The non-commerical (NC) download of QNX 6.2.1 has offically been released today. Commercial developers can also now apply to get an evaluation copy of the pro (PE) edition of QNX. Be sure to use the new 6.2.1 online 3rd Party software repository once you are up and running.
QNX 6.2.1 Officially Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Looks like the link to the new repository didn’t make it into the story posting.
http://download.qnx.com/contrib/repository621a
Just add that in to your bookmarks inside of the Installer
application once you are up and running.
Yes, it did make it… it is just that I linked a different word with it, and not the “software repository” word. changed it now.
That link resolves to http://localhost.localdomain/contrib/repository621a/
Wierd
yes! now i can run all those killer apps [killerstuff.net] that cdm has been making. finally…
Hehe, indeed… Chris, please fix it…
It is okay. That is how our IS dept. setup the site, so unless you ask for a specific file it does that odd redirection. The installer will look for a bunch of files like index, repository.qrm, contents.tgz. After that it will get the packages by name.
Just add the URL into the installer and it will all be fine.
Yeah.. it DLs with 4 KB – it will take ages, if it doesn’t get cancelled meantime. I must assume they never made a download before – highly unprofessional, highly annoying.
My download is coming over at 46 kb. That’s not to bad
Time to use BitTorrent
… between the recently inofficially released 6.2.1?
for some odd reasons i couldn’t install it on my PC, as it can’t find the partition when trying to copy the files (yes, i can select it and it has been formatted … *odd*).
and .altboot from CD doesn’t work for me.
any better than lets say Xandros, Redhat, Suse or Gentoo as a home desktop? Are there good apps for it?
I’d like to know what’s the main purpose of QNX? I know it’s a real time OS and it doesn’t do multi-tasking very well as the system slows down as far as I am aware. If that is the case, I’ve seen a lot of desktop-based like apps available for QNX. As far as I know it’s not aimed at the desktop. What is the whole purpose of this OS? What does it try to achieve?
There are not many apps for QNX RtP. Around 100 third party desktop apps, I would think. QNX is not a Linux, but porting apps is not extremely hard as it is fully POSIX and there is already a GTK+ 1.2.x X11 port.
I just installed QNX 6.2 yesterday. I love it. Neat little OS. I want to give it a try for some weeks (and eventually more).Only thing bothering me for the moment is Opera: when I launch it I have Voyager opening!??.
>What is the whole purpose of this OS? What does it try to achieve?
QNX is NOT a desktop OS, it is primarily an embedded systems OS. The kind of OS you use for your devices, dvd players, space shuttles etc.
However, it used to have a basic gui called Photon, then 3 years ago QSSL decided to extend that gui, and so now it can function as a “desktop” OS. However, the sole purpose of this “gui OS” based on QNX, is NOT to sell a home/corporate desktop, but it is the development platform for the embedded systems QNX OS. It is the dev platform that QNX developers are using to create apps for the embedded systems market of the OS. At least, this is how QSSL is marketing it. Back in the day, in 2000, when RtP first released to the wider public as a stand alone x86 graphical OS, the idea was to try to market it more, but it didn’t work. Soon after, QSSL tried to market it as the dev platform for QNX-based Internet Appliances. That didn’t work either, as IAs didn’t sell. And now, they try to market it as a dev platform for all the QNX-based devs around the globe, with the help of Eclipse. In fact, if you read the minimum requirements, they ask for a PIII 650 Mhz, as this is what Eclipse requires, while the OS itself can run on P200 Mhz without a problem. QNX RtP/Momentics is a dev platform and it is not indented by QNX as a desktop replacement for your current OS. But some people like to use it as such.
>Only thing bothering me for the moment is Opera: when I launch it I have Voyager opening!??.
No, it is Opera. Opera under QNX is not a stand alone browser, it is only the HTML engine loading THROUGH the Voyager GUI. Try it, load once voyager and once opera on a complex html page, and see how they render it a bit differently, as they are different HTML engines, under the same shell.
Here is last year’s preview on qnx 6.2 with screenshots:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=534
Just tested it. Should have done it before downloading Mozilla!
QNX actually does multi-task EXTREAMLY well. I am building code, listening to music, using mozilla, chatting on irc, … and nothing skips a beat.
However, currently the default schedular is fixed-priority round-robin, so it is possible to slow things down with an errant process hogging the CPU. But it is not a general runtime case and you can just kill it off. In those situations “hogs -n -%1” is your friend.
Hopefully in a future release a more adaptive schedular will be the default in the self-hosted environment.
I can’t speak for this version but I have the last one and it really has potential as such,the USB keyboard and mouse on my old Acer 333 amd k6-2 box work just fine as does the ess solo sound ,the Acer winmodem doesn’t unfortunately and i have never had any luck in getting it to install the software pakages by dragging them across from my windows partition(the package manager seems to be hard wired into the browser or else I’m just missing something),this method of software installation always worked well for me running BeOS and Linux on this machine (although I never could get the USB kb and mouse to work under BeOS)It’s too bad more developers don’t make or port apps to this platform,because it has all the makings of being a really nice lightweight desktop OS,like BeOS PE,or GEOS(Breadbox.NewDeal or whatever they’re calling it nowadays) and has some nice little bundled apps .like a calculator, media player, browser,image viewer and text editor , who knows maybe one day I’ll spring for a supported modem and try to get some more apps for it but they seem to be few and far between and mainly geared to development not the end user.I wish there were a Linux that was this unbloated.easy to install and streamlined.Smeone should port some more apps and make a package that doesn’t rely on the net to install.
>although I never could get the USB kb and mouse to work under BeOS
BeOS did not support most of VIA’s USB implementation (some via chipset would work, others won’t, some will be unpredictable), it only supported Intel’s. I don’t believe Zeta is going to change that either…
Next to the MacOSX Aqua, Photon is without a doubt the most proffesional and beutiful GUI out there, not many people know that…
I wish my linux looked like that, try skinning GTK or QT like that and it still sadly looks like crap, and feels far from as robust.
Anyone here ever get around to trying out QNX on the iPAQ?
I had an iPAQ 3150, which isn’t supported by QNX on the iPAQ. I now have a Zaurus SL-5500, and I’d love to try it there.
It’s possible. I used to hang out a lot at #zaurus on openprojects and one of the guys who hang out there works for qnx. He flashed his Ipaq and Zaurus to QNX.
I wanted to try it out, but my Zaurus is still loving OZ
http://207.198.90.123/ipaq_bsp/users_guide.html
“everyone says this is not a desktop OS but..”
I’ve always felt that QNX would make an excellent desktop OS. In fact, if it had more applications I would much rahter use it then Linux.
However, QNX is doing well (last time I looked) in it’s niche market as an embedded operating system. QSSL needs to stay profitable, so I can understand them not wanting to get into the desktop os market.
Still, it’s a cool operating system! QSSL has done a great job on it.
It’s coming along. Perhaps I will start onto it again with more vigor.
I think it makes a decent desktop OS. Although it may be intended for imbedded developers, there are certainly features targeting a desktop user base, including basic screen savers and backgrounds.
There are also apps for basic desktop use, including a word processor, e-mail client, internet browser, and even a few arcade games.
While I doubt anyone would advocate replacing Windows with QNX Neutrino as their primary operating system, it does work well as an alternative OS. QNX detected my modem that other OSes can’t find, the software repositories are easy to use, and QNX can easily load with XOSL or the BeOS Bootman.
Best Luck,
Bob
Hi everyone.
Few questions:
1. Does the NC support 3D acceleration ?
2. Can the Media Player play DVDs, MPEG-4 (DivX and/or
others) files ? If no – are there any 3rd party solutions for
that ?
Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Arturas B.
1. Nothing more then it ever did, which was basically nothing. Just old Voodoo3 cards.
2. We can’t ship support for any of those formats since it would require a great deal of licensing and payment/download. However, you can get mplayer for QNX and it plays all of that stuff just fine. Perhaps someone will do an ffmpeg filter for the new media system so all video players on QNX would get support.
Thanks Eugenia, now I know exactly what QNX RTP is what its sole purpose is and also thanks Chris for clearifing the multi-tasking section of my question
This is great to make use of older laptops.
Any office suites for it?
http://www.abisource.com/download/index.phtml?all=1
Abiword I mean. Tried to do my work with it. The damned thing eats part of my text if I use “justified”. But works very well otherwise.