Open webOS Confirms No Support on Previous Devices, Moving Forward On New Hardware

In a blog post filed yesterday detailing the wide state of the Open webOS initiative so far, the maintainers of the project have confirmed that Open webOS cannot be made available to previous devices, owing to its preference to support chipsets that readily support version 3.3 of the mainline Linux kernel as well as support for much faster components.

“For Open WebOS we are aiming for support on future hardware platforms where SoC’s support Linux 3.3+ kernel and where open source replacements for proprietary components are integrated. Existing devices cannot be supported because of those many proprietary components, including graphics, networking and lack of drivers for a modern kernel (but of course, there is the Community Edition for those interested in improving the TouchPad).”

Another key reason for the lack of support centers on HP”s refusal to open up its proprietary driver sets for all of the previous generation webOS hardware formerly under its umbrella before discontinuing hardware support last year, which would have been necessary in order to properly port the complete version of Open webOS once it’s complete and slated for later this year.

While the statement also mentioned the Community Edition for the HP TouchPad as a basis for future updates, no such version exists for the tens of thousands of Palm Pre, Pixi and Veer variants still in the hands of owners, which means that those devices will stay with their current software versions with no possibility of updates.

Following this morning’s news of Nokia’s impending shutdown of Qt development, the Open webOS project also took care to note its latest advancements in Qt framework integration, with the newly revamped System Manager now supporting select Qt elements such as  QtWebKit for HTML5 rendering and development as well as the latest version of the Qt core for improved performance in System Manager core applications such as Email, Calendar, Contacts, Memos, Accounts, Clock and Calculator along with support for the webOS Synergy framework now being underpinned with Qt.

Finally, the project is still hiring personnel ahead of its September milestone 1.0 release target, with more positions opened up and focused on cloud services (for Synergy) visual design (for the operating system). Enyo/Qt development and software engineering.