OpenQNX reports that the next release of QNX, commonly referred as QNX 6.3, is expected in the second quarter of 2004. The new features in QNX 6.3 haven’t been talked in the news announcement, but based on earlier news postings on qnx.com, it is believed that we will be seeing the new Netfront back-end web browser for the Voyager UI-shell. The Linux-hosted development option for QNX Momentics will also be available.
QNX Momentics 6.3 to be Released Q2 2004
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
QNX isn’t that bad as a UNIX workstation/server. Would be nice to see better USB support as I need to plug in a PS/2 mouse to play around with it, but overall it’s easily installed. An installer including the capabilities of e.g. fdisk wouldn’t hurt though as you’re somewhat limited when it comes to chosing the amount of space to allocate to QNX.
I have QNX 6.2.1 installed here (over my swap partition!) and it’s a joy to use. Extremely fast to both boot and run, very clean and with a slick GUI. Of course, as with all non-mainstream operating systems it doesn’t have all the hardware and software support of the big players, but MPlayer, GIMP, Firebird, AbiWord etc. all run fine on it.
Definitely worth the free download just to play around with.
http://www.qnx.com/eval/
I also used to think about using QNX as a Workstation. I have tinkered around various QNX versions, ordered my first one in CD (2001-03-09) when mine was a lamest 56K connection. This OS has a clear potential as a desktop but sadly it is also clear that their [QNX] desktop/workstation interest is NULL. Real Time, all the Real Time and nothing but the Real Time, for Real Time development.
Waiting for an OS to come.
About USB Support, 6.3 is rumored (it will have) support for usb1 and two, and a long anticipated devu-mass driver.
I doubt the autorecognize & start feature has been worked on tho..
Sometimes I wonder if it really is such a strain for them (QSSL) to open a desktop dept. It’s real money after all, it’s… worldwide recognition, acceptance, bug tracking et all… Well, maybe exclude the bug tracking, but nevermind. It could be almost entirely community-based. Basically all QNX needs to become a mainstream desktop OS is a sporadic scheduler and a PR manager that would convince developers that porting to QNX is good. I doubt everyone immediately needs all the USB niceities. Granted, systems like Windows have been evolving for years, so there’s no need to compare right now. But it will come in short time. Support for all that fancy stuff, once more people ‘dive right in’. I remember there was quite a momentum building at the time of the first QNX 6 release. It was almost like with BeOS. But QSSL didn’t get it and people have played with QNX and abandoned it… Oh so sad. QNX is a very good OS.
QNX is one of several operating systems I dual-boot. As far as alternative operating systems for beginners, it’s one of the easiest to install and use. Unfortunately it doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.
Thankfully, I can always count on OSNews to keep me informed of the latest releases. And should there be a problem with installation or setup, the QNX forum here is a great place to ask.
Thanks,
Bob
> Basically all QNX needs to become a mainstream desktop OS is a sporadic scheduler
It does have it. http://www.qnx.com/developer/docs/momentics621_docs/neutrino/lib_re…
> and a PR manager that would convince developers that porting to QNX is good.
One just needs to try once. Everything QNX needs is money to risk. It is bad they put IPO on hold.
Why is it that anybody want a sporadic scheduler? If I got a task that take a long time to run I can nice it, and it will not take any cpu time from other tasks.(Something you can’t do with linux -(
And I run the gui and media-player at a priority a bit over normal so the gui/music newer lag no matter the cpu-load.
A sporadic scheduler would make all that imposible(Well almost, depending on the exact implementation).
Martin Tilsted
Priority doesn’t work well when you have a wide
mix of work types inside the same box. Sporadic
scheduling can prevent complete starvation while
most of the time not causing any problems.
If you are in a hard real time environment that
can never glitch then you wouldn’t use it. A lot
of embedded systems are more like work stations
now and strict priority scheduling can’t work.
you’re right, Buck. With its excellent UI and OS capabilities, QNX could be a brilliant of Desktop OS.
I love it, it’s installed on my notebook and sometimes I boot into it even if I have no real job at the moment, just to feel it again.
But talking on ‘desktop market’, QNX is far away from it. (1) Real-time systems market is VERY EXPENSIVE, so QSSL has no interest to make money on desktops: they have to sell many-many ‘QNX Desktop’ licenses for reasonable price to make money on desktop market, but Reasonable desktop price isn’t the same as reasonable RTOS price — they will never sell their industry OS for the ‘housekeeping’ price (of $70 Home Edition
(2) QNX lacks many features/applications the average desktop user needs: these opensource (email/image viewer/web browser/office apps/PDF viewer/whatever) I can compile myself are all nice, but this will not satisfy ‘commercial desktop user’
As a self-hosted development platform, QNX is, well, … excellent. Rock-solid, self-contained, powerful, sleek and sexy, — Five stars to QSSL, sure.
I am using QNX 6.2.1 PE edition here and it’s quite nice. Being a all binary distribution there is no compiling or fussing needed (great for new users). Photon is very fast as a light-weight GUI. Granted most software (like Firebird, Samba and others) are ported by the community, in general the basic supports are there.
As for the comment about USB not working – it does for mouse at the least – I am using my USB Intellimouse on my laptop as I type this.
If driver support is better
Before Gatway ruined AMIGA, they were going to use QNX as a base for the new version of it’s OS. Amiga would have been the OSX several years prior to Apple. Its a same that some people (CEOs) have no vision.
Apple should buy them and use them for their consumer product lines such as iPOD.
I want apple would leave QNX alone. They lost their chance when they decided not to license mac technology. I’ve given up on actually expecting the new amiga to be released. It’s been long…
Furthermore, QNX is a great OS and although It’s geared more toward a developer desktop OS it is successful and QNX could tap a really big potential market, although they claim they aren’t into the consumer desktop market, the consumers are coming to them- why not embrace it. Good job making a great OS QNX.