The Pre uses upstart as its init application. In contrast to mainstream Linux distributions that still mostly use upstart in sysvinit emulation mode, the Pre appears to be almost entirely based on native upstart events.

Audio is handled through pulseaudio, while media is handled by gstreamer.

IPC is dbus-based rather than using something custom like Android's binder.

Originally Posted by tso

http://mjg59.livejournal.com/111453.html

Quite interesting, it seems that pre has git installed. Who is willing to bet its used to power synergy?

Also, the layout seems fairly conventional, so i suspect nothing will stop palm from dusting of the foleo, pop in a cortex and run it using webos, with git powering any kind of sync between phone and companion...

But man, for a hacker, the Pre is incredible. As mentioned, it runs unsigned firmware and has a root shell over USB when in developer mode (you can use the Konami cheat code to enable dev mode, too); you can do whatever the hell you like to the OS! The entire UI and all the apps are written in javascript, which in essence means the source code is available for you to modify at will, without recompiling anything. Even better, you can write C/C++ native Linux apps for it that draw directly to the framebuffer, as the recent Doom port shows.

Originally Posted by qole

tso: what an interesting poke through the pre's software guts.

This all sounds very familiar:


It really looks like it will be easy to port Maemo to the pre (and probably vice-versa).

and if this ultimately means we're a few solid steps closer to a Pre running WinMo 6.1, sign us up. Way up.

Originally Posted by qole

Engadget has a twisted idea of what is cool. When told that the Pre can be easily hacked, they write,