Apotheker Seeks to Save HPs Lost Soul With Software Growth - Businessweek

Starting next year, every one of the PCs shipped by HP will include the ability to run WebOS in addition to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, Apotheker said.

via: Apotheker Seeks to Save HP’s ‘Lost Soul’ With Software Growth - Businessweek

Well, this will be interesting. Porting WebOS, which is Linux based, to run on x86 hardware should not be too difficult. What will be difficult is managing the user interface. How are they going to integrate the touch based UI of WebOS with the standard PC?

Apple is solving some of these problems with new gestures and interaction changes with OS X 10.7, but they are not porting iOS to the Mac.

Also, dual-booting is a pain. I used to dual-boot Windows and Linux, before I started using my Mac at work, and the problem I’d run into was that I never knew where my data was. Did I save that file in the Linux partition? Did I accept that meeting invite on the Windows side?

I’m going to assume that HP plans on including WebOS as an option for fast, almost instantaneous boot to use a limited subset of the computers capabilities, and not as a full-blown Linux install. In that case, no one will ever know its there, and will continue to boot straight into Windows.

If HP is really serious about this, I’d suggest that they not install Windows on their machines at all, and ship them with an enhanced, more desktop ready, version of WebOS as the one and only operating system.