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

WAT

[Anonymous Coward]

INTEDEZTING

Re:What about the battery life?

[Barbara, not Barbie]

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 ...