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To: Anthony Ettipio who wrote (7847)	6/1/2000 11:02:00 PM
From: dwayanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Hi Anthony, re your QNX vs desktop OS point: [oops, sorry Anthony, replied to your first post before reading your second. comments tacked on at end below.] I didn't know QNX can handle desktop. If Allen knows an example where QNX is used as a desktop OS, please share with us. If not, please stop associating QNX with desktop OSes with innuendos. QNX handles screen windows, graphics, mice, and UNIX-style daemon processes, plus they are distributing the GNU utilities (presumably a QNX'ized version of same). Looks like a desktop to me. See under: qnx.com Also, the new company Netpliance is putting out dedicated 'internet appliances' which do web browsing and email only, based on a hardware-modified PC. Both QNX and BSD UNIX are mentioned in Netpliance specs, which doing what is unclear. See: netpliance.com From QNX's web site at qnx.com : QNX© RTOS - QNX is a realtime, extensible POSIX-certified OS with a lean microkernel and a team of optional cooperating processes. QNX Neutrino© - QNX Neutrino is a POSIX microkernel that can be scaled to a standalone system as small as 32K or as large as 4G. (pdf version 98k) Photon microGUI© - An embeddable full-featured windowing system with an API similar to Motif and X. (pdf version 435k) and more ... I havn't mucked around with POSIX for years, but unless it's changed a lot, anything that is POSIX compliant is not mean and lean. And the "API similar to Motif and X", you don't want to know how humongous that is. As a long time UNIX jock, my read is that QNX looks like a slimmed-down version of BSD UNIX with realtime features, much as other groups are trying to produce embedded LINUX products, in order to avoid enslavement to Microsoft. If I'm right, QNX's 'advanced features' like virtual memory and processes are simply retained from the original UNIX base. - Dway Anthony, re your second post. Yes, you've picked out all the appropriate points from QNX's site that indicate that QNX is a desktop/workstation OS (their self-described QNX 'platform' is a general purpose UNIX workstation) with the ability to shrink by discarding large chunks of functionality. However, that 'microkernel' with 'scheduling, threads' etc, that's a UNIX kernel. 'Fast', 'efficient', 'small', IMO that's marketing spin words IMO.