[HN Gopher] QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
___________________________________________________________________
QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
Author : transpute
Score : 261 points
Date : 2025-12-27 01:16 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (devblog.qnx.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (devblog.qnx.com)
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of relying
| on QEMU(on Ubuntu).
|
| In theory I'd be tempted to try, in practice not, because of all
| the back and forth between changing owners in the past, and
| resulting policies regarding availability.
|
| I'm also very well served by some 'gaming distro', where nothing
| ever stutters or lags, on almost obsolete hardware, mostly
| clocked down to 800Mhz, with uptimes of up to 150 days. More
| isn't really useful anyways, because of updates.
|
| But hey, Wayland! On QNX! With XFCE on top of that! Who would
| have thought?
|
| What about photonic Plasma instead of some _G_ eneric _T_ ool _K_
| it?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of
| relying on QEMU(on Ubuntu).
|
| They do list "A native Desktop image on Raspberry Pi" under
| What's Next, so hopefully soon:)
|
| > In theory I'd be tempted to try, in practice not, because of
| all the back and forth between changing owners in the past, and
| resulting policies regarding availability.
|
| Yeah, that gives me pause too. There was some noise earlier
| about open sourcing it; I do wish they'd actually do that.
| wmf wrote:
| QNX is running on bare metal in a lot of cars.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Bare metal! So, if you just give it enough time, it will run
| on Rust?
| xvilka wrote:
| Only if it's exposed to elements. Meanwhile Rust already
| works on QNX[1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/8.0/com.qnx.doc.neu
| trino...
|
| [2] https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/platform-support/nto-
| qnx.htm...
| cbsks wrote:
| It's also running virtualized in a lot of cars! Although I've
| seen more and more US car companies switching from QNX to
| Linux. Chinese car companies I've worked with all use Linux
| instead of QNX, so perhaps that is the future.
| jacquesm wrote:
| QnX is expensive for commercial use, that's most likely the
| driver for this.
| xvilka wrote:
| Linux now supports real time too, even mainline. And there
| are open source RTOSes for smaller chips and critical
| applications like FreeRTOS.
| m132 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you mean Linux on bare metal, or Linux
| on top of QVM?
|
| The latter is actually a common setup, used by Mercedes-
| Benz and Hangsheng if I'm not mistaken.
| cbsks wrote:
| Linux on top of a hypervisor. There are several companies
| providing hypervisors, including the one I work at, so my
| experience is biased.
| fud101 wrote:
| which 'gaming' distro is that out of curiousity?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| CachyOS.
|
| Running on Core i5 7500t and Core i7 7700t with integrated
| intel HD630 graphics on Lenovo M910q tiny with 32GB RAM.
| Mostly clocked down to 800Mhz. Chosen path: systemd-boot,
| Btrfs, ZRAM, Plasma/KDE.
|
| Edit:
|
| I'm also not gaming btw, just heavy browser use, and some
| LibreOffice. So if you expect to get insane FPS in 4K(on old
| systems!), that probably wouldn't work. What _does_ work is
| having (a heavily customized) FF working with uBo with
| usually 4 FF-windows open, and each of them at least several
| dozen tabs, almost always one of them playing some music from
| YT without a hitch. Doing other stuff on other virtual
| desktops (I run 3 by 3). 4K videos with mpv no problem. With
| VLC neither, but I deinstalled that because I don 't need so
| much UI and features. Matter of taste. Shrug. Remoting by
| whichever means. Even experimenting with small local LLMs
| like Deepseek R1:8B via Ollama. Though _that_ brings the
| systems to their limits, spinning up the fan _hard_ , and
| going allcore 3.1GHz :-)
|
| Feels like BBSsing in the days of analog modems :-)
|
| (Because 'thinking' for minutes, and answers trickle in like
| text at 300 to 1200 baud, or so)
|
| But still, while doing so, music from YT doodling on, even
| whith EasyEffects, no scratches, klicks, distortions,
| whatever.
|
| System stays responsive, no matter if I'm shuffling files in
| Dolphin/Krusader, torturing LibreOffice Calc, reading some
| website, PDF, downloading something, be it via browser/Kget
| or Ktorrent, remote desking, conferencing...
|
| It's all just flowing very smoothly.
|
| Bliss.
|
| Because it just works.
|
| (On my hardware, which may change if you have to use other
| drivers for AMD, Nvidia, or later intel graphics. Or your
| firmware/UEFI is buggy/broken.)
|
| Editoftheedit:
|
| Oh! Did I mention suspend to RAM and wakeup is working
| perfectly? Every single time! The same goes for Wake on LAN,
| or netbooting.
|
| (cackling madly)
| m132 wrote:
| QT is supported too, and actually upstream!
|
| https://hackaday.com/2017/05/03/your-next-desktop-qnx/
|
| Granted, this is not the full Plasma shell, but you can run a
| lot of KDE software on it just fine.
| bregma wrote:
| > We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of
| relying on QEMU
|
| You can already get a free license for QNX and grab a BSP
| (board support package) to create a bare metal image. You have
| been able to for quite a while. People who understand how a
| computer works, what a device driver is and how and when to use
| one, are not the target for this demo. It's targeted at the
| people who think the user interface is the software and the
| desktop GUI is the operating system.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Yah, I know that. But the licensing swings aside, I've just
| thought 'are you on crack?' because of the Eclipse on Windows
| cross- compiling thing, which they've done when I last
| looked.
|
| And stopped.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| Bare metal is on the short-term roadmap!
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| Did I just wake up from a coma? QNX desktop? Wayland XFCE? What
| is going on here
| harhargange wrote:
| Seems like QNX was hiding in plain sight as a car os and a
| mission critical os for other devices.
| bigyabai wrote:
| There are tons of proprietary RTOS/microkernel products on
| the market. It's not so much hiding as it is crowded-out.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And none of them can hold a candle to QnX. I've used a
| whole raft of them and QnX stands heads and shoulders above
| the competition. The consistency of the implementation is
| extremely impressive.
| undefuser wrote:
| I would like to hear more about your experiences. What
| makes QNX better than others?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Show me another OS that you can undress to the kernel, a
| console, a file system and a disk driver and then build
| it all up again without missing a beat.
|
| The kernel processes are actual processes so each of the
| drivers is fully sandboxed, an error in one bit of code
| can not cause any other processes to be affected unless
| you explicitly declare that it should be so (shared
| memory, for instance) and of course you don't do that.
|
| The reduction of scope alone is worth at least 30 IQ
| points.
|
| Absolutely rock solid. I built some specialized network
| devices using QnX and those things ran for a decade+
| after first installation. Not a single reboot.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think the market is moving to "mixed criticality" so you
| can use Linux for your entertainment system but then also use
| a proper RTOS for the car stuff all in the same SoC.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Blackberry OS 10 was also running QNX under the hook afaik.
| blumenkraft wrote:
| And it was awesome! Very responsive.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| We're definitely a secret ingredient brand... hiding in
| products you use every day!
| WillAdams wrote:
| I wish we could get it's competitor TronOS to make a similar
| desktop version --- the demo of it displaying multiple video
| windows on an 80186 was jaw-dropping --- a shame the U.S.
| Trade Commission quashed Japan's Ministry of Education's
| plans to roll it out nation-wide in schools from elementary
| up through graduate.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Just like MINIX!
| donatj wrote:
| Bring back Photon. It was dang near perfect.
| wowczarek wrote:
| Photon was what I was hoping for before I clicked the link. One
| of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.
|
| Photon or not, I hated the period where they sort of moved to
| canned BSP deployment only, where in 6.5 I could just develop
| on a live system. This is nice.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.
|
| In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open source,
| and runs on modern unix-likes.
| xvilka wrote:
| There is also a FWWM[1] "skin" that doesn't require long
| time abandoned C code - NsCDE[2]. It still requires X
| server (just like CDE itself) which becomes rarity these
| days. They need to port it to Wayland eventually.
|
| [1] https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3
|
| [2] https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Eh, there's always
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayback/wayback for that.
| wowczarek wrote:
| > In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open
| source, and runs on modern unix-likes
|
| Oh I'm aware :) also this beauty from SGI is now around
| again:
|
| https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/
| Animats wrote:
| Me too, although it's been a long time since Photon.
|
| "This environment runs as a virtual machine, using QEMU on
| Ubuntu. To try the image, you'll need: Ubuntu 22.04 or
| 24.04." So it doesn't boot on bare metal?
|
| Maybe they're trying to get away from needing Windows. The
| previous recommended development environment was cross-
| compilation from Windows.
|
| The big news here is that they have a reasonable non-
| commercial license again.[1] The trouble is, QNX did that
| twice before, then took it away.[2] Big mistake. They lost
| their developer base. Support of open source tools on QNX
| stopped. As I once told a QNX sales rep, "Stop worrying about
| being pirated and worry about being ignored". They'll need to
| commit contractually to not yanking the non-commercial
| license to get much interest.
|
| QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine. If you ship enough
| products using it, it gets noticed and they contact you about
| payments, and if you're not shipping much product, Unreal
| doesn't care. This has created a big pool of Unreal
| developers, which, in turn, induces game studios to use
| Unreal. Unreal's threshold is US$1 million in sales.
|
| Apparently they opened things up a bit last year, but nobody
| noticed.
|
| Usefully, there is a QNX Board Support Package for the
| Raspberry PI, so you can target that. QNX would be good for
| IOT things on Raspberry PI machines, where you don't want the
| bloat and attack surface of a full Linux installation.
|
| [1] https://qnx.software/en/developers/get-started/getting-
| start...
|
| [2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/11/qnx_8_freeware/
| xvilka wrote:
| > They lost their developer base. Support of open source
| tools on QNX stopped.
|
| Right. These days it's better to invest into Redox OS[1] as
| a potential substitute for it (if work on real time
| capability). And with real time patches merged into Linux
| mainline[2] QNX doesn't stand much chance today too.
|
| [1] https://doc.redox-os.org/book/microkernels.html
|
| [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-
| linux-is-o...
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > And with real time patches merged into Linux
| mainline[2] QNX doesn't stand much chance today too.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but these and other Linux patches
| were always about soft real time and Linux never had hard
| real time capability because of its architecture.
| xvilka wrote:
| You are absolutely right. For most applications it's good
| enough though, unless regulatorily enforced.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine.
|
| That sounds quite a bit harder to enforce for an OS
| designed to run inside, often not internet-connected,
| devices.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| If someone would decide to run QNX (or whatever) _inside,
| often not internet-connected, devices_ then some IP
| enforcement wouldn 't stop them anyway.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I mean it's a realtime OS. It's designed for that. So the
| pricing model has to work with that.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| Bare metal is on the short-term roadmap!
| jonhohle wrote:
| It's really sad it wasn't open sourced. In the early 2000s I
| was triple booting Windows 98, BeOS, and QNX. BeOS was my
| favorite, but QNX Neutrino was great as well.
| ronsor wrote:
| This is a major throwback to the QNX demo disk, which bundled a
| browser and desktop environment onto a single floppy disk!
| sedatk wrote:
| It was mind blowing at the time because Linux required at least
| 4-5 floppies to set up a text-only base system while QNX ran
| live from just a single 1.44MB.
| viraptor wrote:
| When was that? You can still run from a single floppy
| https://github.com/Steve3184/floppinux and some form of that
| was available for ages.
| fouc wrote:
| He meant with X & web browser and so on. The QNX disk had
| gui + browser and a few other gui apps.
| sedatk wrote:
| No I meant the base system. A system with X would take at
| least 20 floppies or so with Slackware 3. The whole setup
| was 80 floppies in total.
|
| I'm sure it's better now, it wasn't so when QNX had come
| out.
| fouc wrote:
| Oh huh, I forgot about that. I guess I downloaded X after
| the base system was installed.
| sedatk wrote:
| Linux was like that in 1995 (Slackware 3.1 or so). I
| believe QNX live was introduced in 1997.
| bregma wrote:
| QNX was introduced in 1980.
| krylon wrote:
| Yes, but the single-floppy live system with a desktop and
| a browser came much later. ;-)
| sedatk wrote:
| That's why I said "QNX live", not QNX.
| fouc wrote:
| Photon microGUI was included in that, and it blew my mind
| that you could literally kill and restart Photon without
| disturbing any of the GUI apps that were still running.
|
| They also mailed a manual along with the demo disk, and I was
| amazed that QNX had built-in network bonding, amongst lots of
| other neat features. At the the time I was using Slackware &
| the linux kernel version was still 1.x, I don't think bonding
| came to linux until 2.x?
| compsciphd wrote:
| that's not really true. In 2001 I built a single disk linux
| installation (with a handful of popular nics supported) with
| X (tiny X with vesafb support) and rdesktop + vnc as a thin
| client on floppy.
|
| I'd be honest and say that qnx demo disk had more usability
| overall than my disk, but one could easily have a usable text
| only linux bootable disk. Busybox and uclibc already existed
| back then.
|
| https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~spotter/floppy.bin (won't be
| that useful today due to the ethernet drivers, but it was a
| 1.44mb floppy)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Totally miss this.
| bflesch wrote:
| Marketing looks nice, but why do they make it so hard to build
| trust? If it's a software focused on developers it's really
| important to establish trust.
|
| The page on https://devblog.qnx.com/about/ does not show what
| kind of company it is, who is behind it, and where they are
| located. Should I expect backdoors? Is it an elaborate front by
| north korea? Who will be able to remotely execute code on this
| operating system?
|
| It's nearly 2026 and fake job applications by nation-state threat
| actors are common. If a new open source project with shiny
| marketing pops up it would really help if there is _some_ proof
| that the org behind it consists of humans living in democratic
| countries.
|
| Edit: The about page links to https://qnx.software/en which only
| shows a black screen for me.
| wmf wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
| bflesch wrote:
| Their main website is a black page. No idea if someone bought
| the brand or if it is the original people behind this 40 year
| old project. Both the wikipedia and the website only mention
| "canada" in passing but no information is given on company
| and people behind it. Nothing that can be verified.
| ronsor wrote:
| It's developed by BlackBerry, is it not? Has been for years
| now.
| bflesch wrote:
| The footer of the website just says "Join the Discord
| Community - Reddit: r/qnx - Instagram: qnx_devrel -
| Powered by Ghost". There is no imprint and the "about"
| link also does not give any info.
| transpute wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page Developer:
| BlackBerry (formerly QNX Software Systems)
| On April 9, 2010, Research In Motion (later renamed to
| BlackBerry Limited) announced they would acquire QNX
| Software Systems from Harman International Industries.
| harhargange wrote:
| And the bb10os was based on this. I still use it and it's
| the ultimate phone that supports few android apps still.
| f1shy wrote:
| It was bought by RIM (Research in Motion) which were the
| developers of BlackBerry.
| shakna wrote:
| The page certainly isn't black for me. Its QNX's usual
| marketing fluff about being embedded in a wide range of
| cars.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| Hiya! The bulk of my colleagues and I are in Ottawa and
| Waterloo Ontario Canada. We're a division of BlackBerry
| Limited, and have been for about 15 years. QNX itself is
| about 45+ years old, having come out of an OS course at the
| University of Waterloo. I work with a lot of people who are
| celebrating 25-35 year anniversaries -- very much still a
| lot of the same engineering and product talent here through
| all of the transitions.
| transpute wrote:
| _> black screen_
|
| Try disabling content/ad blockers.
| bflesch wrote:
| Thanks, you're correct. The cookie banner script at [1] was
| blocked and somehow it crashes the whole site. I only see the
| black background.
|
| [1] https://qnx.software/scripts/global/cookie-consent.js
| Intralexical wrote:
| QNX is the backbone of the auto industry, and powers over 200
| million cars on the road. For the target demographic, I don't
| imagine they need to "build trust" any more than IBM or
| Microsoft need to build trust.
|
| That said, like IBM and Microsoft, they've also been on and off
| over the years about whether tinkerers, desktop, and other uses
| are welcome. So they probably could benefit from showing that
| this time they're opening the ecosystem for the long haul.
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/BB-...
| mkj wrote:
| People in the industry would know that QNX has been around
| since the 90s (or 80s?) as a very solid embedded GUI platform.
| They're a company that doesn't need to prove their credentials.
|
| I'd agree using qnx.software rather than qnx.com is kinda dumb
| though.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Sure, it's been around 40 years, but it's not like old
| companies haven't changed owners many times. So, for
| instance, QNX is now part of Harman which is part of Samsung.
| ykl wrote:
| I thought that QNX was acquired by / is still developed by
| BlackBerry?
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Seems you are right. See how complicated it is? :)
| lmz wrote:
| So it's an elaborate front by _South_ Korea instead.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Should I expect backdoors? Is it an elaborate front by north
| korea? Who will be able to remotely execute code on this
| operating system?
|
| Stop sowing FUD
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
| bflesch wrote:
| You should "trust, but verify" and not shoot the messenger.
| If raising valid concerns that were not addressed by the
| linked website is FUD for you, so be it. Sourceforge was also
| a major brand back in the day and nowadays it raises an anti
| virus alarm if a user visits that website.
| Lammy wrote:
| > If raising valid concerns that were not addressed by the
| linked website is FUD for you, so be it.
|
| Yes, it is. It's specifically called concern trolling:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll
|
| In this case it's because the mass-market operating systems
| with which QNX could compete already do the things you're
| "concerned" about. QNX could only be an improvement in that
| regard.
| dcmatt wrote:
| QNX is owned by Blackberry?! Blackberry still exists?
| transpute wrote:
| $100M+ last quarter, split between QNX and endpoint device
| software, https://www.panabee.com/news/blackberry-
| earnings-q3-2025
|
| 275M cars with QNX,
| https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2025/12/19/blackberry-...
|
| AI/robotics, https://qnx.software/en/industries/robotics
| harhargange wrote:
| Exactly. And there's a huge community of the old Blackberry
| qnx device owners as well still trying to survive.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| I feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football and
| having Lucy pull it away.
| jdub wrote:
| And, BARTLET By the way, the words
| you are looking for are, "Oh, good grief!"
| tombert wrote:
| I've only ever used QNX in the form of Blackberry products
| (mostly the Playbook), so I am afraid I don't what the advantages
| of it would be compared to Linux or something.
|
| I know it's a microkernel which is inherently cool to me, but I
| don't know what else it buys you.
|
| Can anyone here give me a high-level overview of why QNX is cool?
| cyberax wrote:
| QNX is hard realtime. At one point, its kernel had O(1)
| guarantees for message passing and process switching. It could
| have been rewritten without any loops. I'm not sure if that's
| still true.
|
| It's also really compact. This used to be a great selling point
| for underpowered car infotainment systems. Some cars had around
| 1Mb of RAM for their infotainment, yet they were able to run
| fairly complex media systems.
|
| QNX is also used for non-UI components, just as a good realtime
| OS.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think it is mostly used for non-UI stuff. I could be wrong
| but outside of car infotainment I've never seen it used for
| UI stuff. Mostly it just sits headless quietly running some
| branch of industry that we all depend on. The joke used to be
| that if QnX had a y2k bug that had been missed civilization
| would end and never mind windows because you won't have any
| water, food, energy or transportation anymore.
| cyberax wrote:
| Yep. QNX was better than anything else around 2000. VxWorks
| was technically slimmer and more reliable, but QNX had a
| real mostly-POSIX-compatible environment. You could
| develop/debug the code on QNX itself and deploy it on the
| devices.
|
| They were also early adopters of Eclipse, which was the
| "default IDE" before the advent of VS Code.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've used VxWorks as well, yes, it was slimmer (a lot
| slimmer, actually), but I would disagree that it was more
| reliable. QnX supported a ton of hardware out of the box
| and if there ever was unreliability as far as I've seen
| it it was always comms layer related, never the core OS
| or any other bits that you could put next to VxWorks and
| compare on a functional level. You just required a much
| bigger SBC to run it, and that's why we used VxWorks in
| the first place. But I would have been much happier with
| QnX. I'm imagining the modern day equivalent of QnX
| running on a Raspberry Pi Pico or one of the larger
| Arduino's or a Teensy. That would be an absolute game-
| changer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hard real time (so latency guarantees), microkernel (and they
| actually mean it, so your device drivers can't hose your
| system), standardized networked IPC including network
| transparency for all services, ISRs at the application level.
| m132 wrote:
| >IPC including network transparency
|
| Sadly not anymore, Qnet was removed in 8.0
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh! I only worked with it commercially prior to that so I
| never got the memo. What an insanely stupid move. That was
| one of their USPs.
|
| In general QnX was commercially mismanaged and technically
| excellent. I'm imagining a world where they clued in early
| on that an open source real time OS would have run circles
| around the rest of the offerings and they'd have cleaned up
| on commercial licensing. Since the 80's they've steadily
| lost mind and marketshare though I suspect they'll always
| be around in some form.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| There's been talk about this on Reddit too, where our
| chief architect of QNX 8 broke down the decision. He
| mentioned it was ultimately a tough decision, but that in
| the end the cons outweighed the pros.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Such decisions should _always_ involve the customers. A
| chief architect that knocks one of the foundation stones
| out from under a building isn 't doing the bureau they
| work for any favors.
| m132 wrote:
| Hey, could you please post a link to the thread you're
| referring to? I'm guessing it had to do with the io-pkt
| to io-sock transition, but I couldn't find any
| information about that.
|
| I've also noticed that all of the message passing system
| calls still accept the node ID. Are there plans to open
| up this interface to allow for implementation of custom
| network managers, maybe? I'd be very interested in
| exploring that.
| xvilka wrote:
| I always liked their original UI - Photon[1][2]. Very lightweight
| and fast. Also a distinct and consistent style. I understand why
| they dropped it in favor of Qt and later Web technologies, but
| it's still a big loss.
|
| [1]
| https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....
|
| [2]
| https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/momentics_nc_docs/photon/prog...
| prmoustache wrote:
| Yes while it makes sense to reuse stuff that is already being
| built, my heart sank when I saw the screenshot while expecting
| seeing the photon microgui which to me was the nicest
| skeuomorphic one.
| insin wrote:
| I was expecting to see that, I ended up looking up some old
| LiteStep themes [1][2] for my fix
|
| [1] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/6/
|
| [2] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/292/
| krylon wrote:
| Oooooh, that's a blast from the past! I used to use LiteStep
| for about 6-9 months in 2000, before I started using
| GNU/Linux.
|
| At the end, I had really beautiful (to my eyes, back then)
| and very functional desktop, but something went wrong when I
| made backup before installing SuSE Linux 7.0, so months of
| vigorous customizing were lost. :-(
|
| But it was fun while it lasted. There were a number of
| alternative desktop shells in the Windows 95/98 era.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Reminds me of HaikuOS.
| DaeDev wrote:
| Funny thing is this got brought up to us in other circles. As a
| relatively new person to QNX photon seems to have a special
| place in people's hearts
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Indeed. QNX is the coolest OS I ever seen and Photon felt the
| coolest desktop environment. Although I like XFCE in the Linux
| context (more than e.g. GNOME), I am sad to see it replaced
| Photon on QNX. Photon just looked and felt so lovely and came
| with a visual C++ builder making GUI apps development so nice.
| hhh wrote:
| I still see it used in manufacturing.
| transpute wrote:
| _> I understand why they dropped [Photon] in favor of Qt and
| later Web technologies_
|
| The arrows of time branch and spiral, so it's possible that
| "later" could require some properties of "earlier".
|
| If Photon could not be open-sourced, it could be licensed to a
| third party for custodian maintenance. If QNX is abandoning
| Photon forever, would Blackberry object to Photon being cloned
| for Linux or FreeBSD? That could preserve a future option for
| QNX to use it again, like XFCE.
|
| Enthusiasts still use Blackberry keyboards on handheld devices
| in 2025, which sell out in minutes. In a parallel universe,
| Blackberry.com offers embedded SBC developers self-service
| purchase and global delivery of the legendary Blackberry
| keyboard, with Bluetooth for convenience or USB-c for security.
| Quessy wrote:
| Glad to see QNX still progressing. I worked there as an intern
| twice in Ottawa and they're pretty damn good. Great place to work
| imo. I met some of the kernel devs there. Had the priviledge of
| working with one and he taught and demoed some of the kernel
| features to me. They gave us interns a full summer course on
| kernels, C programming, OS and some hardware. Fun times.
| wwweston wrote:
| Sometimes I wish I could do this for mid career sabbatical.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| Well hey, we're hiring! qnx.com/careers!
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| We still do that! In fact, the _QNX From The Board Up_ series
| on the developer blog is a small rip from that training
| content, adapted by Mr Brown. I hope we'll get all of it out
| there for everyone to benefit from in 2026 :)
| inamberclad wrote:
| Wow, this could be quite useful for poking at the head unit in my
| car. It's also running QNX.
| harhargange wrote:
| I hope you don't end up diagnosing issues on the highway.
| lukeh wrote:
| Oddly Swift appears to support QNX but there's not much
| information about it.
|
| https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-testing/issues/868
| harhargange wrote:
| Does this mean QNX supports at least some of the Apple
| software?
| lukeh wrote:
| Hard to say. May be related to CarPlay.
| f1shy wrote:
| Not at all. Swift is just a programming language.
| written-beyond wrote:
| PREEMPT_RT, Toyota's IVI shell for flutter and the AGL efforts
| has made qnx compete again
| bregma wrote:
| It's not a hard-running race. PREEMPT_RT is soft realtime and
| if you rely on it for your brakes you're going to crash. AGL
| has not yet produced any kind of usable system that can be
| certified for functional safety under ISO 26262 or IEC 61508.
| Just a core kernel with no drivers.
|
| We run into a lot of OEMs who switch to Linux because of AGL
| and come crawling back to QNX many expensive months later to
| start over with a viable solution so they can deliver.
| harhargange wrote:
| As someone who still uses a QNX phone, the Blackberry Q10 as my
| second phone, I'm not just optimistic for the return of the
| cross-platform and secure os, I'm rooting for it. Especially for
| portable Linux handhelds. If Blackberry were to release a phone
| tomorrow, it would instantly be the most secure android phone. I
| still run some of my favourite android apps on my BB10os via the
| android translation layer.
|
| Some comments mentioning QNX can run Swift code makes me think of
| it could also run iPhone apps.
|
| While Blackberry exited the phone market, I'm surprised to know
| QNX is still the most popular os for cars. With 275 million
| devices running it atm.
| f1shy wrote:
| > QNX can run Swift code makes me think of it could also run
| iPhone apps.
|
| Not at all. That is like saying because it can run C, it can
| run windows apps. To run iPhone apps you would need all the
| libraries and runtimes ported, including the whole GUI. Just
| not happening.
| nicksbg wrote:
| Tehnically, BB10 could run iOS apps at the beginning but,
| they disabled it before the release of PlayBook. Bad call.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Swift != SwiftUI. You need the latter to run modern iOS apps
| written in Swift.
|
| It's great that Apple are pushing Swift out there a bit, but
| honestly if they want the World to catch fire with it, they
| need to give away the Crown Jewels and get SwiftUI out there as
| well.
|
| Meanwhile, it's great that QNX is supporting modern languages.
| I can imagine having a bit of fun with this developer desktop
| and seeing how modern tooling plays nicely with it.
| lillecarl wrote:
| .NET is doing pretty good without all cross platform UI.
| gt0 wrote:
| Swift is probably less than 1% of the what it takes to run
| iPhone apps, you can get Swift for Windows too, but it is
| nowhere near able to run iPhone apps. The problem is all the
| libraries an iPhone app expects to be available on the host OS,
| all the multimedia stuff and so on, those libraries on iPhone
| are large and advanced, and not available for porting to any OS
| outside of Apple.
| itvision wrote:
| What compositor is being used?
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| Hiya! It's Weston. Here's the port: https://github.com/qnx-
| ports/build-files/tree/main/ports/wes...
| itvision wrote:
| Thank you!
| supermatt wrote:
| If you want to fall for the QNX bait and switch a 3rd time, more
| fool you.
| samiv wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this?
| roryirvine wrote:
| They've moved back and forth between being partially source-
| available and fully closed source at least twice. It's a
| similar story with usage licenses, with hobbyist and non-
| commercial access variously being granted and then pulled
| away multiple times.
|
| On at least one occasion, the license was changed overnight
| leaving a large enthusiast community in the lurch.
|
| Given the history, there's every reason to suspect that
| there'll be yet more rug-pulls in the future.
| noAnswer wrote:
| They also had a desktop version you could install at home
| before.
| qznc wrote:
| They don't promise anything "Open Source" here.
| supermatt wrote:
| The bait and switch was around the "free" license for non-
| commercial use. They got lots of people using it and porting
| software to it, and then they revoked that free license.
|
| Then they did exactly the same thing again a few years later.
|
| And now, for the 3rd time, they are offering a "free" non-
| commercial license.
| zerr wrote:
| Is GTK their go to GUI toolkit nowadays? (mentioned in the
| examples)
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| GTK support for sure, but also Qt, Godot, and others.
| Commercially, also support for Unity & Unreal.
| noAnswer wrote:
| "Hey! I've seen this one, this is a classic!" <Marty McFly
| pointing at screen>
|
| QNX will shift focus in a year or two.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I learned C on QNX (back then, it booted from a floppy on a
| PC/XT). It was a nice little Unix-like OS, with all the things
| you'd expect from a nice little Unix-like OS, plus a reputation
| of being rock-solid like nothing else.
|
| I think it's a real shame Blackberry didn't manage to etch a
| third (or fourth - I also loved Palm's WebOS) niche for their
| QNX-based phones. Blackbberry 10 was an amazing mobile OS.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Wow so they have a desktop version again after many many years.
| That's huge.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Supposedly QNX is used by many car infotainment systems. A hard
| realtime OS for infotainment? What is the purpose? There are
| costs associated with using something like QNX. I can understand
| if you needed to control drivetain with it, but for infotainment
| why not just use Linux?
| blumenkraft wrote:
| Infotainment controls many of car systems. For example,
| infotainment controls car drive mode, which instantly affects
| gearbox. Probably requires predictable time delays for
| certification.
| tyingq wrote:
| fast boot, low latency for buttons/controls.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I have a Ford Sync 2.5 system which is a cost reduced
| hardware downgrade from QNX based Sync 3. I'm sure the OS is
| doing its best while hobbled by a poor management decision
| but it has lots of bugs that crop up from what appears to be
| severe RAM shortage coupled with some gradual memory leaks. I
| have to reboot it regularly when traveling with Android auto.
| It's always a crap shoot if my phone will connect.
| bluGill wrote:
| No gpl, and more importantly the gpl 'fans' who can't write a
| line of code but will scream about gpl violations if they can
| find anything - even if false.
|
| it run qt and does everything else so it is often an easy
| choice.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| In some cases it could also be an Android guest running as a VM
| on the QNX Hypervisor, where there are multiple guests (QNX,
| Android, Linux) making use of the same HW.
| jecel wrote:
| QNX was my operating system from 1985 to 1988. I also studied it
| in 2000 for a project that ended up getting cancelled.
|
| Initially the actual implementation didn't match the conceptual
| framework, but by version 1.2 they had really cleaned things up.
| eeeficus wrote:
| A bit dissapointed by this. You have to create an account, get a
| license, deploy it and then you get a fucking download manager
| just for linux and windows to download who knows what that should
| run on qemu. Why not just give a link to a qemu image with a
| script that runs it?
| encom wrote:
| And the official support options are Discord and Reddit. Sad.
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| We plan to host prebuilts in the new year to make it easier to
| download/run.
| m132 wrote:
| Yes!
|
| In an era where most development-oriented software is
| downloaded with wget/git clone, this whole process feels like a
| slap in the face. And don't get me wrong, this is still a huge
| upgrade over the InstallShield Wizard of the previous versions,
| which rarely worked at all, and if it did, it would butcher
| your /etc/profile, but its still an absolute abomination,
| bundling an entire JRE for the only rightful architecture
| x86-64 just to download and unzip a few files.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Why would I run QNX on the desktop instead of say Linux or
| FreeBSD?
| JohnAtQNX wrote:
| QNX is not a GPOS, so you wouldn't. I mean you _could_, but the
| real benefit here is hidden within: with the toolchain now
| included in this image, folks working on QNX projects can now
| build them right on target. No more messy cross-compilation.
| soapdog wrote:
| I wish someone would reimplement/clone Photon Micro GUI it was
| amazing.
| int0x29 wrote:
| Since when does xfce run on Wayland?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-27 23:01 UTC)