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Canonical Announcing Ubuntu Tablet Tomorrow?

Posted by samzenpus on from the tomorrow's-tech dept.

hypnosec writes "Canonical has a countdown on its site that indicates a possible tablet announcement tomorrow. With the Ubuntu Touch developer preview launching this week, the announcement about a tablet or at least an operating system for a tablet from Canonical has, it seems, taken a backseat. From the countdown that reads "Tick, tock, tablet time!" it is evident that Canonical is going to make some announcement about tablets tomorrow."

33 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent News! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since the Ubuntu tablet will not have 'keys' in a physical sense; being a largely featureless slab of glass on the front just like everything else on the market, Canonical is pleased and proud to announce that 'keystrokes' will not be transmitted directly to valued advertising partners!

    1. Re:Excellent News! by Chewbacon · · Score: 2

      Just like everything else: everybody's doing it!

      --
      Chewbacon
      The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
  2. Re:Will they just go away? by SerpentMage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!

    --

    "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
    "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
  3. Re:Unity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If it runs Unity then run for the hills. Seriously, how many users did they lose with that ugliness?

    Not me. It's still Linux and I can still install window managers on top of Unity.

  4. Re:Will they just go away? by Seumas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable.

    Does "usable" have to mean "shady invasive crap"?

    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/18/1652242/mark-shuttleworth-addresses-ubuntu-privacy-issues

    I used to appreciate Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu), but I really just wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile. Preferably still based on Debian, but not necessary.

  5. Re:Will they just go away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does "usable" have to mean "shady invasive crap"?

    Google does pretty much the same thing across almost the entire web thanks to google analytics and nobody cares.

  6. Re:Will they just go away? by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile

    You speak of Mint.

  7. Dead last by tftp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope they will come up with some reason for the consumer to go out and buy an Ubuntu tablet. As things are, the competition is pretty strong. Android and iOS have all bases covered, with hundreds of thousands of applications, and with several years on the market, and with millions of deployed devices, and with the user base trained.

    Sight unseen, I'd say that an Ubuntu tablet may not even win against a Windows 8 tablet. It still may be that Ubuntu people have some bright idea that hasn't occurred to Apple and Google, but that is not very likely. Price-wise, they are competing with a free OS (Android) that Google spends millions on in R&D, and with finished tablets that can be had for under $100.

    1. Re:Dead last by rasmusbr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's true if we think of the market in terms of dollars, everyone who's prepared to pay $499 for a tablet already owns one. If we look at the market in terms of number of users and potential users I think we'll find that more than 95% of everyone in the world does not yet own a tablet. Even if we limit ourselves to the 2.5 billion or so people who have a high enough income that they could potentially invest in a cheap tablet I bet more than 2 billion of them don't yet own one. All those people have yet to be trained to use iOS or Android on a tablet, and most of them probably don't even own a smartphone yet.

      Mark Shuttleworth has said that they're primarily targeting consumers in the developing world and corporations/organizations in the developed world, which sounds like a viable plan to me if they can execute it. My doubts revolve around Canonical's ability to deliver a decent version of their OS (both from a consumer perspective and from an app developer perspective) in a timely manner, before the market has been completely saturated by cheap Android tablets and perhaps a cheap version of the iPad. I think it's more likely that it will take them several years to get to where the OS is competitive with Android and by then it will surely be too late.

    2. Re:Dead last by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think there's a market for a 'real' Linux OS on a mobile device. The N800 sold like crazy for how available it was, and people still covet them. It's not a huge market, but I think it's there.

    3. Re:Dead last by rasmusbr · · Score: 2

      In the low end market it's not the price of the OS that determines which phone is cheaper, it's how lightweight the OS plus apps are. If you can make an OS that runs better than the competition on last year's mid-range hardware you can deliver a fast and modern experience at a lower price. If you could deliver something as compelling as the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 experiences (albeit with lower resolution displays) on last year's hardware you could begin to gain market shares in the low end market.

      As I said, I doubt that Canonical will get there in time. It's not like Google will stop improving Android and wait for Canonical to catch up. All I'm saying is that there is a large market out there of people who will want to buy a tablet who haven't trained themselves to use Android or iOS yet, so theoretically speaking it's still possible to get a slice of that market.

      Speaking of the UI, I can tell from watching their demo videos that they have gone completely overboard with all sorts of spacial navigation, left, right, up, down, swipe in from left, swipe down from top, seemingly all at once... Whew. I'm guessing most of the devs are high IQ people with genius level spacial reasoning skills who find that sort of thing super intuitive.course.

  8. Re:Ubuntu Unity worst phone/tablet OS alpha test e by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 2

    Five minutes using unity and I was sure that the ONLY way it made any sense was as a tablet interface.

    --
    If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
  9. Re:Will they just go away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    In fact, contrary to your claim many people care. This is why Ghostery/NoScript/etc exist. Nice deflection though, shill.

  10. Re:Ubuntu Unity worst phone/tablet OS alpha test e by Desler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And yet when people used it on the Nexus 7 it was horrendous as a touch interface.

  11. Re:Will they just go away? by theVarangian · · Score: 2

    I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!

    Sure there is choice, I can for example abandon OS X for Windows OR Linux (Hint: That's two choices). There is a world outside Linux-land there is a world outside Wiindows-land and there is a world outside OS X land and you are allowed to travel between them.

  12. Re:Will they just go away? by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're giving linux a bad name.

    And accelerating FOSS adoption in a huge rate.

  13. For the impatient ones by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you don't want to wait the countdown, there's already a high-res photo of the device available.

    1. Re:For the impatient ones by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      Uh oh. Problems.

      It has rounded corners.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  14. ©anoni©al won't work, they're still FOSS by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be honest, I'm not much of a fan of Ubuntu anymore and that for many of the standard reasons cited here on Slashdot. That being said, I do not understand the ire which comes out every time anything is posted about Ubuntu. I dislike Shuttleworth as much as the next guy, and I think they deserve criticism for the recent privacy issues, but lately it seems like they receive the sort of comments here that used to include "M$". I keep waiting for someone to start complaining about anonial.* I guess it just doesn't look as cool.

    *(Ah. I see. When I clicked preview, I discovered that the cent signs I used for Canonical don't display on Slashdot. Having tried to use other unicode characters, I should have known better. That explains why people who enjoy making a sport of hating Ubuntu haven't used it.)

  15. Re:Will they just go away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mint has a pretty decent income, they bring in thousands every month and publish their incomes and amounts on their website. Mint is financially supported and probably wouldn't exist if it were not a commercial distribution.

  16. Re:Will they just go away? by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When that time comes, I would hope they do what Ubuntu started to do and ask for donations. I think it would have worked pretty well for Canonical if they hadn't killed any good will with the Amazon crap. I'd actually be quite interested which approach got them more money. Long term, I would think donations would win out.

  17. Re:Unity? by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

    ... unfortunately many of us had to. The good news is that I finally got around to devoting attention to setting up KDE the way I like it. That's the nice part about KDE; you can make it it perfect.

  18. Open hardware? by pr0nbot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The most exciting thing about an Ubuntu tablet would be if it means open source drivers for all the hardware. A reference tablet that anyone can install OSS onto would be great for tinkerers. (Or is the Nexus 7 already this?)

    1. Re:Open hardware? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The most exciting thing about an Ubuntu tablet would be if it means open source drivers for all the hardware.

      It doesn't. It's gonna be a typical ARM SoC with blob drivers.

  19. Re:Will they just go away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to appreciate Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu), but I really just wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile. Preferably still based on Debian, but not necessary.

    So how about something like, uhhhh, Debian?

  20. Re:The question is.... by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 2

    Actually, that's pretty funny.
    Because when you visit the Ubuntu sites,
    you'll be hard pressed to find any mention
    of (the word) Linux.

  21. It's one thing to have ubuntu on a tablet by Duncan+J+Murray · · Score: 2

    but it's another thing to have an interface that will work on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen a style blueprint for ubuntu phones/tablets interface yet, only that it'll run on QT. Personally, I'd like a full gnu/linux stack on a phone (and I use the N900), but I just don't see how Canonical are going to compress the years of tinkering done by apple, android and maemo to make a consistent touch-friendly interface that works on a small device. I'm ready to be surprised, but I think most of us are going to be disappointed.

    I think Jolla looks promising, although they've a lot to prove, and at the moment there is way more hype and vapour than substance.

  22. HTC has same countdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.htc.com/us/

  23. Re:The question is.... by GPLHost-Thomas · · Score: 2

    Or Debian... Even though more than 80% of all packages are coming from it.

  24. Re:©anoni©al won't work, they're still F by BlackPignouf · · Score: 2

    Whatever Shuttleworth does now, however shitty Unity is right now, I'll always remember my amazement in winter 2005 when I first tried Hoary Live CD.
    That was the first Linux i tried where sound/network worked out of the box.
    This guy invested millions in this cool project, and I had a blast using Ubuntu Desktop/Server/JeOS during many years.
    Linux Mint wouldn't be exist without Ubuntu.

    So thank you Mark!

  25. Announcing tomorrow, question mark? by EmagGeek · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dear submitter,

    Had you bothered to go actually look at the countdown timer, you would have seen the words "Tick, tock, tablet time!" in large print right there in front of your face, and you would have known to end the title of your summary with a period instead of a question mark, and avoided the whole "let me go make myself look like an ass on Slashdot" thing.

    Thank you for your time.

  26. Re:Will they just go away? by kurkosdr · · Score: 2

    I am starting to have hopes about Ubuntu. They are pissing the neckbeards off, they must be doing something right. But I will wait till wayland before I dual boot it. Ok, flag me as trollbait now.

  27. Re:©anoni©al won't work, they're still F by Rich0 · · Score: 2

    That being said, I do not understand the ire which comes out every time anything is posted about Ubuntu.

    I think the fear (one which I share) is over the mainstreaming of Linux.

    Right now if you want to make your software available on Linux you need to either support many platforms, or more ideally just offer a source tarball. You get your applications from your distro.

    If one Linux distro really takes off then you might find more and more applications that are binary-only linked against the libraries that particular distro uses. Suddenly you end up with less choice, because many parties would rather do it that way than publish their sources. The same thing would likely happen if Linux had a stable module ABI - suddenly people can still buy your server hardware if you don't publish your sources, and thus less source gets published. Selling a server without kernel support is a kiss of death for sales, since Linux has real market share in that domain.