fileCoaster holds a very special place in the history of homebrew application installers. Unfortunately, it cannot currently install Advanced Homebrew packages like the Virtual Keyboard Patch, Terminal, MyTether, etc (only WebOS Quick Install and Preware can do this at the moment).

fileCoaster is still very useful for the purpose that it's name describes - downloading files onto the Pre.

Preware uses the Package Manager Service developed by the WebOS Internals team to be able to securely install Advanced Homebrew. Any other open source installer application is welcome to use the same service to add this capability. We do not allow closed source installers to use the service, since we need to be able to do a security review of the installer source code to make sure it is doing things properly and not compromising the security of the Pre (we had a problem previously where the closed source MyTether application was using a proof-of-concept command line service incorrectly and introduced a huge security vulnerability as a result).

I believe that PreLoad currently uses the same installation technology as fileCoaster (and therefore cannot currently install Advanced Homebrew). However, since PreLoad is open source, it could easily be updated to use the new Package Manager Service. PreLoad already uses the standard package feeds from preware.org, so it already has access to all the homebrew applications that are available from all 4 originating sites (PreCentral, WebOS Internals, Canuck Software, PimpMyPre).

See Towards an open, interoperable homebrew ecosystem for the reason why we created Preware and the Package Manager Service.

-- Rod