QNX demo disk w/ internet. Wow.

[DoctorPepper]

I recently bounced around the QNX website. I just signed up for a few 30 day trials and downloaded away. The legalize is only the RTOS QNX part is free. I am not really interested in the part they want money for anyway, I never did get to design and impliment any embedded systems. I have only played with QNX a short time, so far I haven't managed to get the networking to work on my RTL8139 or Broadcom 4306 nics. I get the strong feeling that that partition is gonna get wiped soon.

I had similar problems getting QNX to "see" my network cards. Apparently it is very much like Solaris, in that the hardware it will work with is severly limited.

Personally, I'd rather use a stripped-down version of Linux or one of the BSD's. The only real benefit to QNX is the fact that it is a RTOS (Real Time Operating System), and will perform better on older systems.

If you have an older computer you'd like to put a more modern OS on, you should look at BeOS. You can still download BeOS Max Edition (which is a tricked-out update to the BeOS PE (Personal Edition) release:

http://www.bebits.com/app/3148

Click on the download link.

If you've never used BeOS, you are in for a very pleasant surprise!

 

[earthsound]

QNX is still available for download

QNX is still available for download

Nope, QNX isn't Linux. It's a proprietary RTOS, based on the Neutrino microkernel. It has POSIX API's, which allow for quick porting of some Linux and other open source applications though.

It used to be a free download for hobbyist, but after trolling around their site for a half hour, I can't seem to find the free download link any longer.

Oh well, I guess I can't experiment with it any more.

For those interested in QNX, you will find valuable information here:

http://www.openqnx.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=259

It includes a link to a mirror hosting QNX4 Demo Disk:

http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/qnx/demodisk

enjoy!