The release of the open platform webOS Open Source Edition 2.10 is introduced, which can be used on various portable devices, boards and car infotainment systems. Raspberry Pi 4 boards are considered as the reference hardware platform. The platform is developed in a public repository under the Apache 2.0 license, and development is curated by the community, adhering to a collaborative development management model.
The webOS platform was originally developed by Palm in 2008 and used on the Palm Pre and Pixie smartphones. As a result of the acquisition of Palm in 2010, the platform passed into the hands of Hewlett-Packard, after which HP tried to use this platform in its printers, tablets, laptops and PCs. In 2012, HP announced the transfer of webOS to an independent open source project and in 2013 began opening the source code of its components. The platform was acquired by LG from Hewlett-Packard in 2013 and is now used on more than 70 million LG TVs and consumer devices. In 2018, the webOS Open Source Edition project was founded, through which LG tried to return to the open development model, attract other participants and expand the range of devices supported in webOS.
The webOS system environment is formed using the OpenEmbedded toolkit and base packages, as well as the build system and metadata set from the Yocto project. The key components of webOS are the system and application manager (SAM, System and Application Manager), which is responsible for running applications and services, and the Luna Surface Manager (LSM), which forms the user interface. The components are written using the Qt framework and the Chromium browser engine.
Rendering is done through a composite manager that uses the Wayland protocol. To develop custom applications, it is proposed to use web technologies (CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript) and the Enact framework based on React, but it is also possible to create programs in C and C ++ with an interface based on Qt. The user interface and embedded graphical applications are mostly implemented as native programs written using QML technology. By default, the Home Launcher is offered, which is optimized for touch screen operation and offers the concept of successive maps (instead of windows).
To store data in a structured form using the JSON format, DB8 storage is used, which uses the LevelDB database as a backend. For initialization, bootd based on systemd is used. uMediaServer and Media Display Controller (MDC) subsystems are offered for processing multimedia content, PulseAudio is used as a sound server. To automatically update the firmware, OSTree and atomic partition replacement are used (two system partitions are created, one of which is active, and the second is used to copy the update).
Main changes in the new release:
- The Storage Access framework has been implemented, providing a single interface for accessing various storages, including internal storage, USB drives and cloud storage systems (only Google Drive is supported so far). The framework allows you to view and open documents, images and files from all configured storage providers through a common user interface.
- The browser engine provides encrypted storage of session and authentication cookies.
- A new Peripheral Manager service has been added to manage peripheral devices, which supports interaction with devices via GPIO, SPI, I2C and UART interfaces. The service allows you to organize the management of new devices without changing the source code of the platform.
- The capabilities of the ACG (Access Control Groups) access control model, used to restrict the rights of services using the Luna Bus, have been expanded. In the new release, all old services that previously used the old security model have been migrated to ACG. Changed syntax of ACG rules.
Source: opennet.ru