Talk:QNX
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[edit] The new "Technology" section
Added "Technology" section, explaining briefly how QNX manages to have a small microkernel that's actually useful. There are two subtle design decisions that really made QNX work, but they're hidden deep in QNX technical literature and not well known. I've never seen them mentioned in academic papers on microkernels, including the literature on Mach and Minix 3, so it's nice to get them into Wikipedia. --Nagle 06:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks!
- Atlant 12:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Most successful microkernel operating system?
Isn't Mac OS X the most succesful microkernel-based OS nowadays? Can someone provide sales figures? Qwertyus 15:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
- MacOS X isn't a microkernel. It's based on an earlier version of Mach than the pure microkernel version. Underneath, it's really BSD with Mach extensions. Networking, file systems, etc. are in the MacOS kernel. The pure microkernel version of Mach was never very successful. One of the lessons of the Mach effort is that trying to take a big kernel and cut it down to a microkernel is the wrong way to go at the problem. --John Nagle 16:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Uncited performance claims
"Despite these efforts, direct comparisons between QNX being one of the fastest microkernel systems available and monolithic systems like Linux indicate that the microkernel concept cannot provide the same performance." was added by 62.214.228.219 (talk • contribs). and "QNX is addressing some of these issues by limiting the use of IRQ usage and use hardware polling where possible to decrease the number of task switches." doesn't seem quite right. Without a cite, there's an NPOV issue. Does anyone have a cite for that? --John Nagle 01:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I've just added a "citation needed" tag.--BMF81 00:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest deleting these claims, and only allow reinsertion if backup data is provided. I know at least one report that rather suggests that QNX outperforms the Linux kernel in a lot of ways, see QNX vs. RedHat Embedded Linux. This is from the QNX website (good PR as QNX wins), but written by a company called Dedicated Systems. I do not know whether they are somehow connected to Harman, but other reports from them seem rather balanced to me (e.g. the comparison between QNX, Windows CE and VxWorks, where advantages and drawbacks are listed for each OS). The second claim of this user ("even the most effective message passing cannot provide the performance to handle extreme interrupt load") is plain nonsense, as QNX is especially optimized to cope with high interrupt loads (like every RTOS), thus outperforming general-purpose operating systems by far. Comparing a general-purpose OS like Linux and an RTOS in this sector is senseless, by the way, as Linux should and does have other goals. On a side note: I use QNX for development at my university, and find its performance astounding, compared to Linux, and even to Windows XP. --Uwe Salomon, 16:58, 27 October 2006 (GMT+01)
- I deleted the whole paragraph. There has been no verification of the claims, and nobody has argued here on the talk page that those claims should stay in. 62.214.228.219 also never even specified precisely what was meant by "performance". If someone feels like rewriting the claims to better fit into the article, and can provide some reference to back them up, I for one don't have any problems with it though. -- magetoo 16:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] should QNX be part of the Ottawa project?
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This article is part of WikiProject Ottawa, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Ottawa and Canada's National Capital Region. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. |
[edit] Unix?
The "Unix-like operating system" template at the bottom of the page lists QNX as a Unix-like system. But the Infobox says "OS family: Not Applicable". Is QNX an Unix-like operating system? I am confused...
- QNX has a UNIX-like API (QNX 6 is POSIX-compliant), and most UNIX or Linux text-mode programs will work on QNX if recompiled, but underneath, the system is totally different. So that info is essentially correct. --John Nagle 16:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
