After several weeks using the Palm Pre, I can say that it most certainly rocks.
The Palm Pre runs Linux Kernel 2.6.24 at its core. So, right off the bat we’re talking stability and efficiency. Currently, you can natively run Linux apps on it, while at the same time having full hardware-accelerated GPU capability. Developers are buzzing on Pre forums, and we’ll hopefully see some awesome new apps coming out soon.
Palm’s WebOS is where they introduce the glitter and polish here. It uses CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript to display the data in a nice, elegant interface. In this environment, the WebOS applications are linked together using various services and plugins offered by the underlying Linux counterparts.
WebOS makes use of several open source apps, services, and utilities to produce what you see and hear. Approximately 137 open-source packages are used on the Pre. For sound/video it uses such packages as gstreamer, ffmpeg, pulseaudio, ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) and LAME encoder. The user interface is rendered via WebKit (originally developed by Apple, open-sourced in 2005). Messaging on the Pre makes use of libpurple, the same as the popular Pidgin Instant Messenger client. For the root filesystem WebOS uses ext3, which is one of the more common Linux filesystems.
The Palm Pre allows for developer mode, terminal/tty/ssh access, and loading of custom/homebrew software and packages via IPKG, the Pre’s package management system. The Pre UI is VERY customizable by way of easily modified .js and .css files that control the UI colors, sizes, etc. Many tools exist online that make it simple to load homebrew software, updates, themes, and patches to really make this phone yours.
There is much more that can be said about the Pre, but I’d like to limit this post here to the Linux aspects of it. I’ll close here with a couple screenshots of a customized theme:
Also, there MAY be a BoardGameGeek app coming in the future 
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/463552/bgg-app-for-palm-pre
