Palm has finally followed up their announcement to make a free WebOS emulator available with a new version of their VirtualBox-based software development kit.� Developers and gadget lovers alike can now take WebOS for a test drive as well as try their hand at building new applications for the much fabled mobile platform.

Since HP took over control of Palm much more attention has been poured into making WebOS a solid contender in the mobile device world.� The latest release sports some nifty features like native support for node.js.

To get started all you need to do is signup for a Palm Developer account, install VirtualBox and Java, install the 64-bit libraries if you have a 64-bit system, and then download/install the WebOS 2.1 SDK.� Once you have it all setup, head on over to LinuxJournal and read through the tutorial which details how to get setup and rolling with the Palm emulator and SDK.

Unfortunately the only official package available is for the Ubuntu Linux distribution.� I'm sure that others will follow but for now that's the only one.� You can run the SDK in VirtualBox on other platforms; you just have to do a bit more work.

[via Linux Journal]