PreCentral: webOS Community Edition sees first release as webOS Ports' LunaCE Alpha

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HP released the webOS 3.0.5 LunaSysMgr component to open source back in late June and worked with webOS homebrew pioneers WebOS Internals to put together the WebOS Ports group to guide development of the Community Edition project. We've seen plenty of what webOS developers have been able to hack into the open source component, but something that normal people like you and me could install wasn't yet available.

Technically speaking, what we have now is something that normal people could install, but it's not something that normal people should install. At least not yet. After two months of work the first alpha releases for the WebOS Ports version of the Community Edition LunaSysMgr have been released as the new LunaCE package that incorporates some of what we've seen unveiled and some new things too.

There's something very important to note: it's an alpha release, so it's guaranteed neither stability nor functionality. We installed it on one of our TouchPads to give it a test drive and it's generally pretty smooth, though it has some quirks (like odd spacing in the dock and issues with PIN locks). If you depend on your TouchPad, it's not something we'd recommend installing just yet, just to be safe. Plus it's good to be able to contribute to the process if you're going to install the LunaCE alpha - it's known to have some bugs, but there are likely others, and the WebOS Ports team needs some first-level testing to make it happen. Don't feel bad if you think you should wait for the beta version, or the release version; there's no shame in that.

So what all does LunaCE offer at this point? Infinite card cycling (reach the end of your spread of multitasking cards, swipe again to jump to the far end), tabbed card stacks (swipe from the edge in a stacked card to see a column of mini cards in that same stack to quickly switch), edge bezel card switching (swipe, slide, or drag in from the bezel to move to the next card - pictured above), and a universal search icon in the title bar, among other things. All of these features are controlled through the latest version of Tweaks, which adds a new section for Luna options.

LunaCE is installable through Preware, but you'll need both access to the alpha feeds and the newest alpha version of Preware. Getting yourself set up in the alpha feeds requires terminal access on your TouchPad (either by hooking up through WebOS Quick Install or using Xecutah) and following the instructions at testing.preware.org. Once you're set up with the alpha feeds, installing LunaCE is a simple matter: bring it up in Preware, tap install, and then performa a Luna Restart. Hope into Tweaks to turn things on or off and you're ready to rock on the bleeding edge of homebrew. There is, of course, the unaltered Palm LunaSysMgr available to install in LunaCE's place should things not be to your liking.

We'll be keeping an eye on LunaCE as it progresses, it's am exciting homebrew project and we're glad that we've got WebOS Ports and WebOS Internals on the job with the support from HP.

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