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I'd love to hack one of these just for the hell of it. It might not have much internal storage, but other than that It would probably make a neat HTPC.

Well, there IS a suitable project for this... SamyGO is a custom firmware for Samsung SmarTVs.

I got a Samsung UE40ES6710 Smart TV and once again the problem is the software. It's ridiculously buggy. It's not uncommon having to reboot it... Reboot a fucking TV!!!

You could always replace the firmware with a custom ROM

Why is this such big news? Did you know you can replace the entire firmware inside your TV too? There's already a group working on getting something usable onto Samsung TVs like these: http://www.samygo.tv/

Not really, considering the TVs run Linux: http://www.samygo.tv/

Not yet, but as the TVs run Linux underneath (and have published their sourcecode, as they required to by the GPL) they're working on it: http://www.samygo.tv/

You can't run them "side-by-side" in the conventional sense. The hardware activates one OS image or the other. And none of this is new - here's a video of Debian running on the same device, back in August of last year http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8-92J9hfkA

Canonical announced their "Android Execution Environment" 3 years ago, then abandoned it 2 years ago because they couldn't do it.

This is as "innovative" as UbuntuTV was - which was just Canonical customizing the freely-available samygo.tv software to run Ubuntu instead of another distro http://www.samygo.tv/ You too can have your own brand TV distro running right inside your TV - Slackware, RedHat, Debian, even MythTV ...

Of course, the other question is why anyone would want to run a half-baked "mobile UI" on a desktop display like they propose ...

It's called throwing good money after bad. His (well-known large ego) won't let him admit that the goofed, repeatedly.

It's the same reason that he keeps focusing on marketing props instead of adding real value, and why Canonical doesn't really even have much in the way of software expertise (they couldn't get Android to run properly in 3 years, while a small company does it in a couple of months?

It also explains why they concentrate on the UI - its the easiest thing to change. Same as Ubuntu TV was just taking someone else's code and slapping it on a rooted Samsung TV because more than a year after promising to ship tablets, they have NOTHING!. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Rien.

Same as Ubuntu Cloud was just re-selling Amazon EC2, and Ubuntu Music Store was just re-selling someone else's music store, and ... oh, what the heck, you get the picture. Remember when he appointed Matt Asay as COO, big showy announcement, and Asay making a fool of himself by saying how he's actually now using linux for the first time, and he's soooo excited (you appoint someone with no real knowledge of your product to help sell your product???) ... and how Asay didn't even last the year, walked away with his tail between his legs, oh so quietly?

Same with the Android Execution Environment - announced with lots of hype, a ship date, then quietly abandoned. This last is now a crucial mistake, since nobody wants a linux tablet w/o android, and Lenovo is shipping Android TVs.

Ubuntu is like the Costa Concordia, and Shuttleworth is its' captain.

Lets you install linux on recent Samsung TVs. It's the same code Canonical grabbed to make their "Ubuntu TV" - so you too can be 133t at next year's CES with your own brand of RedHatTV, or SuseTV, DebianTV, or SlackTV (TV for Slackers!). Turn your TV into PVR and record to USB, etc.

Like http://www.samygo.tv/ ?