
WebOS OSE 2.1 - protomyth
https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos-ose-2-1-0-release/
======
lostgame
The Palm Pre was one of my favourite phones I’ve ever owned, that awful little
plastic feeling keyboard and sharp bottom aside.

WebOS was very well designed, and IMHO only suffered due to underpowered
hardware.

I’ve always wanted to do something with it’s leftovers.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
WebOS was great. The whole idea of "cards" iOS and Android blatantly stole
from it. But even the TouchPad felt underpowered by the time it came out. It
was, as one reviewer at the time put it, "An iPad 1 competitor in an iPad 2
world."

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Well, you can say they stole it but Matias Duarte worked on both -- he was a
VP for UX and design on WebOS and is now Google's VP of design. (And I don't
think he's the only one from Palm to come over to Google, either) Soon after
he joined is when Material Design made an appearance.

~~~
hendi_
HP killed Palm in 2012; I suppose that's when Duarte changed jobs and went to
Google.

Material Design was released end of 2014.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
There were WebOS-like design changes in Android before the adoption of the
official material design spec.

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no_wizard
If I remember right, the biggest innovation of webOS(other than the at the
time especially, amazing card based interface that is so common now) was that
its applications at their core were built on web tech (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
with some performance underpinnings to QT

It appears that also lives on!

[https://www.webosose.org/docs/guides/development/web-
apps/we...](https://www.webosose.org/docs/guides/development/web-apps/web-app-
overview/)

this would have been a very interesting twist of events if this aspect lived
on as hardware became more capable especially

I think its safe to say though its going to be relegated to a niche at this
point. Though I hope the best for this project

~~~
pjmlp
Kind of, Symbian already had the Web Widgets runtime when WebOS came out, so
while not having Web at core, the idea of Web apps already existed.

Plus years before that, Microsoft explored the idea with Active Desktop and
packaged Web apps.

------
muterad_murilax
Great, another OS project that hates screenshots...

~~~
ergo14
This is the OS you see on LG TV's

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giancarlostoro
If I can put this on a Raspberry Pi I may just finally justify building a
Raspberry Pi tablet or one of those laptop kits.

According to:

[https://www.webosose.org/docs/guides/setup/system-
requiremen...](https://www.webosose.org/docs/guides/setup/system-
requirements/)

It does look to be very Raspberry Pi friendly!

~~~
petecox
downstream LuneOS has ports to various devices, including a demo running on
Pine64's phone devkit.
[https://youtu.be/G9lbXE_wWpQ](https://youtu.be/G9lbXE_wWpQ)

~~~
tmikaeld
LuneOS seem dead,the site is gone

~~~
petecox
They had a release only a month ago:

[https://pivotce.com/2019/10/24/luneos-october-stable-
release...](https://pivotce.com/2019/10/24/luneos-october-stable-release-
eggnog-latte/)

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bilal4hmed
man, this OS had so much potential. HP just panicked on this one and killed it
so early

~~~
sersi
I loved the HP Touchpad, such a waste...

~~~
bilal4hmed
I bought it during the fire sale and my mom used it for a number of years till
all support for it was taken away. It was perfect at that price

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smallstepforman
Does anyone know if this has BeOS DNA (since Palm bought out BeInc)?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
No, different PalmOS lineage.

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zakki
Can we use this to replace android on android based smartphone?

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robbyt
Does anyone know how different this is from the version used by LG for their
TVs?

~~~
mmanfrin
I'd love my TV to not run their goddamn spyware, to not autoinstall apps, to
not run spam "Channel Plus" notifications.

~~~
nfoz
You can still buy dumb TVs, and a highly recommend it. For example, LG has a
(hard to find) "commercial lite" line; my 55" 4k dumb TV works great.

US: [https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/commercial-
li...](https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/commercial-lite-
displays)

Canada: [https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-
lite](https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-lite)

~~~
macintux
What’s the fundamental difference between a dumb TV and a smart one that’s
never configured to connect to WiFi?

~~~
als0
Simplicity. Even without internet a smart TV has a certain amount of baggage
(tonnes of menus and applications that require connectivity).

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ofrzeta
It's confusing. I tried to find out who is behind it now and on what platforms
it runs, and this is from the About page:

"webOS is a web-centric and usability-focused software platform for smart
devices, which has proven its performance and stability in over 70 million LG
Smart TVs. ...

The open source project of webOS, called webOS Open Source Edition (OSE), was
announced in March 2018 under the philosophy of open platform, open
partnership, and open connectivity"

The FAQ however claims:

Officially, webOS OSE 1.x and 2.0 only supports Raspberry Pi 3 and 4,
respectively. However, as webOS OSE is an open source project, it is your call
to decide whether to implement webOS OSE on any other form factors.

Also there is "Tier 3 support" for ROS 2, the robotic operating system,
whatever that means.

It supports developing applications in C/C++ with Qt but also enactJs which is
based on React.

------
jayalpha
To sack it may have been one of the stupidest decisions ever by a CEO
(Apotheker).

After the blow out sale they had something they were lacking before: huge
customer base. But the idea to make money with software and apps instead of
hardware may not have been compatible with HP business culture.

------
als0
Not sure if the HP Veer is supported (it had original webOS), but it was
certainly the smallest smartphone I've ever used. Though the keyboard was
hilariously cramped it represented a curious and strangely enticing challenge!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34-89BtmQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34-89BtmQA)

