Objective discussion of WebOS 2.x

[jasontaylor7]

Does anyone know of a good thread or post discussing from a bird's-eye view the pros and cons of upgrading the palm pre plus stock to WebOS 2.x? Some questions such a post might answer:

What are Enjo 1.0 and 2.0? Will it mean I can run App Catalog apps? All I care about is # of titles I can run for free and paid. If I can parsed the answers at Open webOS :: Is Open WebOS killing the huge App Catalog software? correctly, upgrading to WebOS 2.x means being able to run fewer, I'd guess 20% the # of, apps that I can now (running the stock webos). Or is that false?

TIA

Jason Taylor

[GMMan]

webOS 2.x contains both the Mojo framework and Enyo 1 (though Enyo is only included in later versions of 2.x). That means any previous apps on webOS 1.x will continue to run on 2.x. Enyo 2 is designed to be platform agnostic, and as such is slightly less useful for building standard webOS apps as it's integrated less tightly.

[jasontaylor7]

Originally Posted by GMMan

webOS 2.x contains both the Mojo framework and Enyo 1 (though Enyo is only included in later versions of 2.x).

Sometimes, I wonder to myself if I'm just getting dumber, or if things are unnecessarily complicated, or some combination of the two. Especially not helping is lack of continuity between the forums when palm was the new black and today when it is the official Rodney Dangerfield os.




--Jason Taylor

[Remy X]

FYI:

If you upgrade the Pre+ from v.1.4 with a webOS 2.x doctor, be sure to back up your USB/media partition.

While the OTA updates preserve everything, upgrading with a Doctor wipes your apps, and upgrading with a Doctor from 1.x to 2.x wipes everything

Also, under v.2 some apps stop working, such as NaN player (i'm almost done patching that) and the Pre Backup Utility by drewpre... there's others too, but the two here are the most obvious....

[jasontaylor7]

Originally Posted by Remy X

be sure to back up your USB/media partition.

Thanks.

upgrading with a Doctor ...

But doesn't that upgrade require linux. Not just clicking the doctor jar "click and do"?

[GMMan]

Originally Posted by jasontaylor7

Thanks.

But doesn't that upgrade require linux. Not just clicking the doctor jar "click and do"?

It only requires Java. The Doctor is designed to be cross platform.

[jasontaylor7]

Originally Posted by GMMan

It only requires Java. The Doctor is designed to be cross platform.

I'm confused. This page discusses a bunch of steps, and says "Working knowledge of MetaDoctor and Linux systems in general is needed." And that CYGWIN ON WINDOWS IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED.

[GMMan]

I guess it depends on which carrier your phone is from. A cursory check on the webOS Doctor versions list shows that there are no 2.x Doctors for US Pre Plus but there are ones for outside the US. So if your phone is from a US carrier you may have to use Meta-Doctor, which has some Linux build system requirements.

[jasontaylor7]

Originally Posted by Remy X

upgrading with a Doctor wipes your apps

Remy, was "Meta" implied, or is that a different Doctor? How many doctors are in the house, exactly?

[GMMan]

Originally Posted by jasontaylor7

Remy, was "Meta" implied, or is that a different Doctor? How many doctors are in the house, exactly?

There's the standard .jar Doctor, and then there's Meta-Doctor, made by WebOS Internals. I've never used Meta-Doctor, so I'm not too much help with it.

[Remy X]

Like GMMan said, webOS 2.x was available via standard doctor in some parts of the world, see here for list of all Doctors: (WebOS Doctor Versions - WebOS Internals)..

There are european 2.x doctors for the Pre+, but if you are in the US, you might have to create a Meta-Doctor with US-based localization data and the rest being pulled from the EU 2.x doctor. I haven't done this so i can't really explain step by step. Anyway, read here for the MetaDoctor (Application:MetaDoctor - WebOS Internals) and search for a thread that explains the Pre+ upgrade process

[jasontaylor7]

Is Enyo a sort of emulator? A javascript translator? "Framework" sounds like a compiler and some binary libraries. Does Enyo 2 run ontop of Enyo 1 or separately? If these are translators or emulators are converting 1.4 WebOS apps into 2.1 apps, is that translation going to slow down these tiny machines? If so, what's the slowdown verses running an existing 1.4 App Cataloge app without any translation?

[GMMan]

Enyo is a JavaScript framework, which itself is written in JavaScript. There is no emulation going on. Mojo apps will continue using the Mojo framework, while Enyo apps will use Enyo. Enyo 2 is separate from Enyo 1. Any webOS device can run Mojo apps.

[Remy X]

Originally Posted by jasontaylor7

Is Enyo a sort of emulator? A javascript translator? "Framework" sounds like a compiler and some binary libraries. Does Enyo 2 run ontop of Enyo 1 or separately? If these are translators or emulators are converting 1.4 WebOS apps into 2.1 apps, is that translation going to slow down these tiny machines? If so, what's the slowdown verses running an existing 1.4 App Cataloge app without any translation?

A JavaScript framework is a library that becomes available to use if it is declared in that particular namespace. So if you link to jQuery in a web page, all of the objects, functions and methods of jQuery can be used in that page. Every framework is written for developer's convenience, to avoid doing repetitive and unnecessary work.

Now, Mojo and Enyo are webOS-specific JavaScript frameworks, so they deal with some API calls and with declaring webOS UI elements. Mojo is the original framework, Enyo 1 is in 2.x and Enyo 2 is in Open webOS as well as being platform-independent.