Comment by jacquesm
5 years ago
Meanwhile, the world runs on QnX. The fact that you don't realize it and don't see it is testimony to its success.
5 years ago
Meanwhile, the world runs on QnX. The fact that you don't realize it and don't see it is testimony to its success.
I know that QnX is widespread, but far more devices run Android than QnX. It's a bit of a philosophical debate whether the software that runs most smartphones "runs the world" more or less than the stuff covered by QnX, but I'd say that's its a bit of a stretch to just give the win to QnX :)
But you're right, QnX is the one (probably the only?) micro-kernel that has seen widespread adoption. Almost all of it has been in the context of embedded systems, which doesn't invalidate the substantial success, but it does leave QnX as the exception that proves the rule. It also leaves QnX as yet another example of the general failure of microkernels as general purpose computing platforms. QnX design is excellent for the contexts where it is deployed, but there's a reason you don't run it on PCs, tablets, data crunchers, smartphones and many other sorts of computing contexts.
Lots of devices run on Android but that's because there isn't a valid alternative. QnX and it's brethren are used where failure is not an option.
I used it daily on my PC for years and it was hands down the best environment I've used with distance (mostly compared to IRIX, Windows and Linux). Super responsive, never locks up, no weird delays it just works, 24x7, year after year. The whole throughput argument never worked anyway, that was just Linus talking about something that he didn't have direct experience with, it's latency that is far more important than raw throughput in interactive computing because interactive computing is a real time task.