ant@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Anthony Murdoch) (01/04/90)
[Moderators Note:- You'd never think it, but this newsgroup is about
UNIX. All future postings about QNX will be rejected. I've set the
followup to 'comp.os.misc'. This is where this thread belongs. If
the bandwidth warrants it, someone could always start the wheels
turning for 'comp.os.qnx'... - Der]
Hi Netters,
A couple of months ago, I sent out a request for info on the QNX OS
for the IBM PC. For months I got no reply, but yesterday, out of the
blue, 3 replies arrived. This is a summary of what they say.
QNX is a _real-time_, distributed OS based on message passing. This
has been its intention from the very beginning and so it doesn't
suffer from many of the problems that occur when making an existing
OS (like UNIX) distributed/real-time.
Everyone seems to agree that the concepts applied by QNX work well and
are quite fast. An example given for the usefulness of the system, was
being able to do a distributed make using 10 AT's. It seems to be a
very powerful OS, especially in cheap distributed networking.
There are a few problems pointed out to me though;
- A bad network card is apparently fatal for the entire net. I am
not sure on this point as it was my understanding that the system
did not require any network cards, working off of serial
connections. Of course it is possible to use X25 cards and it is
possible that this is what was meant.
- Because the I/O manager runs at a high priority, a user accessing
your hardware (hard-disk etc) remotely will have priority over you.
This is really severe if the remote user is polling your serial port.
There is a disagreement as to whether it is *NIX compatible. From what
I can work out, there is a fair amount of compatability, but because it
is developed with the idea of distributed processing on IBM PC's and
because of some legal probs they had at one stage with AT&T, there are
a few differences.
Also there isn't as large a user group for QNX as there is for some of
the better known systems (Xenix etc) and so there isn't as good a support
environment, nor as big a system of PD stuff available.
In conclusion, it seems to me that the value of QNX as a substitute or
alternative for other PC *NIX systems (Xenix, Venix etc) depends on what
you are planning to do with it. If you do intend to set up some kind of
network, then Xenix is probably no going to give you very much and QNX
is certainly worth looking at. On the other hand, if you are looking at
a single user/single machine situation, then QNX would probably be wasted
on you.
I plan to contact Quantum in the near future, to ask for more information,
especially details like distributors in OZ. If anyone else has done this,
then please post your findings to the net, as I will when I get further
details.
Usual disclaimers ;
I do not work for Quantum,
These are a combo of here-say and my opinions,
These are not the opinions of CS-UofQ.
etc,
etc.
ant
| \o/ Anthony Murdoch ant@batserver.cs.uq.oz
| -O- ant Dept of Computer Science "It's great to be young and insane"
| /0\ University of Queensland - Dream Team