Canonical Puts Ubuntu On Android Smartphones

nk497 writes "Canonical has revealed Ubuntu running on a smartphone — but the open source developer hasn't squashed the full desktop onto a tiny screen. Instead, the Ubuntu for Android system runs both OSes side by side, picking which to surface depending on the form factor. When a device — in the demo, it was a Motorola Atrix — is being used as a smartphone, it uses Android. When it's docked into a laptop or desktop setup, the full version of Ubuntu is used. Files, apps and other functionality such as voice calls and texting are shared between the two — for example, if a text message is sent to the phone when it's docked, the SMS pops up in Ubuntu, while calls can be received or made from the desktop." ZDnet has pictures; ExtremeTech has a story, too, including some words from Canonical CEO Jane Silber.

Comments

So why the push for Unity?

[Culture20]

Why was there a big push for Unity if you're not going to use it in a small form factor? Why not just stick with a real desktop?

Re:So why the push for Unity?

[hawguy]

Unity/Gnome debate is silly and you're really missing the point.

I don't think he's missing the point - Canonical pushed the small touch-screen friendly Unity on everyone, and now that they have Ubuntu running on a small formfactor touch screen that is supposed to be exactly what Unity is good at, what do they do? They dump Ubuntu entirely on that small screen and only run Ubuntu on the big monitor with no touch screen.

So tell me again what the point of Unity is if it's not for touchscreen devices?

Unity

[Sarten-X]

So let me get this straight...

The Unity desktop was arguably intended for tablets and phones... so it's only active when connected to a full-size monitor?

I appreciate the concept of a single computing device for everything, and having that device be tiny... but couldn't somebody other than Canonical do it? Please?

Re:Unity

[GameboyRMH]

So close yet so far. I'd buy a phone running Ubuntu but I have no use for Android. I'd have it run the same OS all the time, just using a mobile GUI (Unity or preferably Hildon) on the small screen and a traditional desktop GUI (I'm thinking XFCE) on the large screen.

If I can make a Droid 4 run Ubuntu I'll buy one ASAP. Once you can run a regular GNU/Linux distro you can customize it to do anything the hardware is capable of. That's the only problem with my N900, the hardware's old and out of date.

Re:Unity

[Jonner]

Canonical first officially released Unity as part of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Currently, they call it "A powerful desktop and netbook environment that brings consistency and elegance to the Ubuntu experience." I don't think Canonical has said it was intended for tablets and phones, but others have incorrectly assumed that.

I don't hate Unity as so many others seem to, but neither have I found it particularly useful. What I'd like to see is a way to run arbitrary Free *nix apps on an Android system in as seemless and integrated way as possible. At a bare minimum, this would require an X11 server, but integration of notifications would be another obvious thing to do.

Not ready

[Guspaz]

It's the right idea, but Ubuntu on ARM is nowhere near ready. It's crazy buggy, and you're going to miss out on hardware accelerated graphics for the vast majority of applications, because most apps still expect OpenGL, and can't take advantage of OpenGL ES.

The other problem is that devices like the Atrix, while an interesting concept, aren't really ready to host desktop Linux yet. The performance just isn't there yet. I suspect that the next crop of smartphones, with dual core A15s or quad-core A9s, those will probably do a decent job at it.

Disclaimer: my experience with playing around with this is limited to various versions of Ubuntu on a pandaboard, which is a TI OMAP dev board with similar specs to the Atrix.