QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall Reaction to the New QNX Desktop

  • Many are surprised to see a full QNX desktop again, especially with Wayland and XFCE.
  • Enthusiasm from people nostalgic for QNX/BB10 and those interested in modern tooling on a microkernel RTOS.
  • Some see it mainly as a demo / dev environment rather than a serious desktop OS competitor.

Bare Metal vs Virtualized Environment

  • Current release runs under QEMU on Ubuntu; several commenters want a native, bare‑metal image.
  • Roadmap mentions a Raspberry Pi desktop image and bare-metal support in the short term.
  • Experienced users note that QNX has long supported bare-metal deployment via board support packages; the VM image is aimed at people who think of the UI as “the OS.”

Licensing History and Trust Concerns

  • Strong skepticism due to repeated past “bait and switch”: hobbyist / non-commercial licenses and partial source access were granted and then revoked, sometimes abruptly.
  • View that this destroyed the community, stalled open‑source ports, and pushed developers away.
  • Suggestions that QNX needs a stable, Unreal‑style revenue-sharing license and a contractual commitment not to yank access.
  • Some argue it’s wiser now to invest in open alternatives (Linux RT, Redox) given this track record.

Automotive Use and Linux Competition

  • QNX widely used in cars, both bare metal and virtualized; some OEMs reportedly moving to Linux, especially in China.
  • Reasons cited for switching: QNX commercial cost, Linux now having mainline real-time patches, existence of open RTOSes for smaller/critical systems.
  • Counterpoint: PREEMPT_RT is still soft real time and AGL hasn’t yet produced certifiable safety systems; OEMs sometimes “come back” to QNX after failed Linux experiments.

Technical Merits of QNX

  • Praised as a “true” microkernel with hard real-time guarantees, O(1) messaging/scheduling (historically), and very small footprint.
  • Kernel services run as processes; drivers are sandboxed so failures don’t take down the system.
  • Reported decade‑long uptimes on deployed devices without reboots.
  • Network‑transparent IPC (Qnet) was a standout feature, but its removal in 8.0 is widely criticized.

UI Stack and Tooling

  • Strong nostalgia for the Photon microGUI and its robustness (e.g., restarting the GUI without killing apps).
  • Disappointment that the new desktop uses Wayland/Weston + XFCE/GTK instead of Photon or full KDE Plasma.
  • Qt is supported and upstream; much KDE software can run on QNX.
  • Weston is confirmed as the compositor in this release.

Ecosystem, Languages, and Phones

  • Rust and Swift are supported as languages, but commenters stress this does not imply iOS app compatibility.
  • QNX’s role in BlackBerry 10 and older QNX demo disks (single‑floppy GUI + browser) inspire considerable nostalgia.
  • Some are hopeful QNX could again power secure mobile or embedded devices; others think mismanagement and closed development have limited that potential.