Quake on it is besides the point. As a matter of fact, these systems are replacing machines which were built up from discrete IC as dedicated controlers.
One of the problems you encounter is that the designers of an operating system have to make some basic assumptions about what the priorities of certain common tasks should be. Right now we are selling a system running Windows NT which is controlling an outdoor electronic sign (such as the scoreboard at a football stadium). Our fiber-optic output device is trying to send data real-time to the scoreboard 30 times a second, but we are being pre-empted by the hard drive controller. The fact is that we want the hard drive (and the mouse for that matter) to take a back seat for what is the main task, running that sign.
If you are in the medical products industry, the situation becomes even more important. If your computer crashes and needs to reboot, you've just killed somebody. It can cause some problems if your system needs to pause for a couple of seconds to perform a heap cleanup routine. In these situations a lousy operating system is an embaressment when you are selling your product. Industrial controlers are another area where this is important, such as a controller which mixes ingredients in a modern food processing plant. (Opps, I guess we didn't turn that valve off soon enough. I guess we need to dump this batch of food worth $10,000 and try again)
I'll admit that Linux is probabally capable of doing just about everything I've mentioned, but there are some other considerations: As somebody else posted here recently (and I apoligize that I can't remember who or on what article) you can't go wrong buying Microsoft. Like it or not, MS has a reputation with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and they consider Linux still to be an upstart OS. This is very similar to how IBM has been (and for the more part still is) percieved by these same people. They write in to the bid proposals that you must provide a controller which runs a certain operating system. Sometimes we can influence the people writing the bids and suggest a certain operating system or another, and if you do suggest something they aren't familiar with you need to explain some very clear benefits that a very non-technical person can understand with about one or two minutes of explaination.
The CEO of the company I work for has read about Linux in the Wall Street Journal and some other general magazines, and has suggested we investigate the possibility of developing controllers with it. I'm also keeping an eye out for other OS products, like QNX, which may also help out with our product lines. I will say that I don't think Microsoft products are up to the task for real-time applications, and this is one operating system area that MS has significantly ignored or neglected. It is also an area of OS development that can be extreamly expensive to develop if you havn't planned for it from the very beginning of the OS development.
'Un-Real Time' Nature of QNX's Web Site (Score:2)
QNX demo (Score:3)
And they had the "Towers of Hanoi" game on there, and any OS that comes with that can't be all bad. *grin*
-B/W/
Finally, QNX gets it. (Score:5)
QNX is different. Unlike MS Windows, MacOS, UNIX, BSD, or Linux, it's a real microkernel operating system. All the kernel does is manage memory, handle task switching, and pass messages between processes. Everything else is outside the kernel - file systems, networking, graphics, device drivers, windowing, and of course applications. Any of those can go down and restart without taking the kernel down. This is the way operating systems are supposed to be written. And QNX demonstrates it can be fast.
They're giving away QNX Neutrino, not classical QNX; this is their new OS. The old QNX kernel is rock-solid (I once read that the last kernel fix was made in 1992), but x86 only. Neutrino is available for x86, PPC, and MIPS, although the free version seems to be the x86 distribution only.
CodeWarrior [qnx.com] is available for QNX Neutrino. The current version just invokes GCC from the CodeWarrior IDE, but the next release will use the usual CodeWarrior compilers. You can also cross-develop with CodeWarrior on MS Windows, targeting for QNX Neutrino.
The applications aren't yet available for QNX as a general-purpose desktop OS, but I think the intent of this free version is to encourage moves in that direction. Mozilla could probably be ported, for example.
Photon, their GUI, has a rather nice architecture from the programmer's perspective. If you're used to the uglyness of X or MS Windows, it's a relief.
All in all, it's a powerful, highly respected system.
Re:what's the affect of these "free" distributions (Score:2)
They seem to be aiming at getting developers to make a crossover. But from my experience, why would a developer go from a system he uses and is free to improve, to a system he doesn't like quite as much and costs to improve?
It's MHO, but I think others feel this way too.
I need a new OS... (Score:3)
Let's see now... There's QNX, BeOS and a few other real-time OS' that are free->beer.
For the OSS side, there's ExoPC (exokernels are fun!), L4/OSKit, L4Linux, Mach, Hurd, vanilla Linux, Real-Time Linux, *BSD, FreeDOS, etc.
What's interesting is that development and take-up does NOT appear related to price, quality, licence or source availability. ExoPC, for example, has a decent licence, the code's available via CVS, it's very well-designed and VERY fast, costs nothing, yet next to nobody uses it.
On the other hand, the Mach microkernel is notoriously slow, bulky, bloated and deserves to be the first against the wall when the high-power magnet comes. Yet it's used by several microkernel OS' today, including some Linux ports.
I'll bet there are more active BeOS 4 developers than there are people who've ever even looked at L4 or the OSKit.
Is this to say that the suits are right, that freedom isn't worth it? Not at all! What it DOES say, IMHO, is that enough people are conditioned to believe that paying is, in and of itself, proof of goodness that alternatives are invisible.
IMHO, I would like to see an "Alternative OS Day", in which OSS users actively make use of the lower-profile OS' during the day.
Re:But is it secure? (Score:2)
Some would argue that QNX's original crypt is stronger as their are no duplicate generated strings; a brute crack would have more strings to go through before finding a password. Bear in mind that you cannot gain access to the password file without being root (or through an entirely different exploit). In which case you don't need the decrypting crack because you can just edit the file and delete the password.
So basically the whole argument is moot, but fixed any way you look at it. Shadow passwords, BSD style crypt...make ya happy?
THIS IS A FULL DISTRIBUTION (Score:4)
It'll be the complete development toolset which we use. The only occasion where we may seperate out portions of our OS is where we have royalty (or ownership) considerations. In those cases we'll either allow the owner of the product to bundle the package or we'll sell the component for a nominal fee to cover the royalty cost. (More than likely we'll bundle these into suites of packages which you can buy as a set...but nothing has been officially decided.)
All in all, it's our intent to give the development community at large the ability to use what we use everyday. All of it, nothing sneaky or tricky, our money is made from OEM's and commercial development seats: Not free development.
-William Bull
Re:Yes there is a client (Score:2)
I may be biased, but... (Score:4)
If you happen to be thinking about setting up your house server with QNX, because it's so cute and tiny, allow me to provide the following arguments against doing so:
QNX has one of the smallest array of available applications on it. The situation is better than it once was, however, you will have to face the fact that even with GNU or other open-source tools, you either port it yourself, or you remain a few versions behind.
My servers, especially my own house server, ends up being a swiss-army-knife (sorry, leatherman) system providing more than an internet gateway, but also a miriad of different services internally. Linux is a wonderful choice for this, because it has some of the most flexible networking tools in it, most sources compile very nicely for it, etc. etc. QNX... can fit on a floppy (or a handful, for a full install with its (cough) optional TCP/IP module). Forget IPMasq, forget tcpwrappers, forget it all. Unless, of course, you port/find someone who's ported something more recently than '98.
If you happen to be thinking about using QNX commercially: QNX is expensive. Actually, QNX was always expensive. It's even more expensive if you don't want thousands of licences - I think in terms of features per dollar, it's sucking pretty hard.
Finally: if you happen to be thinking about using QNX in a realtime or timing-critical application/environment, GO FOR IT. That's QNX's specialty. It's a niche OS designed for this role, and it also has a nice fit for embedded uses (like iOpener). It is not, however, a general purpose OS.
In the end, free QNX is kinda like free llama-skin pajamas. It doesn't cost any money, but I don't see it meeting any of my needs. And it might just cause me to itch.
Here endeth my rant.
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
Your patient's heart monitor shouldn't be kept waiting while Unreal Tournament is trying to calculate where the body parts land
I don't know how rigidly QNX adhears to a hard real time design, though.
Eh? (Score:3)
>are more important than unix's cornucopia of >applications and features.
Is this to lead us to believe that UNIX isn't stable or predictable?
Well, certainly, you can set it up that way, but UNIX has been pretty stable for me for a long time. Of course 'UNIX' is kinda vague, (and please don't start a 'linux-is-not-really-unix-because-it-isn't-part-o
Kinda sounds marketing fluffish. But if you're going to go that path, go all out.
QNX provides a world-class enterprise server based information technology solutions enabling people in all teirs of applications development rapid access to empowering decision making information in an Object Oriented (TM) framework built to provide the ultimate in flexibility.
So what if it's nothing but absurd lies? It moves product, particularly to PHB's.
The biggest feature of QNX (Score:3)
So when interrupt driven events just aren't good enough... QNX does the job admirably.
Real Time Linux (Score:2)
it can runs linux binaries directly (Score:2)
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BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite [be.com] free!
QNX not just for older PCs (Score:3)
Also, before you guys get to work programming, I ask that you please read the on-line manuals on the functions Send() Receive() and Reply() and that you actually use those functions (along with qnx_register_name() and qnx_name_locate()) together those functions form the basis of the best inter-process communication i've seen to date.
Anyway, I'm rambling now
-- Jon Olson
Re:Just don't do anything secure with it! (Score:2)