HP’s venture into the tablet market was an abysmal failure, even when its webOS had promising prospects. So when HP decided to shelve the platform altogether, there were many who were disappointed. Now, Simon Busch has ported Open webOS to Google Nexus 7 to give us a glimpse of what we have missed.
Google’s Nexus 7’s hardware and software, both are of an open-source nature. This is precisely why the tablet is a great choice to port webOS to. The process of porting the open-source HP solution to Google’s tablet was led by Simon Busch of webOS Ports.
It was accomplished with the help of LibHybris, which allows for “bionic-based [Android] hardware adaptations in glibc systems.” In other words, it makes the process of porting something like webOS to an open-source device less daunting so that after the port, you don’t have to write all the drivers anew for every single device.
The port is untethered and webOS runs nearly perfectly well on the 7-inch slate. It supports all the core functionality as well as a majority of the features, although there are times when the user may feel a slight lag in the operations.
However, the overall experience of using webOS on Google’s Nexus 7 gives TouchPad lovers a taste of what a current-generation HP tablet could have been. As sad as it is to note that HP has no plans of resurrecting the platform, it is indeed good to see that webOS can be used on other Android tablets without any hassles. Watch the video below to see webOS running on Nexus 7:
Courtesy: WebOS Nation
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