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Porting webOS to the Raspberry Pi would be virtually pointless as anything but an academic exercise, since the following are lacking:
1. No touchscreen, so input would be "interesting"
2. No Bluetooth, so no webOS Keyboard(*)
3. No drivers for touchscreen controllers; need to be written for each different controller
4. No accelerometer, GPS, compass, etc. that lots of apps/games rely on(*)
5. Hell, drivers would have to be written for most every hardware component
6. It's ethernet-only ($35 model); no WiFi option(*). $25 model has no base connectivity.
And then you have the additional cost of having to buy a Touchscreen if you want the card metaphor / multitasking interface to mean much at all; if you've used the webOS Keyboard for the Touchpad, you know what I mean. Losing the touch interface in webOS makes it a less than fun experience. Hell, it's painful and there are still huge gaps in webOS itself when it comes to keyboard-based control.
Furthermore, the SoC only runs at 700Mhz--not especially fast considering any port would be rough and unoptimized for a while. If you installed webOS 2.x on an old Pre, that's pretty much what you could optimistically expect, but with more problems, errors, a degraded user experience, etc. since you're dealing with a port involving hardware webOS was never built for, much less been used on. And remember, webOS sits on top of Linux; it isn't itself Linux.
The Pi also has only 128MB/256MB of RAM depending on the model you buy. "Too Many Cards" errors? Get used to those again; they'll be all over the place, and don't even think about running some of the more resource-hungry apps.
Just because it's an ARM device and runs Linux doesn't mean it's ripe for porting a mobile operating system to, and it's doubtful that with those hurdles above it'd gain much traction, if any. Users certainly wouldn't come "flooding" to webOS, I can certainly say that.
Linux, being optimal for lean configurations, will be fantastic on this which is exactly what I intend to install on it once the ordering window opens up. You just can't beat a $35 home webserver/seedbox.
(*) You need to buy a separate WiFi adapter/dongle if you want to run it wirelessly. You could probably attach a USB hub to accommodate it and also GPS and Bluetooth dongles, but it kind of defeats the purpose of being a compact and cheap platform. And, again, driver support?
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Originally Posted by eblade
