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Comment by mech422 | Hacker News Reader

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mech422·

Will Photon be available as well ?

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This isn't an OS meant for desktops.

There are many uses for graphical UIs outside general purpose desktops.

That's why I said it isn't meant for desktop [where you would play games via proton].

Photon nonetheless made for an outstanding desktop.

Wait hold on, I'm a moron that read photon (the UI of QNX) as proton (valve thingy). Disregard my message.

It used to be desktop-friendly enough to develop on. It's not a purely embedded OS.

I wouldn't call it desktop-friendly. Yeah, you could install and develop for QNX on it, but that was pretty much all you could do on it? Definitely won't be playing any video games on it.

Ignore this, I read "photon" as "proton"

Haha, got it. Cheers.

IMO "Gaming" is a level above "Desktop". You wouldn't play games on FreeBSD either yet it is a perfectly acceptable desktop OS for productivity apps. The question, can QNX still run Firefox and LibreOffice?

So I've used FreeBSD as a desktop for a very long time. I don't think it's acceptable desktop OS by today's standards at all:

- graphics card drivers years behind (actually what made me switch to linux)

- A lot of linux graphic environment tied itself to systemd and it's friends

- Specifically, firefox lacks some features that available on Linux, Windows and macOS (related to memory consumptions and overall snappiness)

- Many things depend on FreeBSD specific patches to work and if you aren't a seasoned porter, good luck porting it yourself[1]

[1]: this one obviously depends on what kind of software you require. For it me it's a miss.

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