I was active in the QNX community when there was the NC6.2.1 version. Now I got a new hobbyist key to freely use the 6.4 - everyone else can also get such a key. And now I’m interested in QNX again …
I wanted to ask if QNX is still used as alternative end-user system due to its POSIX/UNIX conformity and the easy way to port existing *nix applications. And is there also a new community growing as it was before?
Currently I’m checking out the pkgsrc tree and testing some applications. I’m also interested in porting some important applications for end-users.
Furthermore I think QNX got with Photon a big potential for professional GUI-applications. PhAB is also far developed so it can be used for easy and rapid application development.
I’m curious about some answers. It would be nice if a small, but nice community can be revived again but currently I cannot rate how many people are still interested.
There is Sean and some other people at QNX that have worked on getting QNX an official platform of pkgsrc which is great. Beside that the community is non existant as far as providing application. Here on the forum there is I think 5 active posters that answer most question.
My take on the issue is it`s a dead end. With QSSL not providing an IDE for self-hosted, more and more people will be going to cross development, mainly the new customer who have never experience the advantages of self-hosted.
I liked QNX but the dearth end user applications is frustrating. I battled for a long time with the mplayer port before Crank Software stepped in (Thank you!). And other projects are just as frustrating because so few people are trying to port things. So you are working alone and if you post questions, good luck. There is very little enthusiasm around these days.
Pkgsrc is great but we need an updated XPhoton (one based on Xorg would be nice) so that porting GTK and other fun stuff is a lot easier.
I’d love to see more end user applications but there are also needs to be some community support as well.
Sorry… I’m still wondering what’s an “end-user system” ? If it’s a desktop system to send mails, browse the web, and use spreadsheets, and a cute puppy sniffing your hard disk when u are looking for a file, I recommend you Windows-XP .
By end-user system I mean a system which is usable for experienced users. A developer also needs e-mail, a running browser, some music and some editors and viewers. Short: some essential tools. Not all the fancy things you got in Windows, but a self-contained set of tools to work with.
And I still think QNX has the potential, because Photons GUI is just rocking because it’s fast, compact & flexible. It has a really great API and is very extensible. And it looks nice.
Furthermore the QNX APIs like the DDKs, TDKs and general OS interfaces are “well-formed”: The develop gets a persistent way to work with internal parts of the OS but also with external devices.
mario is right, I think a self-hosted system can be a real alternative if the manufacturer stays stable (the change of license and company politics from 6.2 → 6.3 were horrible). And tools can get developed by a small community which can evolve around QNX but it needs enthusiam… that’s why I’m asking here for people who are also interested in order to see if it’s worthwhile to invest time in it. And if there are more people interested, enthusiam grows …
Anyway, many thanks for the answers. And I got some other questions
Do you think QNXs development on the part of the manufacturer will stay persistent?
Now that QNX’ old repository format (QPG) is gone, do you think pkgsrc is a good alternative? Which fundamental parts are still missing in the pkgsrc repository?
Are this forum and the #qnx IRC-channel on irc.freenode.net the only meeting points?
Don’t have much of a choice anyway For me it makes a lot of sense given, why have yet another packaging format. QNX is officially supported by pkgsrc which is a big thing IMHO
Can’t tell, all I need is vim, svn ( with https), samba and 7zip. It’s all there.
I use QNX through phindows on a Windows machine, I couldn’t care less for QNX support of media player, browser, pdf reader, printer, etc.
There is also Foundry27. But I don’t think it’s the place to talk politic, if you have a project, a concrete idea then that’s would be the place to do it.
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For me it makes a lot of sense given, why have yet another packaging format. QNX is officially supported by pkgsrc which is a big thing IMHO