QNX Support Restored For SDL3

[stormcrow]

What uses QNX anymore? I looked it up but all I got was car navigation systems which doesn't seem like much of a use for SDL. Does it have real-world uses or is this more of a hobby thing like OS/2?

Neither QNX nor OS/2 are "hobby things". QNX did have a single release geared for the hobbyist crowd around 2006?ish or so to drum up a grass roots developer base such as those that were coalescing around the new revolutionary touch screen smart phones. They were eyeing the smartphone market with a covetous eye, ultimately unsuccessfully. QNX is a common OS used in critical systems. You probably have it in your car's control systems -if you have a car- like the brakes control module, the power module (the auto's central computer which is not the infotainment system in most vehicles), the airbag system, etc. It's quietly clicking away inside train systems, aircraft, nuclear power stations, and industrial SCADA devices right this instant with almost no one noticing much like the TRON OSes (specification link) that most people have never heard of.

OS/2 is hobbyist in as far as there's a nostalgic attraction to underdog OSes that never had a mainstream desktop success but were technically interesting for their time. OS/2 was adopted and became a de facto standard platform by certain industries that still use it under a different name, "EComStation". EComStation uses IBM's OS/2 code under license so it's very much both the direct and spiritual successor to OS/2 and still in supported production use.

I have no first hand idea what SDL on QNX is used for (native touch interfaces perhaps?), but if there wasn't someone using it or interested in using it then no one would have taken the time to restore support for it. My last experience with it was back when QNX made that aborted stab at being a smart phone OS competitor with v. 6.x by releasing what they called hobbyist licenses. Before that in college in the mid 90s the lab I worked for was evaluating v. 4.x (I think) installed on PC-104 computers for experimental cosmic ray particle physics detectors. I was an undergrad writing C & FORTRAN 77 code t to read out and crunch the data acquisition hardware in the lab test environ along with being the assistant Unix admin. I pivoted my own career elsewhere when I realized my math skills would never be up to working in experimental research labs.

[Ironmask]

I'd like to see a comeback out of BlackBerry. Android and iOS are getting a little too spyware and a little too addictive. BlackBerry was a productivity first OS that got out of your way and let you use your phone as a phone without trying to hook you into all sorts of social media time wasting garbage.

You know there's an entire ecosystem of open source Android ROMs you can flash on to your device, right?
If QNX was a modern competitor it probably would be just as bad as iOS.

[Lanz]

I'd like to see a comeback out of BlackBerry. Android and iOS are getting a little too spyware and a little too addictive. BlackBerry was a productivity first OS that got out of your way and let you use your phone as a phone without trying to hook you into all sorts of social media time wasting garbage.

[Elv13]

What uses QNX anymore? I looked it up but all I got was car navigation systems which doesn't seem like much of a use for SDL. Does it have real-world uses or is this more of a hobby thing like OS/2?

To expand on Dawn point, neither are hobby at all. OS/2 is used on legacy devices that live for decades, such as manufacturing and industrial equipment. These devices cost millions are can be used for half a century with proper maintenance. You usually don't replace tooling for a production line that works. Sliced bread slicer of the 90's can be a sliced bread slicer of the 2040's. OS/2 is a better DOS than DOS and DOS is just "good" at some RT tasks. No new products use it, but products being sold today are designed in the 80's/90s and pretty much unchanged (running on stockpiled old CPUs or drop-in FPGA clones). New motherboards based on ISA slots are still being designed/produced.

QNX is certified in many industry where certification is absurdly expensive. Linux cannot be certified because it changes too much and by too many parties who don't care about mission critical use cases. QNX+Qt rules many industries. QNX hasn't been on hobbyist radar since the famous floppy demo disk. QNX/LynxOS/VxWorks are some of the most popular living OSes, their job just happen to stay invisible.

[Dawn]

What uses QNX anymore? I looked it up but all I got was car navigation systems which doesn't seem like much of a use for SDL. Does it have real-world uses or is this more of a hobby thing like OS/2?

Car IVI, medical, and defense are the big ones. I've seen QNX+SDL in the past for interface rendering, usually something where for whatever reason Qt isn't flexible enough or otherwise is not to the end user's liking.

QNX is most assuredly not a hobby thing. It's just off in the same box as LynxOS - that of "expensive embedded operating system for high-rel or hard-RT stuff" (though LynxOS skews more toward defense, QNX more toward automotive.)

[Ironmask]

What uses QNX anymore? I looked it up but all I got was car navigation systems which doesn't seem like much of a use for SDL. Does it have real-world uses or is this more of a hobby thing like OS/2?

[stiiixy]

I didn't think QNX was a target for removing support in the first place. I'm personally glad to see it still going.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: QNX Support Restored For SDL3

When SDL3 development kicked off last November for this open-source library that is widely used by cross-platform games and other software, QNX support was removed alongside other old targets. Just months later, the QNX platform support is being revived...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-QNX-Restored