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Comment by xvilka | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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/

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.

Reminds me of HaikuOS.

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.

I ever saw.

I have ever seen.

> 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.

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.

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

I still see it used in manufacturing.

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