Once you’ve installed QNX, you can configure it so that it looks and feels
the way you want it to. In this article, let’s see how you can do so.
The QNX GUI is called the Photon microGUI, and its desktop is called a ‘workspace’.
All menus on this GUI are placed in what are called ‘shelves’. By default,
QNX has two shelves, and you can edit the settings of existing shelves or add
new ones. A right click on the desktop brings up the context menu that gives you
options of configuring your graphics, desktop, and shelves.
Configuring the graphics
The graphics configuration includes the resolution, color depth, and refresh
rates for the display. Specific settings for these parameters depend on the
display card and the monitor you’re using. You should also check the card’s
hardware compatibility list to see whether it is supported under QNX. Otherwise
you will end up with the default vga or ‘flat’ screen drivers, which will
have limited graphics settings. Interestingly, the graphics configuration option
in QNX tells you to run the OS at high resolutions and color depths to get a
good feel of its capabilities.
Configuring the desktop
The desktop configuration option allows you to adjust the properties of the
application windows, the desktop wallpaper, and color schemes (similar to
Windows). For the wallpaper, you can choose from the available defaults or use
other bmp, gif, jpg, or pcx files. These settings are the same as Windows, so
you shouldn’t have any trouble with them.
Configuring QNX shelves
Shelf configuration in QNX is pretty interesting. By default, QNX creates two
shelves. One can be compared to the Windows taskbar as it has a Launch button
similar to a Start button, and it lies at the bottom of the screen. The other is
located at the top right corner of the desktop and has buttons for launching
common applications. The shelf configuration option allows you to change the way
items and buttons appear in the workspace. Shelves can be made to auto-hide, and
you can also add new items to them, like time, drawers, and separators.
A drawer, as the name suggests, functions like an actual drawer; when you
click on it, it slides out. A drawer can hold multiple content in it. For
instance, you can have a drawer to house buttons to all your favorite software
and name it ‘My Stuff’.
Another interesting application that you can add to the shelves is the
monitor for CPU load and memory usage, which is quite similar to the Win NT Task
Manager. This is already in one of the shelves by default, but you can create
another shelf and add it there. You can also enable screen savers from the right
shelf. These are applied as they are in Windows. Of the many in-built savers,
phattract emerged as one of the favorites of almost everyone at PCQ Labs. You
can also password protect the screen saver. For viewing any images, the QNX RTP
package also comes with an image viewer application. This can be used to view
and do some basic editing to gif, pcx, bmp, and other images.
Now let’s look at the items in the Launch menu, which is present on the
other shelf. These are again similar to Windows or Linux KDE Start menu except
for some nice little icons next to the item names. Default program groups for
editors, multimedia, Internet, games, development, etc, house the corresponding
application links.
Multimedia time
For audio and video buffs, QNX comes with a host of multimedia features. Many
of the popular sound chips are supported and the installation had no trouble
detecting our Sound Blaster Live! sound card. There’s a Mixer application that
can be launched from the right shelf, which allows you to control both playback
and recording volumes for all sound devices and components like master, wave,
and even PC speaker. Interestingly, the QNX installation also detected our
onboard AC97 audio chip and we were even able to use a second microphone from
the AC97 input jack.
QNX Media Player handles the playback of WAV and MP3 music files. The latest
patch A adds streaming media capabilities to the player. (The patch is a part of
the release that is given on our CD.) So you can directly pass HTTP references
to the player and listen to thousands of streaming music stations around the
world. Apart from music, you can also play back MPEG video with the player. QNX
also supports direct overlay for smooth frame rates. Video playback uses Xing
MPEG decoder by default. Video CD playback is, however, not currently supported
by default.
Streaming media content cannot be complete without discussing Real Player.
RealNetworks has the Real Player 7 for the QNX platform too, which we’ve given
on the CD. Except for a full screen mode, users will find most of the features
of Windows Real Player. It also supports connections through a proxy server.
Multimedia talk is incomplete without MP3. Winamp is the most popular player
on Windows, while XMMS is the counter in Linux. XMMS has also been ported to QNX.
So you have a Winamp lookalike with similar features on your QNX machine. You
can create or modify playlists, use graphic equalizers, plugins, etc, for all
your music.
That was just part of the fun we had while working with QNX. To find out
more, install it on your machine and explore at the options.
Ashish Sharma