QNX Neutrino 6.1 (2001) (part 1 - intro) - widely successful but underappreciated outside embedded

QNX is one of the earliest and most successful microkernel-based OSes, dating back to the early 80s. It has been deployed in a wide range of embedded systems of various types, and up until 2014 it was possible to run it as a desktop OS. It has several enhancements over conventional Unices, and was even said to outperform System V on many benchmarks back in the early 90s. Despite this, only a few OSes have had any significant architectural influence from it, all of which are either incomplete or abandoned, and many people are under the false impression that microkernel OSes are inherently slow.

Today I will be reviewing QNX Neutrino 6.1.0, which I consider to be the height of QNX as a desktop OS. I will be running the PC version on QEMU.

This is the first part in which I talk about QNX's history and architecture. The second part in which I give a tour of the installers and a running system is at    • QNX Neutrino 6.1 (2001) (part 2 - tou...  

(a transcript of this video in blog form is available at https://andreww591.blogspot.com/2024/...)

Developer: QNX Software Systems (later acquired by BlackBerry)
Release date: 2001
Family: Unix-like
Functional Unix
QNX
Kernel type: Microkernel (QNX/L4-type)
Platforms supported: ARM32, POWER, MIPS, SuperH, x86-32
License: Proprietary
Written in: C


Paper from 1992 where QNX beat System V/386 on some benchmarks: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~voelker/cse2...
FOSDEM presentation on UX/RT, the QNX-like OS I am writing:    • UX/RT introduction from FOSDEM 2022  
Microkernel OS history/introduction:    • Microkernel OS history and introduction  
Introduction to the history and classification of Unix-like OSes:    • History and classification of the Uni...  
UX/RT GitLab project: https://gitlab.com/uxrt