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Ubuntu Smartphone Shipping In October

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-in-time-for-clergy-appreciation-month dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Smartphones running the open source Ubuntu operating system will be available to customers beginning in October 2013, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told CIO Journal. Ubuntu will be available on a full range of devices, including desktop and tablet computers, potentially providing corporate IT executives a way to reduce the number of devices they purchase and manage, and would allow users to access all manner of corporate data through a single, pocket-sized device. 'You can share Windows apps to the phone desktop,' said Mr. Shuttleworth during a meeting in New York Tuesday." Jon Brodkin adds, "Canonical is taking community input on what the core applications (e-mail, calendar, clock/alarm, weather, file manager, document viewer, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) should look like. The best aspects of community proposals will hopefully make it into Ubuntu phones when they finally hit the market sometime toward the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014. Take a look at the best designs Canonical has received so far."

7 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sorry, but by EliSowash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just can't get excited about this. Ubuntu on PCs isn't the holy grail of desktop computing, and between Droid and iPhone, I'm not sure what new-shiney Ubuntu brings to the smartphone table. Does that make me a bad person?

    1. Re:I'm sorry, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Holy grail it may not be, and it's not about new shiny. It's a step up from what we have, and it's open enough to interoperate with other closed platforms without much trouble. Because choice and flexibility are good.

    2. Re:I'm sorry, but by Teun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as they allow us to run KDE they'll remain successful.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    3. Re:I'm sorry, but by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As someone with an n900, Android is not nearly as open as many people think.

  2. Exchange by DogDude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's a non-starter without seamless Exchange access. That's the #1 function of my phone. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

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    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Exchange by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      my 50+ years of life and 30+ yrs of computing shows that PHB's use exchange and the engineers use regular old email (wanted to say sendmail, but we have gotton beyond that, right?)

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      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  3. Arrows on keyboard by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I saw there one example of a terminal session. And that reminds me - one thing that aggravates me on ipad (jailbroken) when using midnight commander in terminal is that the arrows keys are missing! I cannot event use the bash history.

    We definitely want the arrow keys on keyboard when in terminal mode.

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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