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[Nightcrawler]

I've been using qnx 6.2.1 for networking at home for a while now, and really like it. Today, I decided to remove my windows partition entirely and only use qnx... After I removed Win, it sort of dawned on me; I have no software, no idea where and how to get software, what SW is good, and so on. Any tips?

[Tomas]

That is the biggest prob i encountered also... QNX seems like a great OS, but sadly it does virtually have no software at all :-( Even BeOS seems to have more.. atleast the last time i checked

[Crusher]

Maybe these links can help a bit?

http://www.openqnx.com/
http://www.qnxzone.com/
http://www.opera.com/products/user/i...l?platform=qnx
http://julius.qnx.org.ru/
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/qnx/

I just wrote QNX on Google.com and found a bunch of links. :-)

[that_punk_guy]

It's a shame that QNX isn't more popular, it's way better than Linux IMO, at least from a user perspective.

There's a few links to repositories on the QNX site here.

[Nightcrawler]

that_punk_guy wrote:
It's a shame that QNX isn't more popular, it's way better than Linux IMO, at least from a user perspective.

There's a few links to repositories on the QNX site here.

Thanks all. I've got Opera running now. Apart from that, I really don't need anything. From using qnx as a "desktop" system so far I've found that it is F A S T. Being used to windows' I found myself waiting long after processes had finished. 1-0 qnx! And I like the gui. Real neat with no icon clutter on the desktop. I think this is a keeper :-D

I'll see in a few days time if I'm still impressed...

[bhoggett]

QNX is nice in terms of performance and design, but...

The available range of software is very limited, and ports tend to lag behind most other versions. Driver support tends to be rather limited too (a situation which gets worse if you want more than the generic functions available to various devices).

QNX would make a decent desktop system if QSSL saw that as a priority and so pumped some more resources into it. However, the QNX RTOS is really intended as a developer's system to support development of applications for the QNX core business (embedded systems etc.). As such, you won't get the kind of features you will find on other systems, like fully featured 3D drivers, support for all sorts of peripherals, built-in component drivers etc.

For me, QNX never made it past the "cute but not very useful" barrier, which is a shame.

[Nightcrawler]

bhoggett wrote:
QNX is nice in terms of performance and design, but...

The available range of software is very limited, and ports tend to lag behind most other versions. Driver support tends to be rather limited too (a situation which gets worse if you want more than the generic functions available to various devices).

QNX would make a decent desktop system if QSSL saw that as a priority and so pumped some more resources into it. However, the QNX RTOS is really intended as a developer's system to support development of applications for the QNX core business (embedded systems etc.). As such, you won't get the kind of features you will find on other systems, like fully featured 3D drivers, support for all sorts of peripherals, built-in component drivers etc.

For me, QNX never made it past the "cute but not very useful" barrier, which is a shame.

Well, I understand your POV - I would probably stay with windows (not to mention upgrade a lot) if I cared about games and such. But I don't :-D

For my needs QNX seems just about perfect so far. If that still holds in a few days time remains to be seen, but so far it looks excellent. And I can't tell you how nice it is to not hear the damn HD moaning every time I change apps...

-edit: BTW didn't Gateway or whoever mean to base their AmigaOS on QNX? I seem to remember something like that...

[that_punk_guy]

OT:

Nightcrawler wrote:

-edit: BTW didn't Gateway or whoever mean to base their AmigaOS on QNX? I seem to remember something like that...

Yep... then they suddenly switched to Linux... it was weird. Then those plans were scrapped. QNX could have make a very good core for the next generation AmigaOS, from what I read around that time.

Link here and here.

[Tesral]

Yep... then they suddenly switched to Linux... it was weird. Then those plans were scrapped. QNX could have make a very good core for the next generation AmigaOS, from what I read around that time.

Link here and [url=http://amiga.emugaming.com/linuxchoice.html]here.[/url
]

I know why QNX doesn't seek the desktop market. They are the only OS considered stable enough to use in "life critical" applications. So that heart monitoring machine, the heart lung machine, they run QNX. Highly imbedded, and most people that use it are unaware they do.

[Rodney]

Whats the difference between the versions of qnx? I had one once, but i dont think it liked my card or something, cause it was very very very slow. I think it was QNX 4 or something... whats neutrino all about? what are all these QNXs?

[that_punk_guy]

Rodney wrote:
Whats the difference between the versions of qnx? I had one once, but i dont think it liked my card or something, cause it was very very very slow. I think it was QNX 4 or something... whats neutrino all about? what are all these QNXs?

Neutrino is the new name for the QNX Realtime OS from version 6.2 onwards. I think they changed it to distinguish between the company and the product a little more. I'm surprised to hear it was slow for you, I had QNX running on my stepdad's old P233 laptop once, and it was quite snappy. (Maybe I just have good luck with these things, people always seem to complain of AROS running slow too. Maybe I just have good hardware ;-))

Regarding the differences between QNX 4 and QNX 6.2, from the QNX website:

Like QNX 4, QNX Neutrino is a microkernel, message-passing, memory-protected operating system. But compared to version 4, QNX Neutrino lets you deploy systems on a much larger variety of processors, including PowerPC, MIPS, SH-4, ARM, StrongARM, XScale, and x86. It's also more scalable, with support for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). And it provides a much richer set of POSIX APIs.

[greenboy]

After the Gatemiga paper switch to Linux, QNX the company predicated its moves to work on a user desktop on phase5 partnership. When phase5 no longer showed any ability to pursue its part of the partnership, QNX still had some hope that it could leverage its plans toward a self-hosted DEVELOPMENT desktop to dovetail with a sustained climb toward multi-hardware-platform user desktop amenities, including improvements on Amiga-specific concepts such as datatyping, and process managers providing compatibility layer/APIs, and some more efforts to widen the application base beyond *nux/nix ports.

But when less and less Amiga community interest was shown because a lot of the Amiga-conversant developer base they hoped would participate - with a need for a deep partner(s) with phase5-level skills - was instead being drawn toward Amiga DE development, they began to prioritize differently, leveraging the demand they enjoyed in telecom, aerospace, mobileGT, and industrial and embedded even more than before.

Because of breakdown in negotiations between Amino (now the new Amiga Inc) and QNX (QNX could see no realistic business plan from Amino and did not like the Amino approach toward relationship-building), Tao was hastily chosen to keep from dieing stillborne - either because (1) Amiga Inc didn't do its homework in looking for an alternative that would do what they claimed they wanted to do at Gateway2000, or (2) they had no real intentions to deal with the desktop and the home gateway concepts, instead just wanting to string the community along while they made further inroads with developers.

This really sapped the development pool and momentum QNX was interested in that would have complimented the *nixy types pretty much guaranteed by POSIX compliance, and the embedded developers who were already working with the older QNX (pre-6.x) codebase. After alpha and beta testing and some early apps ports it became obvious to Phoenix that some of us had to look for major finance and talent to build on QNX for our needs. Indeed, most of us preferred QNX for modern desktop potential and for embedded spinoffs.

Fortunately, after dealing with sharks of various tooth size and not wanting to sell all our work for loss of control the VC sharks insisted on, we saw that Genesi was forming and had a strong interest in multi-OS work, and in both desktop and embedded work. Just in time, from my perspective!

Today its pretty obvious that Tao's multiplatform approach was designed for other uses entirely, and it seems a shame that QNX's multiplatform approach wasn't finally to get more desktop emphasis. But QNX itself has done very well in expanding its base and its potential, which only seems to intersect the desktop for the average user slightly.

Phoenix still has people doing QNX stuff, and Genesi is involved in making sure QNX is ported and that a business relationship with QNX is thereby developed. QNX is waiting for Peg2 after having ported to Peg1. When Peg2 porting and testing is done (should go fairly quickly given the speed of getting it happening with Peg1) it will be time to seriously consider product using the two.

[Nightcrawler]

greenboy wrote:
>>
Phoenix still has people doing QNX stuff, and Genesi is involved in making sure QNX is ported and that a business relationship with QNX is thereby developed. QNX is waiting for Peg2 after having ported to Peg1. When Peg2 porting and testing is done (should go fairly quickly given the speed of getting it happening with Peg1) it will be time to seriously consider product using the two.

Thanks for the info, Greenboy. I am particularly interested in the paragraph quoted above. Will this be a straight port, or will there be any "amigafication" done to it? Should I stop waiting for Aone lite/micro/whatever, and start waiting for PegII instead?

Oh, and two days running - still impressed ;-)

[greenboy]

Nightcrawler : I am particularly interested in the paragraph quoted above. Will this be a straight port, or will there be any "amigafication" done to it? Should I stop waiting for Aone lite/micro/whatever, and start waiting for PegII instead?

It'll be a port of QNX as it stands today. It's unlikely that any Amigafication will take place at the beginning. Genesi already has MorphOS for that. QNX on the other hand has established itself as suitable for mission critical use and provides developers of embedded and industrial solutions with pretty much all that is needed to build totally robust products.

At the start at least, the main thing is to make the Pegasos product line available to companies and developers who already use QNX, or consider it when spec'ing product designs.

You can still wait for Peg2 though : }}} - and it won't be long, maybe a couple weeks. I think the initial 1500 that have been required elsewhere are probably just about done.

Oh, and two days running - still impressed

QNX is getting into the 99.999% reliability category, which may smack of marketing, but has some basis in reality ; } ...And this can happen in transparent networking on a variety of hardware including SMP machines.

Do check out the URLs that were provided earlier in the thread, in spite of the non-consumer-desktop emphasis (as a developer desktop it excels, partly because of their involvement in eclipse), there are a variety of applications that developers have brought over to use QNX in place of other nixxy systems because they prefer the smaller footprint, the performance, and the microkernel architecture.

Glad you are liking it, Nightcrawler : }**QNX has a lot of great people so I always enjoy seeing some appreciation of their efforts.

[amigamad]

I like qnx as well but i found thew same problem not much software where beos has tons of software .