Netbook
Porting webOS to a touchscreen ARM netbook (or convertible tablet)
Motivation
webOS is designed for users to search data and create new data, by means of a keyboard built in to each phone. Typedown filter lists allow users to quickly find an item amid thousands. Netbooks marry the high-input-bandwidth of a keyboard to the high (for a mobile device) output bandwidth output of a display. Netbooks running a desktop OS have stalled, because mobile design is different than desktop design. Netbooks running webOS will combine the ease-of-use of webOS with high-bandwidth input, making it ideal for mobile search and mobile content creation. Netbooks are ideal for command-line use.
Goals
- normal use of standard webOS apps on a netbook
- packaging open-source webOS to make installing it as easy as it can be.
Hardware
First priority is to identify suitable hardware, with a multitouch screen. We need to find an initial target platform that is currently available.
What kind of graphics chips can be made to work?
Possible
Always Innovating Touch Book Netbook v2 The company is all about open hardware and varying OSs.
- CPU board: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/MID_board without the Smart Book components
- Tablet module: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/Smart_Book_specs without the Mini Book
- install another (ARM-based) OS page: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/Install_another_OS
SG-TPC TPC0801 Can't find mfg page, which would make it a poor initial target.
Toshiba AC 100 Toshiba's site doesn't acknowledge this, so it may have been discontinued.
| HP Touchpad | Pre2 | AlwaysInnovating TouchBook 2 | Eee Pad Transformer TF101 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOC | Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 | OMAP 3630 | TI ? OMAP3530 | NVIDIA Tegra 2 |
| processor core | Scorpion (similar to ARM Cortex A8) | ARM Cortex-A8 | ARM Cortex-A8 | ARM Cortex-A9 (lacks NEON) |
| cores | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| instruction set | ARMv7 | ARMv7, Thumb-2 | ARMv7 | |
| ordering | In-order dual instruction issue | |||
| L2 cache | 512 kB | 256 KB | shared 1MB | |
| Graphics | Qualcomm Adreno 220 core | PowerVR SGX530 | ULP GeForce 333 MHz | |
| display | 1024x768 | 320x480 | 1024x600 8.9" capacitive touchscreen ? AU Optronics B089AW01 V0 | 1280x800 "10 finger multi-touch support" |
| accelerometer | Freescale MMA7455L | "G-Sensor", "Gyroscope" |
Not Possible
chromebooks (no touchscreen)
Areas of Concern
- low-level touch screen driver
- gstreamer; what codecs are already available?
Tools
- OpenEmbedded and Debian build systems