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QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

188 pointsby transputetoday at 1:16 AM100 commentsview on HN

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rbanffytoday at 1:52 PM

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.

xvilkatoday at 4:47 AM

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...

Quessytoday at 5:44 AM

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.

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ronsortoday at 2:58 AM

This is a major throwback to the QNX demo disk, which bundled a browser and desktop environment onto a single floppy disk!

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OsrsNeedsf2Ptoday at 2:25 AM

Did I just wake up from a coma? QNX desktop? Wayland XFCE? What is going on here

noAnswertoday at 1:10 PM

"Hey! I’ve seen this one, this is a classic!" <Marty McFly pointing at screen>

QNX will shift focus in a year or two.

wewewedxfgdftoday at 3:46 AM

I feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football and having Lucy pull it away.

donatjtoday at 2:29 AM

Bring back Photon. It was dang near perfect.

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dcmatttoday at 3:42 AM

QNX is owned by Blackberry?! Blackberry still exists?

harhargangetoday at 6:40 AM

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.

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lukehtoday at 6:13 AM

Oddly Swift appears to support QNX but there’s not much information about it.

https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-testing/issues/868

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zerrtoday at 10:06 AM

Is GTK their go to GUI toolkit nowadays? (mentioned in the examples)

supermatttoday at 9:46 AM

If you want to fall for the QNX bait and switch a 3rd time, more fool you.

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written-beyondtoday at 6:33 AM

PREEMPT_RT, Toyota's IVI shell for flutter and the AGL efforts has made qnx compete again

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inambercladtoday at 5:47 AM

Wow, this could be quite useful for poking at the head unit in my car. It's also running QNX.

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itvisiontoday at 8:53 AM

What compositor is being used?

tomberttoday at 4:02 AM

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?

ngcc_hktoday at 3:17 AM

Totally miss this.

LargoLasskhyfvtoday at 2:09 AM

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 Generic ToolKit?

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upvotenowtoday at 1:39 AM

[flagged]

bfleschtoday at 3:38 AM

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.

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