from Hacker News

The QNX Operating System

by BirAdam on 10/5/25, 2:47 PM with 142 comments

by faluzure on 10/5/25, 7:37 PM
I had some fun history with this OS.
First, we had ICON computers in my elementary school, we'd all try to spin the trackball as quickly as it would go. Not sure if we ever broke one.
The second is when I worked at BlackBerry. I was building a feature that allowed you to use your QNX BlackBerry as a Bluetooth HID device. You could connect it to any device and use the trackpad + physical keyboard to remotely control a computer. It was fantastic. You could hook your laptop up to a project and control slides from your BlackBerry.
Then some product manager with questionable decision making told me to lock it down so it would only work with Blackberry Playbooks for "business purposes", rendering it effectively useless (since Playbooks are all ewaste). I distinctly remember that meeting where Dan Dodge argued that since it's a standard, it should not be locked down.
I respect Dan Dodge for that, I don't think I'd work with that PM again.
by taviso on 10/6/25, 12:26 AM
I really liked the QNX Photon aesthetic, for a long time I maintained an absurdly complex FVWM configuration designed to look like it.
This was a screenshot of my Gentoo desktop around 2004!
https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/img/fvwm_desktop.jpg
by travisgriggs on 10/5/25, 10:51 PM
I loved the idea of QNX. Got way excited about it. We were moving our optical food processor from dedicated DSPs to general purpose hardware, using 1394 (FireWire). The process isolation was awesome. The overhead of moving data through messages, not so much. In the end, we paid someone $2K to contribute isochronous mode/dma to the Linux 1394 driver and went our way with RT extensions.
It was a powerful lesson (amongst others) in what I came to call “the Law of Conservation of Ugly”. In many software problems, there’s a part that just is never going to feel elegant. You can make one part of the system elegant, which often causes the inelegance surface elsewhere in the system.
by jasoneckert on 10/6/25, 2:40 AM
The ICON picture in this blog post is of my ICON and taken from my blog (with credit, which is a nice gesture). If anyone is interested in reading my two posts about the Burroughs ICON computer running QNX, here are the links (the first post has YouTube links of my QNX demos):
https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/icon-computer/
https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/lexicon-computer/
by _joel on 10/5/25, 6:38 PM
Probably about 1996(?) remember getting this on a floppy disk, full RTOS GUI with a networking stack, wondering how they could do that with such a small footprint. For reference I recall having to write stacks of disk set floppies for Slackware basic install, let alone Windows 95 :)
by Theodores on 10/5/25, 8:07 PM
I had to use QNX for realtime applications in the late 1990s before the Pentium came along. Windows, Linux and existing UNIX flavours were not an option as none of them could do the realtime thing in quite the same way that QNX could. That was the strength of the OS and I am glad I knew this before reading the article.
What I also liked about QNX was the petite size. If I remember correctly it came on one floppy disk, and that included a GUI, not that you need a GUI with QNX since the product will be an embedded system of sorts. All of the documentation was clear and, even if you had not read the manual, the overlap with UNIX meant that the system was far from intimidating as most of the commands that I knew would work fine, albeit with different options to commands.
I had not fully realised how QNX had gone from strength to strength in automotive, and I didn't even know Harmon owned them for a while.
Given that we have gone from single core, 32 bit 386/486 to today's sophisticated SOCs that are thousands of times more capable, the question has to be asked, how important is QNX's superpower of realtime goodness, particularly if it is just for automotive applications such as turning on the A/C?
Surely a modern CPU that goes so much faster can do a better job without having to care about realtime performance? Or maybe Android Auto and Automotive Linux have those bases covered? Regardless, I am sure that if you want realtime embedded applications then you hire the guys that know QNX and reject those that haven't a clue.
by heja2009 on 10/6/25, 8:25 AM
I worked with QNX 4 at uni and we built a robot system based on 2-4 networked 486/Pentium CPU cards in a rack with it [1]. We fully used the OS to make our robot system both hard real-time and completely network based using QNX's native capabilities. This gave me a deep understanding of those issues in my later career in robotics systems and I basically recreated - tediously - most of its features with UDP, TCP/IP and various IPC (inter process communication) features on vxWorks, SunOS and Linux.
One feature of the OS I fondly remember was that the most basic system calls (send/receive/reply) were implemented as about 3 inline assembler instructions each directly in the header file (qnx.h ?).
[1] https://herbert-janssen.de/paper/irini97-12.pdf
by WillAdams on 10/5/25, 6:31 PM
For folks who want to experiment and have a spare rPi:
https://carleton.ca/rcs/qnx/installing-qnx-on-raspberry-pi-4...
by kragen on 10/6/25, 1:12 AM
> Don't misunderstand us. We at Quantum have a great deal of respect for Unix. It was a major force in moving operating systems out of the 60's and into the 70's. QNX however, was designed in the 80's and will be a driving force of the 90's. Over 20,000 systems have been sold since 1982.
Things they weren't anticipating included GNU, the internet, Microsoft Windows, third-party development, the Windows applications barrier to entry, the World-Wide Web, shareware, BBSes, VARs, and the free-software movement. They didn't understand how operating systems were a winner-take-all game, so pricing your OS at hundreds of dollars was a losing strategy.
But it was 01986, so who could blame them? Their 01987 ad does try to reach out to VARs.
Still, they were certainly aware of Unix, and you'd think that would mean they were aware of uucp. They just didn't anticipate its significance. Again, though, who did?
They also don't seem to have appreciated the importance of GUIs until version 2.0 in 01987, despite the popularity of the Macintosh, the "Jackintosh" Atari ST, and GEOS on the C64. The article says that the "Photon" GUI everyone remembers wasn't until QNX 4.1 in 01994.
by brynet on 10/5/25, 10:05 PM
I used ICONs in school growing up in Ontario, Canada, they were so cool. It was a sad day when Windows PCs replaced them in the computer lab.
All but a few of these computers were destroyed by the ministry of education. And without the LEXICON server that accompanied them, they're basically useless.
For a bit of fun, I ran the DOOM shareware demo using the official QNX4 port on a 486SX with 8M of ram.
https://brynet.ca/video-qnxdoom.html
I picked up QNX6 again as a hobbyist later in life... until self-hosted QNX was killed, no bootable .ISOs after 6.5. Then they killed the hobbyist license, killed the Photon desktop GUI, dropped any native toolchain support in place of a Windows/Linux-hosted IDE. Porting software became difficult, pkgsrc no longer maintained.
They are completely noncommittal as a company, nothing short of actually open-sourcing it under the MIT/BSD would convince me to use it again.. and not another source-available effort that they inevitably rug pull again.
https://www.osnews.com/story/23565/qnx6-is-closed-source-onc...
by Rochus on 10/5/25, 7:44 PM
Nice article, interesting read.
The Neutrino 6.4 version, which was made accessible as "openQNX" to the public, can still be downloaded from e.g. https://github.com/vocho/openqnx.
Here is an AI generated documentation of the source: https://deepwiki.com/vocho/openqnx
by ahartmetz on 10/5/25, 6:55 PM
QNX is a really cool OS (it's fast AND elegant AND extremely reliable) and QNX dude Dan Dodge gave the only conference keynote so far that I greatly enjoyed. It was basically fun stories from over 30 years (at the time) of OS development. It's sad to see QNX use, apparently, decline.
by yangosoft on 10/5/25, 7:04 PM
This series are quite interesting to understand and play with QNX 8.0
https://devblog.qnx.com/tag/from-the-board-up-series/
by Quessy on 10/6/25, 7:38 AM
I worked at QNX twice as a softwarte engineering intern during my college days in 2019 and 2021 on their OS security features and testing. Can say it was an unforgettable experience and I learned a lot there. The senior devs there are amazing.
by 51Cards on 10/5/25, 7:07 PM
What a great summary. I was reminded of QNX through the Blackberry acquisition but I had forgotten it's history went back so far. (I should have remembered, I was around in those early PC days) With so many things these days having an operating system running them (including the mentioned cars, rockets and robots) QNX seems to have a bright future ahead doing what it does best, being the solid core to build upon.
by CalChris on 10/5/25, 7:51 PM
This is not the same Gordon Bell as the early DEC programmer and later VP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Bell
by Aldipower on 10/6/25, 1:25 PM
Around 2002 I found out that I could access my cable modem via telnet. And guess what, a QNX ran on this modem. Exciting times.
by jacquesm on 10/5/25, 8:32 PM
Interesting to see this a couple of days after my post. I wonder if there is any link, but in case there isn't: QNX is well worth studying, it is in so many ways an OS done right.
by gmueckl on 10/5/25, 6:36 PM
It's somewhat refreshing to see this OS going strong in 2024. I briefly used it for some ill fated project around 2008 and that's when I learned to appreciate its design and well written documentation (including a warning that a timer would overflow after 400-odd years of continous uptime).
by Lammy on 10/5/25, 9:20 PM
QNX 6 was the first non-Microsoft non-Apple OS I ever used, even before Linux, and after trying and failing to pirate OS/2 Warp 4. It came on the Maximum CD with the March 2001 issue of Maximum PC alongside the “Alt OS” article in the same issue: https://books.google.com/books?id=yAEAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT53&dq=%...
So much '90s anime in those screenshots — super nostalgic!
by aclark on 10/5/25, 10:03 PM
I used QNX in the 2000s at NIH to run experiments! We eventually replaced it with Linux and Windows and dedicated "experiment" hardware to handle the "real time" needs.
by michaelw on 10/5/25, 9:53 PM
Oh this brings back some fun memories. I worked with QNX for the ICON computer at Cemcorp and ESP Educational Software Products.
The OS was so clean but it lacked a lot of basic tooling. Back then there was no GUI or even a graphics library. We had to build or port a lot of things, including a VCS, from scratch. My editor of choice was JOVE (I couldn't get Emacs to build). I remember digging up various papers on graphics and creating our first graphics library.
by pjmlp on 10/6/25, 8:38 AM
Still have the 1990's demo distribution somewhere on my folks place tucked away in a box.
It was great experience, especially for those of us that appreciate microkernels.
by dvratil on 10/5/25, 7:26 PM
I was involved in porting some software to Qt back when Photon was deprecated, and I always found the system very interesting. This is the first time I'm actually learning more about its history. Thanks for the great read.
I was also a huge fan of BlackBerry phones (having used Q5 and Z10 as daily drivers). The system was solid and had some really cool ideas. Too bad it didn't work out...
by leakycap on 10/5/25, 11:06 PM
Until recently, QNX was the OS used for the infotainment/head units in VW/Audi including navigation, voice interaction, etc.
by kotaKat on 10/5/25, 6:38 PM
Who else remembers hacking on QNX from the i-opener and 3com Audrey era? ;)
by cmos on 10/6/25, 1:49 PM
Used QNX for an audioserver.. got MP3 encoding and playback ported to it. Visited the headquarters and Dan Dodge instructed his team to help us in any way we needed it.
We needed the help. Thank you Dan!! We eventually ported to linux about 6 years later, but you helped our startup get up and going.
by christkv on 10/6/25, 5:29 AM
Man I still remember booting up the 1.44 MB disk image demo and being amazed how well it worked at the time.
by varispeed on 10/5/25, 8:23 PM
I had shareware floppy of QNX. I still remember how I admired it, but unfortunately had no use case.
by lambertsimnel on 10/6/25, 7:30 AM
I wonder whether the QNX 4.25 source code will ever be released under a FOSS license, or at least a non-commercial license that allows distribution of modified versions. If so, it might be worth running on less capable hardware for educational purposes.
by derekcheng08 on 10/6/25, 3:03 AM
What a fun blast from the past! I fondly remember real-time at Waterloo. If nothing else, it taught you how to project-manage/time-manage so you could write a project of tens of thousands of lines of code in a four month term.
by smoyer on 10/6/25, 12:14 AM
I have a couple iOpeners that I use as text terminal. Full QNX once you root them.
by hacknews20 on 10/6/25, 12:35 PM
The blackberry QNX implementation on their Tablet was rock solid, I had high hopes. That was the last time i knowingly used QNX.
by xattt on 10/6/25, 12:25 AM
VW (and others) was using QNX as the base for its infotainment UI. Snappy and responsive. Got the job done.
by jjkaczor on 10/6/25, 1:06 PM
During the 90's, I seem to recall that the "SkyTrain" light-rapid transit system in the lower-mainland (Vancouver, BC Canada) used QNX as it's RTOS.
by pjmlp on 10/6/25, 9:04 AM
Love some of the juicy pieces out of the story,
> The name QUNIX was a bit too close to the name UNIX for AT&T. The name of the system was changed to QNX in late 1982 following a Cease and Desist by AT&T.
Already not as nice as in the early days.
> While RV1 was limited to just C and x86 assembly language, the company was hard at work on BASIC, FORTRAN, and Pascal compilers that would utilize common code generators allowing for the mixed-use of languages without losing optimization.
Yet another example of previous polyglot compiler stacks attempts.
> UNIX systems come in more flavours than ice cream.
That was a fun one.
by transitorykris on 10/5/25, 9:17 PM
This Icon was a hunk of junk. The only value it provided were to the students with any sort of curiosity about how this frankensystem worked. It was only later that it was clear it took advantage of procurement processes in the most extreme sense. A pure embarrassment of technology, grifters, and government. We learned more from the PETs, Commodores, and after that the PS/2s.