“This zippy derivative of the UNIX operating system could make
development of Web appliance hardware cheap and easy”
“One of the easiest ways for a company to boost its stock lately
has been to mention that it has some association with the Linux
operating system. The wild ride enjoyed by Linux-related stocks is
based on speculation that the free operating system will find wide
use in a brace of new Web appliances just beginning to hit the
market…”
“Linux, however, has a rival in this burgeoning line of
business. It’s called QNX, and it comes from privately held QNX
Software Systems Ltd. (www.qnx.com) of Kanata, Ont. Like Linux,
QNX is a derivative of the UNIX operating system developed in the
1970s by what was then AT&T Bell Labs. But where Linux was
designed to run on standard PC hardware, QNX is what’s known as a
real-time operating system: super-fast and small enough to be
embedded in devices on a computer memory chip.“