QNX
 | This article is a work in progress. …well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editors’ notes. |
| QNX-tan | |
| [[File:|250px]] | |
| Character Information | |
|---|---|
| Common Names | QNX-tan |
| Other Names | QNX Neutrino |
| Human Name(s) | Quinn X. Dodge |
| Faction | Anti$oft Coalition |
| Lineage | independent (influenced by, but not descended from Unix) |
| Rival(s) | OS-9, ROMDOS, Windows CE (competitors among embedded OSes), the Linux Unix Consortium. |
| Appearance | |
| Height | 168 cm (5'6") |
| Hair Color | cyan |
| Eye Color | yellow |
| Weapon(s) | Photon beam cannon |
| Design | |
| First Appearance | Sep 2006 |
| Technical Information | |
| System Personified | QNX |
| Developer(s) | QNX Software Systems, RIM (since 2010) |
| Debut | 1982 (QNX), 2001 (QNX Neutrino) |
| Latest release | v7.0 (March 2017) |
Technical details
QNX (now known as QNX Neutrino) is a full-featured, minimalist real-time OS that is widely used in embedded systems. It is highly stable, and is used in automobiles, industrial applications, medical electronics, and nuclear power plants.
QNX Software Systems was bought by Harmon Kardon in 2004, and QNX became freeware with source code available in 2007, but it became restricted again when QNX Software Systems was bought by BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) in 2010. BlackBerry has used QNX as the basis of its OSes for the BlackBerry PlayBook, and their line of smartphones that were released between January 2013 and April 2015.
Character details
General
QNX-tan is represented as cyan-haired woman who dresses in semi-formal attire. She wears buttoned shirts with a lab coat and tie, and the tie always has an even number of tie clips on them, since she prefers to count only in even numbers. Her tendency for everything to be even and symmetric references the numbering scheme of QNX, which is now at version 7, but remained at version 6 for several years, and skipped versions 3 and 5. In her hair, she wears a hair clip on each side, one "QNX"-shaped, the other in the shape of the Neutrino logo.
She is very level-headed, difficult to faze, values minimalism and efficiency, and does not tolerate error from years of experience running mission-critical jobs. She is a mechanic, and likes working with cars, owing the QNX's widespread use as an embedded OS in car systems.
Among her fields of experience are mechanical work, nuclear physics, medicine, and medical technology. Her professional attitude even extends into her daily life out of force-of-habit; she is emotionally distant and somewhat reclusive because of all the responsibilities she has. When she interacts with others, she is polite and agreeable, but often does not talk with others for long; as a real-time OS-tan, she will drop the conversation when another job needs her attention.
Contrasting with her expertise in various fields of science and engineering, she is terrible at domestic tasks, and her attempts at cooking often turn into dangerous "science experiments".
QNX-tan is one of the most powerful OS-tans alive, since QNX is the most powerful and widely-used embedded OS. That gives her a tremendous hardware base to draw power from, which includes the nuclear power plants powered by QNX, but she is reluctant to use that power and willingly squanders it since she already has several responsibilities, and is afraid of getting corrupted by it.
Her weapon of choice is a photon cannon that she built herself.
Family and relationships
Unix Family
She is overall ambivalent towards the Unix Family, and has had a love-hate attitude towards them ever since her early life. From the beginning she admired Unix's philosophies and strived to be just like her. As she learned more about Unix as a person and her family, she grew disillusioned, noticing that Unix strayed far from her ideals, the hypocrisy of her daughters, and their in-fighting. The Unix Wars further disillusioned her.
During the Unix Wars, she was drafted to fight and serve as a medic, but was mistreated and discriminated against by the full-blooded Unices who considered her inferior for being 'just' a Unix-like and not a full-blooded Unix OS-tan. For years, she had grown to despise most of them except for their defectors. Allegedly, she intentionally neglected Solaris-tan's very sickly younger sister Spring OS-tan, whom Solaris trusted her with, and left her to die.
Years have passed, and she doesn't hate them anymore. Some of them might now respect her for the power and influence she gained after the wars, though they might not admit it outright because of their strict family structure that privileges Unix OSes that meet the Single Unix Specification.
Anti$oft Coalition
She is a part-time member of the Anti$oft Coalition. She does not personally have a vendetta against the Windows-tans, but joined because she became friends with OS/2-tan and RISC OS-tan back when they were founding the faction, combined with her sympathy for fellow underdogs, and continues to be supportive of them despite their continuing bad track record as a group. She is willing to join in their tactics, because she feels it is one the only times she can drop her professionalism.
TRS-DOS-tan is slightly antagonistic of her, annoyed that QNX-tan keeps showing off new pieces of technology.
BlackBerry-tan
BlackBerry-tan became QNX-tan's boss in 2010 and urged her to enter the mobile market. QNX-tan shows some discontent towards her, since her venture into the mobile market under BlackBerry's orders went poorly. However, she is grateful that Blackberry-tan still grants her some autonomy, referencing the QNX communities that were allowed to continue since then.
Others
After a short stint with an open source model (though there were restrictions on commercial uses), she left open sorcery to be completely proprietary again, some of the open source OS-tans see her as a traitor.
OSC Notes
In the Annex Project continuity, QNX-tan joined the Anti$oft Coalition. Unlike its founder, OS/2-tan, she does not personally dislike the Windows-tans, although she dislikes the practices the Windows Family employed in the 90's. She was frustrated over being phased out of the education market, but she was more severely affected by her time having to serve in the Unix Wars, which happened afterwards.
History and background
Early years
QNX-tan was idealistic at first. She quickly gained a positive reputation for her stability and reliability. In 1984, she had her first major assignment in the Canadian education market as the OS for the Unisys ICON, which she served for several years, though she would face competition against MS-DOS-tan, Apple II-tan, and the Mac-tans. Through the late 1980's and early 1990's, her idealism faded as she was phased out of the market as later ICON machines would run MS-DOS or Windows, and because of the Unix Wars.
She was drafted into the Unix Wars as a medic in 1988, because she was phased out of her original market and no longer had that job to exempt her from being drafted.
Unix Wars
As a medic, she had an important role, but it was uncertain if she was recruited to any particular side in the war. However, most of the Unix-tans, more so the higher-ranked in the hierarchy, looked down on her for being a Unix-like and not a full-blooded Unix OS. She resented them for it, but took her duties seriously.
She was unable to save Xenix-tan's life, but did not know at the time that Xenix-tan's death was the result of sabotage. If she knew, this would have furthered her dislike for the Unix Family.
She was assigned to look after Solaris-tan's sickly younger sister SpringOS-tan, but was still not trusted. When SpringOS-tan died from her illness, QNX-tan was falsely accused by Solaris-tan and many others in the Unix Family of killing SpringOS-tan through withholding medical care.
After the Unix Wars
After the Unix Wars, she felt jaded and hopeless, had no job, and had to start over. Her talents for efficiency were recognized by the late 1990's, owing to the success of the QNX 4 demo disk, which fit a full-featured version of QNX on a 1.44 MB floppy disk, when it was thought to be impossible.
She found success in the embedded OS market, and operating industrial machinery, medical devices, automobiles. She later also became a nuclear physicist, and operated power plants. Despite her newly-found success, she joined the Anti$oft Coalition after one of their recruitment drives. She saw that OS/2-tan and RISC OS-tan had a great amount of talent that they were not able to fulfill, but her own frustration over being unable to return to the desktop market may have also influenced her decision.
In 2010, corresponding with BlackBerry buying out QNX, Blackberry-tan became her boss. QNX-tan gave up on open sorcery to be a fully-commercial OS again, but still acknowledges her hobbyist followers.
Entering the mobile market, she and Blackberry-tan were competing against Windows Mobile, iOS and Android. Their ventures have not been very successful, but have been competing throughout the 2010's. However, with support for the BlackBerry 10 phones being dropped after 2019, and BlackBerry phones released after 2015 running Android OS, she does not expect to be able to compete in the mobile market for much longer.
In her spare time, when Blackberry-tan does not need her, QNX-tan continues her various engineering work. QNX continues to be widely used in automobiles, so she is confident that she will still have a role she can fulfill.