QNX is pronounced like "queue nicks".

The simple answer is that QNX is a realtime, microkernel, preemptive, prioritized, message passing, network distributed, multitasking, multiuser, fault tolerant operating system.

QNX was originally created by Dan Dodge and Gordon Bell in 1980 and ran on prototype, wire-wrapped 8088 and 6809 machines. The QNX community benefits tremendously from the fact that Dan and Gord still play an active role in the development and coding of the QNX operating system.

The OS was originally called Qunix, "Quick UNIX", until they received a polite letter from AT&T's lawyers asking that they change the name.

One of the first high-volume applications for QNX was as the enabling technology in AES dedicated word-processing machines to provide networked file servers. QNX was also used in the ICON machines that were destined for classrooms in Ontario schools.

Today QNX is used for everything from medical instrumentation to nuclear reactor monitoring, to traffic light control, to brewing beer. You probably use QNX several times a day without being aware of it.

The current version of QNX is 6, though QNX 2 and QNX 4 are still being used by many companies. QNX 6 is also known as QNX Real Time Platform (QNX RTP), which is built on the Neutrino (NTO) microkernel technology.

QNX 6.2, the latest release of QNX 6, also comes with a new name: QNX Momentics. Momentics comes with three flavors: None Commercial (NC), Standard Edition (SE) and Professional Edition (PE).

More information about old QNX2/QNX4 can be found from those two FAQs:
http://schoenbrun.com/~mba/faq.htm
http://www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/qnx4.html.
There is also a Neutrino FAQ: http://www.parse.com/free/neutrino-faq.html.

QSSL is an abbreviation for "QNX Software Systems, Limited". QSSL is the company that produces the QNX operating system and provides technical support to the QNX community. They were previously known as "Quantum Software Systems, Limited", and as a result many old-time QNX users will still occasionally refer to them as "Quantum". The name change was made because there are so many companies called "Quantum Something-or-other". They seem to get referred to as QSSL most frequently as it works for both the old and new company names.

In the old days of QNX2 and QNX4, the answer was "call your sales rep". Even the first couple releases of QNX6 didn't change that answer. The good news is, with the latest QNX 6.2 Momentics, QSSL published the prices on their web site:
- NC "Non-Commercial" - free for download
- SE "Standard Edition" - $4,295 US
- PE "Professional Edition" - $8,695 US

(Mitchell's QNX4 FAQ @ http://schoenbrun.com/~mba/faq.htm seems to have listed the unofficial prices for the QNX4 and its various components).

You bet! Most QNX'ers hang out in the IRC channel #qnx.

Servers:
irc.freenode.net

QNX Channels:
#qnx - Main QNX irc channel, talk about everything and nothing
#eqip - Talk about QNX on Handhelds.
#qnxzone - Talk about development of the QNXZone.com website.
#ru.qnx - Just like #qnx, but in russian!

Depending on what information you are looking for, you should be able to find lots of sites in the "WebLink" section at http://www.openqnx.com: Click here to go there directly.

Both of them can be used for non-commercial use. In 6.1.0, there is no difference between the commercial and non-commercial version, while in 6.2, QSS separated the product into commercial (PE/SE) and non-commercial (NC) versions. This means you can have full QNX tools and platform support with 6.1. But QNX 6.2NC only supports x86 and arm, and also misses some components that are only available in the commercial edition.

With the release of QNX 6.2.1, QNX breaks the old 48 characters limit in filenames.
To active the long filename support for a particular QNX partition, you need to
touch /mnt/point/.longfilenames
chmod 444 /mnt/point/.longfilenames
chown root:root /mnt/point/.longfilenames
If you only have one QNX partition, which is mounted as /, you can just
touch /.longfilenames
chmod 444 /.longfilenames
chown root:root /.longfilenames

You will need to umount and mount the partition again before it can take effect. It usually means a reboot, especially if you are working on the root partition.

If you create a new QNX partition, you can use the -N option with dinit, and this will create the new QNX filesystem with the long filename support.