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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.
Very nice!, nonetheless I'd rather see it run on my Notion Ink Adam. I like the hardware, but somehow still grab my laptop more often.
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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?
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?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
I would really like the ability to dock my phone with my TV, and turn my phone into a HTPC. Only challenges to overcome would be - content providers like (Hulu and Netflix), and a remote (bluetooth?).
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
According to what I read, they're planning on keeping it from the community and only working it in with OEM's on future devices. Where did you go wrong Canonical?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
the Ubuntu for Android system runs both OSes side by side
Nice trick. Anyone knows if this scheme respects battery life?
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Aw man, and I thought the idea I had for a single computer with multiple display formats for different input and output devices (keyboard/monitor, tablet, phone, digital music player, etc) was totally revolutionary. At least I can claim I thought it up on my own. And certainly, it was far more extensive than what Canonical is doing here, but what they have is the first step in that direction. So far it seems like they're running dual OSes with common data points, but my vision was a single OS that simply determined the appropriate display configuration depending on the user interface device being used, making data universally available without requiring multiple copies that have to be monitored to keep them in sync.
This might make me switch from Fedora to Ubuntu. Red Hat has been sorely lacking when it comes to pushing new technologies. So this interesting little achievement might be the thing that pushes me off of Fedora into that world.
I wonder if this can be made to run in a low-grade "Wondermedia" Chinese tablet? If so, would be a totally nice thing to make the most of the hardware. I'd get it installed like right now.
It's mostly because I get mixed feelings for Android. While it certainly works for little things to do with a phone or tablet, I can't help but feel it lacks stuff to make it productive. It'd be so convenient to have a little bash+sed+awk+etc environment to do little scripts on the road, or a working python terminal**...and the market is convenient, but a lot of the stuff takes me back to the bad aspects of shareware. So I would really want to run Ubuntu on it, and use familiar apps like Pidgin with OTR, a bash scripting environment...etc. And I think Unity in a tablet is a good thing to have, even if just Unity2D.
Gesundheit.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
the open source developer hasn't squashed the full desktop onto a tiny screen
I think that's a given, considering Canonical hasn't squashed a full desktop onto a 30" screen in the past year or so.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I've been saying that this is where Apple's going for a while. Either the iPhone 5 or the one after it will only have a Thunderbolt port, no other dock connector (the Thunderbolt port can take a USB2 or Firewire to Thunderbolt cable for everyone with old computers/pc's and all.) And I be that after Mountain Lion, about two years from now, iOS and OSX will merge into one OS. The OS will know what hardware it's on and provide an appropriate user interface.
Phones will have all the power and storage most users need for everything they do. All many people will need is their iPhone and docking monitor, and the phone will behave like a phone when it's not docked, and like a computer when it is docked. At that point, yes it will cannibalize their PC sales, but the writing has been on the wall for PC sales since before the PC as we know it was even invented -since 1965 when Gordan Moore formulated his law. It's been inevitable that all the computing power and storage the average user needs will eventually be cheap and tiny, it's just amazing how long we've managed to come up with higher needs for power and storage space. But for the past 10 years usage requirements haven't kept pace with progress. Lower and lower end machines increasingly handle everything most users do. Apple is a smart enough company that they'd rather cannibalize their own sales and be the market leader in something than hold back on selling an inevitable progression for fear of cannibalization, like Kodak.
I wish Ubuntu luck with being first to market here, but I think it's a little early (not quite enough power and memory in this generation phone to be a good desktop), not a complete solution (this doesn't let you run the monitor off the phone and replace the guts of the computer entirely, it just lets you use a desktop interface for the phone when it's docked to a computer), and probably not going to be hugely successful.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
If Microsoft allowed Windows 8 on ARM to have desktop applications this is what could have been.
This sounds very intriguing. I hope something comes of this. I'm not sure I care about this for a phone but for a tablet it would be awesome.
Imagine the Asus Transformer Prime running Ice Cream Sandwich as a tablet, and when docked its a full blown laptop.
So here's what I'm getting from this story. They have Ubuntu as a dual-boot(?) alongside Android and they use the Android drivers to get at the device's functionality from within Ubuntu, without having to write new drivers for each device. This might be a great first step from Canonical to get a foot in the door on smartphones and tablets before going full OEM. Hopefully when they release the source, the community will adapt it to run another distro (Debian with KDE Plasma Active anyone?), although I wouldn't mind Unity on a tablet, much as I hate it on the desktop.
Unfortunately I couldn't tell from the corporate-speak if they're just implementing yet another (albeit official) chroot application. I'd love a full Linux distro on my tablet (like my n900). One can hope.
I find that hard to believe. Win7 only requires a 1 GHz processor and 1G of RAM; surely you can tweak an Ubuntu distro to run fine on a current phone?
If you use software that doesn't run smoothly enough on current phone, your requirements are likely to scale up with increased processing power so you'll never feel anything but a desktop is sufficiently powerful.
One big holdup for me buying a webtop with my Atrix was that I needed to downgrade from unlimited data to 4Gig, then buy a separate tethering plan, which is absurd. This looks like and even better solution, because I can keep my unlimited plan.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Canonical announced an EEEpc with Linux, and that never happened. I'm wary of Canonical claims that they're "partnering" with somebody, when the other "partner" doesn't announce the deal too. Where's the announcement from Google?
The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone
Other than being a more recent version of the Ubuntu apps, this is no different than a non-locked down version of the 'Webtop' functionallity that comes stock with the Motorola Atrix and kin. In fact I'd would not be surprised to find bits of Motorola's open sourced webtop code in the Ubuntu for Android distribution.
I have had multiple window managers running on a machine before too...
Hipsters already ruined the Mac .....they aren't welcome on Linux either
Your comment has been modded to oblivion; but within there is a kernel of truth that should be answered. I've loved both the Mac and Ubuntu (quite a bit before 10.04). Both really have changed in spirit; the Mac from a platform for creation (remember they used to bundle what at the time was a top end paint program and word processor with the original system) towards a platform for media consumption. Ubuntu from an easy way to get the full GNU/Linux experience which absolutely tested every usability corner case to death into a strange visionaries test ground.
But.. Let's hold on a sec. There's a fundamental difference which stems from their cultural basis, one in BSD an the other in GNU. With OS X the consumer vision is becoming more and more entrenched and there is no escape. Where you used to just download and install developer tools or get Hypercard for free, now you: sign up for an apple account/sign up for Xcode/agree to a developer agreement/download macports/install the apps/find it's not compatible/have to search for an x server... etc. etc. etc.
With Ubuntu you are still one command and a re-login away from a civilised XFCE desktop. If you download Kubuntu you don't even need to use that one command. Linux Mint is fully available and fully Ubuntu software compatible. You won't get that on Android, let alone your 'WiNokia". Ubuntu have had some bad luck with anti-FOSS and FOSS corrupting people like Matt Assay, but they are still in the fold of people who are pushing forward software where you can do what you want with the end result. As long
If the hipsters are paying for that, there isn't much to complain about. Concentrate instead on companies like Apple and to a large extent Google which produce "Open Core" software where everything is open except the very bit that matters. These guys take your effort and turn it into their user's lock in. Ubuntu is still driving forward free and open code and free and open user experiences. That counts for plenty. The thing is to make sure that Ubuntu is encouraged to stay with Copyleft as much as possible and push back against their use of contributor agreements and unprotected code.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
There's still some of it left which Canonical hasn't managed to ruin?
Since the Nokia N770 (2007), Linux has been on ARM - maybe even prior to that.
Way prior to that. I was using Familiar Linux on iPaq devices (and one Zaurus) back in 2003-2004, and it was mature at that point.
No longer true for Xcode 4. It is free download in the apps store so it's pretty available but you do have to register which is a perfect example of how Apple sets its self up able to tighten the screws whenever they want.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Really what they need to do is come out with a flash rom that you reflash your particular android device with and boom you're using ubuntu both in dock and undock mode... Doing it the way they are currently doing it, basically as an app running on the phone, is a step in the right direction, but really the road map should be to fully replace Android with Ubuntu. I think most people who use Android devices wish these devices were just running ubuntu, because ubuntu (and any desktop linux OS really) has a ton of more features out of the box than Android. With Android, they took linux, stripped away all the things that made it great, and then put a clunky window manager on top of it and a sandbox with limited features. I bet the same Android device running Ubuntu would run almost twice as fast, due to the natively compiled nature of Ubuntu versus the interpreted Java-based Android.
It seems to me Canonical are hoping to piggyback on Android's popularity. By shipping along with a recognisable and proven OS, they get their foot in the door with carriers and customers. As kludgy as the dual-OS approach seems, I have no doubt their end goal is to displace Android entirely and ship a pure Ubuntu phone that does everything in docked and undocked forms.
Well, since there's no longer an install DVD, Xcode can't be on it. It's completely free, and they aren't going to "tighten the screws". It's all about simplifying the process for finding, downloading, buying, etc., software.
Xcode is arguably much more accessible to install now than it has ever been in broad terms, since a computer today is more likely to be connected to a high speed network, and discs are usually packed away and often lost. Let alone the fact that the version on the disc is likely to be out of date, leading to then downloading the updated version of Xcode anyway (which, on the Mac App Store is now a delta update, vs the old way which was not).
If you don't see the difference between "everybody gets the development kit automatically" and "you can only get the development kit if you register", which an apple account requires, then there is a serious problem. They could very easily include it on the default install and even offer to automatically delete it if it hasn't been used by the time the disk is full if they are worried it will take too much space.
Where you come from, all computers may be connected via fast links to the internet. That is nowhere near true in much of the world.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
If you don't see the difference between "everybody gets the development kit automatically" and "you can only get the development kit if you register", which an apple account requires, then there is a serious problem.
Who said there's no difference? In fact, I pointed out that there is a difference: that it's now more accessible than before.
"Ooh, people have to get an Apple ID!" It's not like there aren't hundreds of millions of people with such accounts--more accounts than Macs. I don't see how this is a problem.
They could very easily include it on the default install and even offer to automatically delete it if it hasn't been used by the time the disk is full if they are worried it will take too much space.
They could do millions of things, all of which people like you would find something to bitch about. What's wrong with the way it works now? In your imagined scenario, everyone would have to download the Xcode tools (Lion is primarily available via download only), and have the system delete it afterwards. Xcode is something that 90%+ users have no idea what it is and will never use.
Where you come from, all computers may be connected via fast links to the internet. That is nowhere near true in much of the world.
No one said it is. So what? This is the same tired complaint that was thrown around when Lion came out. It hasn't turned out to be much of a problem. All Macs come with a functional OS install. No Mac will cease to function without Mountain Lion, and OS updates themselves can exceed 1GB.
Are there places and circumstances where this can become a problem? Sure. But it's really not that big of a deal. I can never understand this line of reasoning. "Something bad *can* happen, therefore the entire model is bad". Somehow this only seems to ever apply to the system a person has an irrational hatred of.
Besides, how are MS developer tools distributed? How are many Linux distro dev tools distributed? How is Android's SDK distributed? They're all distributed via the Internet. Some of these *may* also have official physical distribution options (which are not stocked in stores). If you really are somewhere that you can't download a couple of gigs in a reasonable amount of time, you can always have someone send it to you on disc or flash drive. Apple will not go after you for doing this.
Who said there's no difference? In fact, I pointed out that there is a difference: that it's now more accessible than before.
"Ooh, people have to get an Apple ID!" It's not like there aren't hundreds of millions of people with such accounts--more accounts than Macs. I don't see how this is a problem.
I don't see how this is a problem for you either. You are obviously not a Syrian dissident. If you were, then every place that your and the use of your computer is registered becomes a risk to you and the more you have the less you have time to make . Facebook and Twitter are ways that the underground communicate at the same time as being ways that people are discovered by the government. Your Apple ID might also be used in the same way; to see who generated software for the rest of the underground and so it becomes an additional barrier to your computer use.
There are lots of other people who are in situations different from yours; even just people who like their privacy and who don't want to be registered on principle; choosing solutions which can include everyone is better.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You keep grasping at straws. Who is at risk for downloading Xcode? It's an absurd parallel.
Once you quit making up bullshit imaginary scenarios, you'll see that there's really nothing evil, nefarious, onerous, or otherwise significantly negative about how this works.
There's already an alternative solution called PocketVM for iPhone/iPad and Android that lets you carry Windows, Linux, BSD or other full desktop OSes on your phone or tablet with you. e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXlkCOsuHE8
And that's the way it is, February 22nd, 2012.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Personally I'd be looking for an open source kernel I can trust but able to run Android in a sandboxed environment quickly too.
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