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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx.doc.neutrino_user_guide/using_photon.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/momentics_nc_docs/photon/prog_guide/about.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/momentics_nc_docs/photon/prog...</a>
I was expecting to see that, I ended up looking up some old LiteStep themes [1][2] for my fix<p>[1] <a href="https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/6/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/6/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/292/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/292/</a>
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.
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.
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.<p>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.
This is a major throwback to the QNX demo disk, which bundled a browser and desktop environment onto a single floppy disk!
Did I just wake up from a coma? QNX desktop? Wayland XFCE? What is going on here
I feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football and having Lucy pull it away.
And,<p><pre><code> BARTLET
By the way, the words you are looking for are, "Oh, good grief!"</code></pre>
"Hey! I’ve seen this one, this is a classic!" <Marty McFly pointing at screen><p>QNX will shift focus in a year or two.
Bring back Photon. It was dang near perfect.
Photon was what I was hoping for before I clicked the link. One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.<p>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.
Me too, although it's been a long time since Photon.<p>"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?<p>Maybe they're trying to get away from needing Windows. The previous recommended development environment was cross-compilation from Windows.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Apparently they opened things up a bit last year, but nobody noticed.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://qnx.software/en/developers/get-started/getting-started-guide" rel="nofollow">https://qnx.software/en/developers/get-started/getting-start...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/11/qnx_8_freeware/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/11/qnx_8_freeware/</a>
> QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine.<p>That sounds quite a bit harder to enforce for an OS designed to run inside, often not internet-connected, devices.
> They lost their developer base. Support of open source tools on QNX stopped.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://doc.redox-os.org/book/microkernels.html" rel="nofollow">https://doc.redox-os.org/book/microkernels.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-officially-part-of-the-kernel-after-decades-of-debate/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-o...</a>
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.
> One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.<p>In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open source, and runs on modern unix-likes.
> In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open source, and runs on modern unix-likes<p>Oh I'm aware :) also this beauty from SGI is now around again:<p><a href="https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/</a>
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE</a>
QNX is owned by Blackberry?! Blackberry still exists?
$100M+ last quarter, split between QNX and endpoint device software, <a href="https://www.panabee.com/news/blackberry-earnings-q3-2025" rel="nofollow">https://www.panabee.com/news/blackberry-earnings-q3-2025</a><p>275M cars with QNX, <a href="https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2025/12/19/blackberry-qnx-embedded-technology-now-powering-more-than-275-million-vehicles-on-the-road/97725/" rel="nofollow">https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2025/12/19/blackberry-...</a><p>AI/robotics, <a href="https://qnx.software/en/industries/robotics" rel="nofollow">https://qnx.software/en/industries/robotics</a>
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.<p>Some comments mentioning QNX can run Swift code makes me think of it could also run iPhone apps.<p>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.
> QNX can run Swift code makes me think of it could also run iPhone apps.<p>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.
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.
Swift != SwiftUI. You need the latter to run modern iOS apps written in Swift.<p>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.<p>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.
Oddly Swift appears to support QNX but there’s not much information about it.<p><a href="https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-testing/issues/868" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-testing/issues/868</a>
Is GTK their go to GUI toolkit nowadays? (mentioned in the examples)
If you want to fall for the QNX bait and switch a 3rd time, more fool you.
PREEMPT_RT, Toyota's IVI shell for flutter and the AGL efforts has made qnx compete again
Wow, this could be quite useful for poking at the head unit in my car. It's also running QNX.
What compositor is being used?
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.<p>I know it's a microkernel which is inherently cool to me, but I don't know what else it buys you.<p>Can anyone here give me a high-level overview of why QNX is cool?
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.
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.<p>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.<p>QNX is also used for non-UI components, just as a good realtime OS.
Totally miss this.
We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of relying on QEMU(on Ubuntu).<p>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.<p>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.<p>But hey, Wayland! On QNX! With XFCE on top of that! Who would have thought?<p>What about photonic Plasma instead of some <i>G</i>eneric <i>T</i>ool<i>K</i>it?
> We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of relying on QEMU(on Ubuntu).<p>They do list "A native Desktop image on Raspberry Pi" under What's Next, so hopefully soon:)<p>> 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.<p>Yeah, that gives me pause too. There was some noise earlier about open sourcing it; I do wish they'd actually do that.
> We'll see if it reaches bare metal some time, instead of relying on QEMU<p>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.
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.<p>And stopped.
QNX is running on bare metal in a lot of cars.
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.
Out of curiosity, do you mean Linux on bare metal, or Linux on top of QVM?<p>The latter is actually a common setup, used by Mercedes-Benz and Hangsheng if I'm not mistaken.
Linux now supports real time too, even mainline. And there are open source RTOSes for smaller chips and critical applications like FreeRTOS.
QnX is expensive for commercial use, that's most likely the driver for this.
Bare metal! So, if you just give it enough time, it will run on Rust?
QT is supported too, and actually upstream!<p><a href="https://hackaday.com/2017/05/03/your-next-desktop-qnx/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2017/05/03/your-next-desktop-qnx/</a><p>Granted, this is not the full Plasma shell, but you can run a lot of KDE software on it just fine.
which 'gaming' distro is that out of curiousity?
CachyOS.<p>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.<p>Edit:<p>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 <i>does</i> 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 <i>that</i> brings the systems to their limits, spinning up the fan <i>hard</i>, and going allcore 3.1GHz :-)<p>Feels like BBSsing in the days of analog modems :-)<p>(Because 'thinking' for minutes, and answers trickle in like text at 300 to 1200 baud, or so)<p>But still, while doing so, music from YT doodling on, even whith EasyEffects, no scratches, klicks, distortions, whatever.<p>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...<p>It's all just flowing very smoothly.<p>Bliss.<p>Because it just works.<p>(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.)<p>Editoftheedit:<p>Oh! Did I mention suspend to RAM and wakeup is working perfectly?
Every single time! The same goes for Wake on LAN, or netbooting.<p>(cackling madly)
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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.<p>I'd agree using qnx.software rather than qnx.com is kinda dumb though.
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.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX</a>
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.<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/BB-T/pressreleases/36644071/qnx-embedded-technology-now-powering-more-than-275-million-vehicles-on-the-road/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/BB-...</a>
<i>> black screen</i><p>Try disabling content/ad blockers.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://qnx.software/scripts/global/cookie-consent.js" rel="nofollow">https://qnx.software/scripts/global/cookie-consent.js</a>
> Should I expect backdoors? Is it an elaborate front by north korea? Who will be able to remotely execute code on this operating system?<p>Stop sowing FUD <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt</a>