
HP releases more Open webOS code, including System Manager and core apps - llambda
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-releases-more-open-webos-code-including-system-manager-and-core-apps/
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plainOldText
There are so many things to love about WebOS; in some aspects it offers such a
wonderful user experience(cards, gestures - like others have mentioned,
notifications are so simple and non invasive.). Too bad it was not as widely
adopted as other mobile OSes out there. It's frustrating to build something
nice then get disappointed later when no one uses it.

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Xyzodiac
I know webOS is far from being relevant in the world of mobile operating
systems but it will always be my favorite. Open sourcing really was the right
way to go, and I applaud HP for choosing that route.

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wvenable
Open sourcing it makes it effectively a dead-end as a platform. At least
closed source it might have been worthwhile as an alternative platform for
someone. Hell, maybe RIM could have bought it and been further along than the
current Blackberry OS.

Yes, we all get pick at the pieces like buzzards now but that's not a good end
for the platform.

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lsh
Incorrect. There are now two upcoming distributions of webOS - the Community
Edition of webOS (WOCE, <http://webos-ports.org/>) which is still only
suitable for devs, and Open webOS (<http://openwebosproject.org/>) which will
appear on future HP devices. Open webOS will not be made available for
existing HP devices (like the Touchpad or Pre).

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mhd
There really is a need for some "legacy phone" OS. There soon will be plenty
of pretty powerful phones out there out of support, and something a bit low on
resources would be very useful for that. Is the hardware really that
splintered?

I've got a Pre and a Nexus One sitting around idly myself. Sure, no multiple
cores, but they're not exactly 8 bit computers without MMUs...

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lsh
I think the problem for Open webOS preventing them from backporting it to
older hardware is the proprietary drivers. There was quite a bit of
disappointment with HP when it was announced that Open webOS wouldn't be
available for the Touchpad. I can understand their reasons but it does put
more pressure on the community edition now. They are doing great things
though, so theres little doubt a stable Touchpad version will be available
soonish. I don't own a Pre but there seems to be a lot of love for it. I
personally think webOS on the Touchpad has a beautiful and elegant user
experience but is a bit of an arse to develop for so I'm going to wait until a
stable Open webOS release to seriously look at its internals.

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Scene_Cast2
I hope that some of the ideas (namely the cards view and gesture area) come to
other mobile OSs. Those are my favourite features by far.

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Zenst
One question - have they relesed enough to enable somebody to compile a full
OS that you can run or is that down the line?

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jetz
QT, really? Using a framework for a must-be-power-efficient device on a much-
slower-than-desktop cpu. I'm not a QT or C++ expert and wondering outcomes of
using QT for webOS. There is absolutely a hit on power and speed but how much?

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densh
Qt is about as low level as iOS's Objective-C runtime (both are compiled to
native code and offer semi-manual memory management.) Meanwhile Android is
based on full-blown virtual machine (Dalvik) with garbage collection.

HTML5 on the other hand is an elephant in the room. Promoting it as THE way to
write apps for WebOS was a huge mistake. It's terrible inefficiency lead to
stuttering ui and godawful memory consumption.

Also Qt has been used for graphical embedded projects for years (e.g. it
doesn't require X11 on linux and can be compiled on many different
architectures.)

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lsh
<quote>HTML5 on the other hand is an elephant in the room. Promoting it as THE
way to write apps for WebOS was a huge mistake. It's terrible inefficiency
lead to stuttering ui and godawful memory consumption.</quote>

Agreed. Applications can be written in Javascript using the Enyo framework
(Enyo 2 for Open WebOS) so you don't see much html5, but applications can also
be written in c++ and their performance is excellent.

Enyo v2 is really superb and you get an awful lot of gui magic for very
little: <http://enyojs.com/> It recently released it's first stable 1.0 but
even their pre-stable versions were really quite comprehensive.

Purely anecdotal, but in Android (Cyanogenmod) vs webOS power management I've
found webOS beats it hands down. I just turned my Touchpad on now for the
first time in a few days and the meter is reading as 43%. I don't use it
heavily, usually just in hour or two sessions and charge it about once every
four or five days.

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zokier
Do you think we are going to see webOS ported some day to more tablets, such
as the very cheap (<$100) Allwinner-based ones? That'd be cool

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lucianm
webOS will be the next WebKit, everyone will use portions of the code.

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mikerice
I really had big hopes for webOS, it looked very promising when it was
announced. Too bad it never made it.

