QNX Demo Disk screen shots | Hacker News Reader

QNX Demo Disk screen shots

toastytech.com

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I remember this. Impressive.

Here's how they did it:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991128112050/http://www.qnx.co...

That wasn't the UI I remmembered. Was more like this: https://mariomasta64.me/archive/toastytech.com/guis/qnx621ca...

That's version 6. The floppies used version 4.

That QNX 6 GUI reminds me of BeOS

i love this gui

I knew a dude who was really into porting GNU tools to QNX after seeing the floppy demo. I think all that effort was lost after they closed it up. Still, I have this sneaking feeling that we've kinda lost the plot as far as software goes... so much can be done with small systems.

It was really strange how QNX had a full multitasking GUI operating system for Intel, back in the days when there was a faint chance of competing against Windows, and yet the QNX company had no interest at all in taking QNX to market beyond embedded systems.

Yes. I had tried it out, for a while, many years ago, at a time when Linux distros fitted on CDs, not DVDs.

Installed it off a CD that came with PC Quest Magazine, onto a partition on my PC.

QNX was really fast, not just compared to Windows, but even compared to Linuxes of the time.

It even had reasonable device support (what I cared about worked) and a web browser. I’m sad that they dropped Nutrino, but am glad it existed.

Neutrino still exists and it's running your car. In fact you can still buy it for home use. It's just not Free. Or "free" as in Windows.

Neutrino, I guess. Cool. And I think the GUI module (for lack of a more appropriate word, subsystem, maybe) was called Photon.

By the time that demo floppy was release (1999) Microsoft already had become the 'default PC OS'. Also, Microsoft had Windows _and_ Office, server software to network a company (NT) and for home users about all the PC games they could dream of. QNX had a very impressive demo, but never really had a chance of competing, otherwise they would have lost from free Linux distributions that had more software at the time.

They didn't have any software and didn't emulate dos or windows

Why would anyone run it

Damn I remember this. The feeling of booting up a full GUI system with PPP dialing and a browser off of a 1.44MB disk was incredible. I played with it for days.

Yeah. IIRC, the GUI was called Photon.

I wonder why so many lighter, good products don't do well, while heavier, worse ones do. (The "worse is better" thing.) (1)

Good at tech but bad at marketing?

Not enough financial clout?

Or don't know how to, or don't want to, wine and dine corporate buyer honchos? Ugh.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

Update: I submitted the Wikipedia link above as a new HN post, for anyone who wants to discuss it, including their own experiences on this, apart from general thoughts, although those are welcome too. Would be particularly interesting to hear from software creators who created a better product, compete(d) against a worse one (or vice versa), and failed or succeeded, and why they think it worked out the way it did.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to put the post link. Here it is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37888214

There's plenty of emulators online if you want to give it a go

https://archive.org/details/qnxdemo_modem_v4

Once I tried to use the QNX floppy demo. There is a backdoor that allows you to reach out to the command line http://qnx.puslapiai.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm but I wasn't able to accomplish it.

Also I wonder if we have a root account, and if it is possible to install it on a hard drive. There is no rooted and installable floppy QNX demo that I am aware of.

I booted this on my 486 back in the day. That machine had a combo soundcard/modem which gave me fits when I upgraded to a 33.6 later on (Plug and Play, haha. At least I learned how to deal with IRQ conflicts). QNX booted and recognized everything and it just worked, and so fast.

Also keep in mind that at this time, getting Linux working was a crapshoot, I had already attempted and failed to get it running on the same machine, making the QNX disk seem even more amazing.

QNX is still around and being developed (i think) I wish BB made it easily available for non-commercial use

https://blackberry.qnx.com/en

It is heavily used in some industries, just not the average desktop or mobile markets.

By the way, you can compile almost all FreeBSD packages with a bit of care and get a full desktop running on QNX. QtCreator, Firefox, even VSCode can be made running native on QNX (not that anybody would be interested in it though...)

Good luck: https://membarrier.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/qnx-7-desktop/

Behind some (unfortunately closed) doors there are almost 8000(sic) packages that run on 7.1. But that was after some time just grunt work and the interesting stuff actually happens below the kernel, not above ;).

Below the kernel is the hardware. QNX is a nanokernel in which the kernel itself is just a tiny executive and all the real work is done in userspace processes, including process management. Pid 1 is procnto, the usespace process manager, and everything else including drivers are userspace processes started and managed by pid 1.

In short, all the interesting stuff actually happens above the kernel, not below. The kernel just does some grunt work of VMM and IPC.

Well. Yes but not exclusively (I am working with QNX since many years), what I meant are the drivers or how resource managers do their job and for which hardware.

Ah, I understand what you said reading it again. You are right, that is "beneath the kernel" not "below".

You can get an academic license if you bug them for long enough. Then you can get a BSP for Raspberry Pi and play with it.

Yup, the infotainment system in 2016+ Fords runs QNX.

There's a QNX 6.21 bootable demo CD, if anyone still has one.

Very nostalgic as it was the first non-Microsoft PC OS I ever installed after trying and failing to pirate a copy of OS/2 Warp. It came on the March 2001 "Maximum CD": https://books.google.com/books?id=yAEAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT53&dq=%...

I really enjoyed it aside from lack of support for my winmodem which was sadly a dealbreaker. We got ADSL about a year later and by that point I went for Mandrake 8 instead.

This it? Looks like an ISO.

https://archive.org/details/qnx-650-live

Nice. The 6.2.1 version was open and installable. This is live CD only.

QNX was closed source, then free personal version (QNX era), then closed source, then open source (Harmon era), then closed source (RIM). During the more open eras there were third-party ports of most of the Gnu tools, along with Firefox and Thunderbird. All these license changes in the 2000s killed off third party development and the point of sale industry.

I never got that. Even if just releasing it, not even open source, but for free, unsupported, they would get free software ports, exposure to potential commercial developers, and it doesn't really cost anything.

KolibriOS/MenuetOS are similar floppy-sized OSes with just as much if not more functionality.

i used XNQ as my daily driver for a short period :)

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