QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

Posted by transpute 12/27/2025

QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop(devblog.qnx.com)

276 points | 169 comments

xvilka 12/27/2025|

I always liked their original UI - Photon[1][2]. Very lightweight and fast. Also a distinct and consistent style. I understand why they dropped it in favor of Qt and later Web technologies, but it's still a big loss.

[1] https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....

[2] https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/momentics_nc_docs/photon/prog...

insin 12/27/2025||

I was expecting to see that, I ended up looking up some old LiteStep themes [1][2] for my fix

[1] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/6/

[2] https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/292/

krylon 12/27/2025|||

Oooooh, that's a blast from the past! I used to use LiteStep for about 6-9 months in 2000, before I started using GNU/Linux.

At the end, I had really beautiful (to my eyes, back then) and very functional desktop, but something went wrong when I made backup before installing SuSE Linux 7.0, so months of vigorous customizing were lost. :-(

But it was fun while it lasted. There were a number of alternative desktop shells in the Windows 95/98 era.

johnisgood 12/27/2025|||

Reminds me of HaikuOS.

qwerty456127 12/27/2025|||

Indeed. QNX is the coolest OS I ever seen and Photon felt the coolest desktop environment. Although I like XFCE in the Linux context (more than e.g. GNOME), I am sad to see it replaced Photon on QNX. Photon just looked and felt so lovely and came with a visual C++ builder making GUI apps development so nice.

NuclearPM 12/28/2025||

I ever saw.

I have ever seen.

transpute 12/27/2025|||

> I understand why they dropped [Photon] in favor of Qt and later Web technologies

The arrows of time branch and spiral, so it's possible that "later" could require some properties of "earlier".

If Photon could not be open-sourced, it could be licensed to a third party for custodian maintenance. If QNX is abandoning Photon forever, would Blackberry object to Photon being cloned for Linux or FreeBSD? That could preserve a future option for QNX to use it again, like XFCE.

Enthusiasts still use Blackberry keyboards on handheld devices in 2025, which sell out in minutes. In a parallel universe, Blackberry.com offers embedded SBC developers self-service purchase and global delivery of the legendary Blackberry keyboard, with Bluetooth for convenience or USB-c for security.

prmoustache 12/27/2025|||

Yes while it makes sense to reuse stuff that is already being built, my heart sank when I saw the screenshot while expecting seeing the photon microgui which to me was the nicest skeuomorphic one.

DaeDev 12/27/2025|||

Funny thing is this got brought up to us in other circles. As a relatively new person to QNX photon seems to have a special place in people's hearts

hhh 12/27/2025||

I still see it used in manufacturing.

Quessy 12/27/2025||

Glad to see QNX still progressing. I worked there as an intern twice in Ottawa and they're pretty damn good. Great place to work imo. I met some of the kernel devs there. Had the priviledge of working with one and he taught and demoed some of the kernel features to me. They gave us interns a full summer course on kernels, C programming, OS and some hardware. Fun times.

JohnAtQNX 12/27/2025||

We still do that! In fact, the _QNX From The Board Up_ series on the developer blog is a small rip from that training content, adapted by Mr Brown. I hope we'll get all of it out there for everyone to benefit from in 2026 :)

wwweston 12/27/2025||

Sometimes I wish I could do this for mid career sabbatical.

JohnAtQNX 12/27/2025||

Well hey, we're hiring! qnx.com/careers!

ronsor 12/27/2025||

This is a major throwback to the QNX demo disk, which bundled a browser and desktop environment onto a single floppy disk!

sedatk 12/27/2025|

It was mind blowing at the time because Linux required at least 4-5 floppies to set up a text-only base system while QNX ran live from just a single 1.44MB.

fouc 12/27/2025|||

Photon microGUI was included in that, and it blew my mind that you could literally kill and restart Photon without disturbing any of the GUI apps that were still running.

They also mailed a manual along with the demo disk, and I was amazed that QNX had built-in network bonding, amongst lots of other neat features. At the the time I was using Slackware & the linux kernel version was still 1.x, I don't think bonding came to linux until 2.x?

compsciphd 12/27/2025||||

that's not really true. In 2001 I built a single disk linux installation (with a handful of popular nics supported) with X (tiny X with vesafb support) and rdesktop + vnc as a thin client on floppy.

I'd be honest and say that qnx demo disk had more usability overall than my disk, but one could easily have a usable text only linux bootable disk. Busybox and uclibc already existed back then.

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~spotter/floppy.bin (won't be that useful today due to the ethernet drivers, but it was a 1.44mb floppy)

sedatk 12/29/2025||

You’re missing my point. QNX live floppy came out in 1997. My experience with Slackware 3.x at the time was exactly like how I said it was. You needed two floppies just to boot up the kernel (they were called boot disk and root disk), so Linux setup could start.

I wasn’t claiming Linux couldn’t achieve this, merely stating why QNX was mind blowing: because it was way ahead of what was available, not what was possible.

Congrats on your live floppy project, I guess.

compsciphd 12/30/2025||

yes, I was using Linux back then too :). Linux could do it in 1997 as well. I seem to recall (but we are talking 30 years ago so memory might be faulty) of Debian having a 1 disk install for its first release of 1.1 (and pre-releases of 0.x) if one was installing it over a network. by definition then this 1 disk was a fully working linux system on a single floppy.

my conceptual floppy was less to demonstrate it fitting on a floppy (that was just the carrot), the idea was to show how one could dynamically "rewrite" shared libs to only include the symbols one needed to run the apps and have them work.

argument being, static linking a single binary is smaller than dynamically linking it and including the shared library, but as one adds binaries, the duplicated code will eliminate that size advantage. But shared libraries (especially something like glibc) are large and apps dont always use vast sections of them), so what if one could iterate over all the dynamically linked apps one wanted to include and only include the sections of the shared libs that were needed.

So the project was demonstrating that. In practice, uclibc was smaller than the sliced up glibc (and at least for this project, worked just fine)

sedatk 12/30/2025||

No Linux distro ran a live/usable system from a single floppy at the time. Netbooting obviously isn't an example of a self-contained usable live system. uclibc and Busybox you were referring to had come out years after QNX live floppy.

viraptor 12/27/2025|||

When was that? You can still run from a single floppy https://github.com/Steve3184/floppinux and some form of that was available for ages.

sedatk 12/27/2025|||

Linux was like that in 1995 (Slackware 3.1 or so). I believe QNX live was introduced in 1997.

bregma 12/27/2025||

QNX was introduced in 1980.

krylon 12/27/2025|||

Yes, but the single-floppy live system with a desktop and a browser came much later. ;-)

sedatk 12/27/2025|||

That’s why I said “QNX live”, not QNX.

fouc 12/27/2025|||

He meant with X & web browser and so on. The QNX disk had gui + browser and a few other gui apps.

sedatk 12/27/2025||

No I meant the base system. A system with X would take at least 20 floppies or so with Slackware 3. The whole setup was 80 floppies in total.

I’m sure it’s better now, it wasn’t so when QNX had come out.

fouc 12/27/2025||

Oh huh, I forgot about that. I guess I downloaded X after the base system was installed.

OsrsNeedsf2P 12/27/2025||

Did I just wake up from a coma? QNX desktop? Wayland XFCE? What is going on here

harhargange 12/27/2025|

Seems like QNX was hiding in plain sight as a car os and a mission critical os for other devices.

WillAdams 12/27/2025|||

I wish we could get it's competitor TronOS to make a similar desktop version --- the demo of it displaying multiple video windows on an 80186 was jaw-dropping --- a shame the U.S. Trade Commission quashed Japan's Ministry of Education's plans to roll it out nation-wide in schools from elementary up through graduate.

bigyabai 12/27/2025||||

There are tons of proprietary RTOS/microkernel products on the market. It's not so much hiding as it is crowded-out.

jacquesm 12/27/2025||

And none of them can hold a candle to QnX. I've used a whole raft of them and QnX stands heads and shoulders above the competition. The consistency of the implementation is extremely impressive.

undefuser 12/27/2025||

I would like to hear more about your experiences. What makes QNX better than others?

jacquesm 12/27/2025||

Show me another OS that you can undress to the kernel, a console, a file system and a disk driver and then build it all up again without missing a beat.

The kernel processes are actual processes so each of the drivers is fully sandboxed, an error in one bit of code can not cause any other processes to be affected unless you explicitly declare that it should be so (shared memory, for instance) and of course you don't do that.

The reduction of scope alone is worth at least 30 IQ points.

Absolutely rock solid. I built some specialized network devices using QnX and those things ran for a decade+ after first installation. Not a single reboot.

mycall 12/28/2025||

Is this true? [0] No CVEs since 2011?

[0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-436/...

jacquesm 12/28/2025||

If there is one thing that is testimony to the power of microkernels then it is that one. And that 2011 one was avoidable, imo.

The reduction in scope is really gold, it makes it so much easier just to have a small defined interface per program. It is a bit like Erlang/OTP but with C as the core language, the IPC is so lightweight that it becomes the driver behind all library level isolation. So what in a macrokernel would be a massive monolith with all manner of stuff in the same execution ring turns into a miniscule kernel that just does IPC and scheduling and everything else is a user process, including all of the luxuries that you normally associate with user processes: dumps, debuggers, consoles.

JohnAtQNX 12/27/2025||||

We're definitely a secret ingredient brand... hiding in products you use every day!

TacticalCoder 12/27/2025||

We're geeks: I know my car is running QNX for it's nav and audio (and certainly some other things) and, as a geek, I love it. So thank you so so very much! (it's a Porsche from 2013 btw)

IceWreck 12/27/2025||||

Blackberry OS 10 was also running QNX under the hook afaik.

blumenkraft 12/27/2025|||

And it was awesome! Very responsive.

IshKebab 12/27/2025||||

I think the market is moving to "mixed criticality" so you can use Linux for your entertainment system but then also use a proper RTOS for the car stuff all in the same SoC.

lukeh 12/28/2025||

Yup, similar for audio stuff.

johnisgood 12/27/2025|||

Just like MINIX!

wewewedxfgdf 12/27/2025||

I feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football and having Lucy pull it away.

jdub 12/27/2025|

And,

    BARTLET
    By the way, the words you are looking for are, "Oh, good grief!"

donatj 12/27/2025||

Bring back Photon. It was dang near perfect.

wowczarek 12/27/2025|

Photon was what I was hoping for before I clicked the link. One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.

Photon or not, I hated the period where they sort of moved to canned BSP deployment only, where in 6.5 I could just develop on a live system. This is nice.

Animats 12/27/2025|||

Me too, although it's been a long time since Photon.

"This environment runs as a virtual machine, using QEMU on Ubuntu. To try the image, you'll need: Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04." So it doesn't boot on bare metal?

Maybe they're trying to get away from needing Windows. The previous recommended development environment was cross-compilation from Windows.

The big news here is that they have a reasonable non-commercial license again.[1] The trouble is, QNX did that twice before, then took it away.[2] Big mistake. They lost their developer base. Support of open source tools on QNX stopped. As I once told a QNX sales rep, "Stop worrying about being pirated and worry about being ignored". They'll need to commit contractually to not yanking the non-commercial license to get much interest.

QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine. If you ship enough products using it, it gets noticed and they contact you about payments, and if you're not shipping much product, Unreal doesn't care. This has created a big pool of Unreal developers, which, in turn, induces game studios to use Unreal. Unreal's threshold is US$1 million in sales.

Apparently they opened things up a bit last year, but nobody noticed.

Usefully, there is a QNX Board Support Package for the Raspberry PI, so you can target that. QNX would be good for IOT things on Raspberry PI machines, where you don't want the bloat and attack surface of a full Linux installation.

[1] https://qnx.software/en/developers/get-started/getting-start...

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/11/qnx_8_freeware/

JohnAtQNX 12/27/2025|||

Bare metal is on the short-term roadmap!

mpweiher 12/29/2025||

Cool!

I am a little confused about it both being a virtual image running on QEMU and requiring a very specific Ubuntu version as the base OS.

Shouldn't anything that can run QEMU work?

I used to do software development back on 386 with the OS on a floppy disk and really loved it. In fact, I ported my Objective-C compiler and runtime to QNX back then. Would love to play around with it on my Mac.

Thanks!

skrebbel 12/27/2025||||

> QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine.

That sounds quite a bit harder to enforce for an OS designed to run inside, often not internet-connected, devices.

justsomehnguy 12/27/2025||

If someone would decide to run QNX (or whatever) inside, often not internet-connected, devices then some IP enforcement wouldn't stop them anyway.

skrebbel 12/27/2025||

I mean it’s a realtime OS. It’s designed for that. So the pricing model has to work with that.

xvilka 12/27/2025|||

> They lost their developer base. Support of open source tools on QNX stopped.

Right. These days it's better to invest into Redox OS[1] as a potential substitute for it (if work on real time capability). And with real time patches merged into Linux mainline[2] QNX doesn't stand much chance today too.

[1] https://doc.redox-os.org/book/microkernels.html

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-o...

dvfjsdhgfv 12/27/2025||

> And with real time patches merged into Linux mainline[2] QNX doesn't stand much chance today too.

Correct me if I'm wrong but these and other Linux patches were always about soft real time and Linux never had hard real time capability because of its architecture.

xvilka 12/27/2025||

You are absolutely right. For most applications it's good enough though, unless regulatorily enforced.

jonhohle 12/27/2025||||

It’s really sad it wasn’t open sourced. In the early 2000s I was triple booting Windows 98, BeOS, and QNX. BeOS was my favorite, but QNX Neutrino was great as well.

yjftsjthsd-h 12/27/2025|||

> One of my favourite GUIs, closely tied with CDE.

In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open source, and runs on modern unix-likes.

xvilka 12/27/2025|||

There is also a FWWM[1] "skin" that doesn't require long time abandoned C code - NsCDE[2]. It still requires X server (just like CDE itself) which becomes rarity these days. They need to port it to Wayland eventually.

[1] https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3

[2] https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

yjftsjthsd-h 12/27/2025|||

Eh, there's always https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayback/wayback for that.

lproven 12/29/2025|||

Sorry, but this line is wildly inaccurate:

> that doesn't require long time abandoned C code

https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) 2.3 Latest

on Jun 16, 2023

https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/files/

src 2025-11-25

CDE is still in active development. NsCDE is effectively abandoned.

wowczarek 12/27/2025|||

> In case you're not aware: CDE is still around, open source, and runs on modern unix-likes

Oh I'm aware :) also this beauty from SGI is now around again:

https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/

harhargange 12/27/2025||

As someone who still uses a QNX phone, the Blackberry Q10 as my second phone, I’m not just optimistic for the return of the cross-platform and secure os, I’m rooting for it. Especially for portable Linux handhelds. If Blackberry were to release a phone tomorrow, it would instantly be the most secure android phone. I still run some of my favourite android apps on my BB10os via the android translation layer.

Some comments mentioning QNX can run Swift code makes me think of it could also run iPhone apps.

While Blackberry exited the phone market, I’m surprised to know QNX is still the most popular os for cars. With 275 million devices running it atm.

f1shy 12/27/2025||

> QNX can run Swift code makes me think of it could also run iPhone apps.

Not at all. That is like saying because it can run C, it can run windows apps. To run iPhone apps you would need all the libraries and runtimes ported, including the whole GUI. Just not happening.

nicksbg 12/27/2025||

Tehnically, BB10 could run iOS apps at the beginning but, they disabled it before the release of PlayBook. Bad call.

gt0 12/27/2025|||

Swift is probably less than 1% of the what it takes to run iPhone apps, you can get Swift for Windows too, but it is nowhere near able to run iPhone apps. The problem is all the libraries an iPhone app expects to be available on the host OS, all the multimedia stuff and so on, those libraries on iPhone are large and advanced, and not available for porting to any OS outside of Apple.

PaulRobinson 12/27/2025||

Swift != SwiftUI. You need the latter to run modern iOS apps written in Swift.

It's great that Apple are pushing Swift out there a bit, but honestly if they want the World to catch fire with it, they need to give away the Crown Jewels and get SwiftUI out there as well.

Meanwhile, it's great that QNX is supporting modern languages. I can imagine having a bit of fun with this developer desktop and seeing how modern tooling plays nicely with it.

lillecarl 12/27/2025||

.NET is doing pretty good without all cross platform UI.

jecel 12/27/2025||

QNX was my operating system from 1985 to 1988. I also studied it in 2000 for a project that ended up getting cancelled.

Initially the actual implementation didn't match the conceptual framework, but by version 1.2 they had really cleaned things up.

rbanffy 12/27/2025||

I learned C on QNX (back then, it booted from a floppy on a PC/XT). It was a nice little Unix-like OS, with all the things you'd expect from a nice little Unix-like OS, plus a reputation of being rock-solid like nothing else.

I think it's a real shame Blackberry didn't manage to etch a third (or fourth - I also loved Palm's WebOS) niche for their QNX-based phones. Blackbberry 10 was an amazing mobile OS.

lproven 12/29/2025|

> Blackbberry 10 was an amazing mobile OS.

100% this. I had a Passport and it was one of the single lovelist phones I've ever had.

Compared to my Nokia 7710, the last device with the original Psion UI... that was an elegant touchscreen, plus physical buttons, and a replaceable battery, but that was about it.

Compared to my Nokia E90 Communicator...

The keyboard was even better; it charged off a standard MicroUSB port, and had a standard headphone jack; it had way more apps, because it ran Android ones pretty well.

Compared to any Android phone... Vastly unrecognisably better messaging app, with one inbox for all messages and notifications. Square screen so no fighting portrait vs. landscape. Physical keyboard for much more accurate typing -- and scrolling. Google-free.

rbanffy 12/29/2025||

> I had a Passport and it was one of the single lovelist phones I've ever had.

I would still love one, but I don't think I could move it to my own Blackberry account at this point in time.

dcmatt 12/27/2025|

QNX is owned by Blackberry?! Blackberry still exists?

transpute 12/27/2025|

$100M+ last quarter, split between QNX and endpoint device software, https://www.panabee.com/news/blackberry-earnings-q3-2025

275M cars with QNX, https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2025/12/19/blackberry-...

AI/robotics, https://qnx.software/en/industries/robotics

harhargange 12/27/2025||

Exactly. And there’s a huge community of the old Blackberry qnx device owners as well still trying to survive.

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