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Ubuntu Tablet Now Available For Pre-Order
prisoninmate writes: During last month's MWC 2016 event, Canonical had the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet on display at their huge booth, along with the superb Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition smartphone, and the Sony Xperia Z1 and OnePlus One Ubuntu Phones. The company teased users last week with the availability for pre-order of the first ever Ubuntu tablet for March 28, and that day has arrived. Probably the most important aspect of the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet, which interested many users, was the price, and we can tell you now that it costs €289.90 for the Full HD version, and €249.90 for the HD model. It can be pre-ordered now from BQ's online store.
The perfect accessory for my Firefox phone! Sign me up for this overpriced underpowered slab of junk.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The only way i can see this taking off is in a business sense... and even then it needs to be tightly tied to an Ubuntu ecosystem.
Apple went the consumer route with the iPad and made it a media consumption device. Youtube, email, facebook, etc... Microsoft went the professional route with the Surface, enabling professional artists to have a digital sketchbook, or architects to view that 3d model. Both MS and Apple have nice integration with their mainstream OS/Server solutions. If Ubuntu wants to stay relevant, they need to up the ante and provide something their competitors don't. I could see these being used for a collaborative meeting where every person can write to a display, or view/take notes on slides. Video Teleconference with a team across the ocean, etc...
If they don't give something new for the money, then Archiebunker is completely right.
I have Ubuntu 15.10 on my Lenovo Thinkpad X that has a multi-touch display and can be converted to a tablet.
However I rarely ever do this because Ubuntu touch display defaults in general suck. I am not apt to change from the defaults because most of the time I want to use it like a desktop, this model is too old (big and bulky) to really be used as a tablet. However Ubuntu at its current state just sucked on tablet mode.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Can we wipe Ubuntu off of it and put a real Linux distro on it? Still wouldn't want it, 10inch doesn't fit in the pocket, small 8inch tablet good enough when on the go.
Despite Ubuntu, we're still waiting for a proper Linux distro for a phone, and tablet. I'm getting really sick of Google/Android, it's increasingly becoming like Microsoft, taking control away from users.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I want one of these. It's plenty capable enough as a lightweight laptop replacement and companion device to a real desktop. And the price is low enough that I don't feel worried about wasting my money.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Really, nobody cares what O/S anything runs, any more (and probably never did - unless it was a Windows tablet). What matters is what apps, security, price, speed and bugginess/bloatware it sports.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'll probably get one.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Quad-core, lame GPU, pathetic uSD support (only 64GB? phones do 128GB, lames) and most ridiculously, only 2GB RAM. That's asstacular. That's minimally OK for Android, but it should have 4GB minimum for running Ubuntu, and I don't want to use Linux on less than 8GB any more, that being about the point at which I don't feel I need swap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nobody never announced the official "Year of Linux on the smartphone", but it just kind of happened as Android phone adoption became more popular and overtook iOS and Blackberry device market share around 2012.
Now Google is the established player in the mobile space along with Apple, and everyone else is an also ran. Like you, I'm not sure why someone else would enter this space when the market was already matured.
This Ubuntu tablet has 2 UI modes.
The first is the normal tablet mode, if no bluetooth mouse or keypad connected.
As soon as either is connected, it goes into windowing mode like a normal desktop to use it like a normal desktop.
That is exactly what I want - most of the time, I want to attach a real mouse and keyboard and type
on a physical keyboard. Its faster. And I want to move around from numerous applications copy, pasting,
and running tasks. It also has a micro HDMI port to connect to a big HDMI screen if needed.
With 2GB RAM, the windowing of applications is likely to be fast and not as drawn out as with
1GB RAM tablets.
Hats off to Ubuntu developers for recognizing this is what we the Ubuntu users want,
and BQ to bringing this all into one place.
I pre-ordered one, hopefully it is the long awaited bundle of joy I have been looking forward to for a long time.
Installed Ubuntu on my Surface Pro 2.
Android isn't really Linux. Certainly not Linuxy enough for me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It has a load of crap that I can neither change nor remove. That's not the case with something like Fedora, Debian etc.
Kernel schmernel already.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've been waiting for one. I've actually been waiting for them to get a Surface Pro that is fully working with Lubuntu but this is close enough. I'll buy this one. I'll pre-order when I'm done reading the thread.
The thing is, I'm still trying to find a tablet I like. I've tried them all. Really, I've bought about two dozen tablets since the newer tablets started coming out. (I like to call these ones slates but they like to call them tablets.) I used to use a Motion tablet for on-site work and that's what I handed out to employees for that sort of work. They weren't really like today's tablets. So, I'll get one of these and it will probably end up being gifted or put in a box where it collects dust. That's what I expect to happen with the Surface Pro but I'm going to try that - even if I may not like it.
I really, really want to like tablets but I've not yet found one I liked. That includes various models of iPad, a bunch of Androids, a Kindle or two that were also Android, and some strange thing I picked up in Mexico that was actually in Chinese and I never did figure out how to get it into English but it's probably not Android underneath it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Android is Linux after Linux has been pulled into Google's basement and given a vivisection. - Some Slashdotter not too many months ago but I forget which one. I'm inclined to agree with them. Even if it is the kernel, it's a far stretch to call it Linux and you sure as hell can't call it free. You can make it more free, with the loss of some functionality, if you want. At that point, you might just as well buy a dumb phone.
But, who am I to talk? I'm still awaiting a Lubuntu phone and I currently use a Windows phone. I'll get the tablet but this phone only piques my interest as a curio. I might pick one up but it's unlikely. I'll be pre-ordering the tablet as soon as I'm done reading this thread and scroll back to the top. That much I know... I'll give that a shot but the phone is not, yet, on my "must have list."
I really want the phone to run Lubuntu - with LXDE and not LXQt. Hmm... I bet... Yeah, I bet I can get LXDE installed on it. I might have to find all the dependencies and recompile 'em but I've got ample underused hardware that can crunch all that in short order. I can probably even automate it so I can keep up with updates and security fixes. I will have to look into that and maybe make it publicly available - if it works well enough.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Proper Baytrail support would open Ubuntu, derivatives and Linux in general to a bunch of cheap, plentiful Intel powered tablets, that cost a fraction of what this does.
And yes, I know you can get some distros to run, however they usually lack a bunch of drivers, wifi and touchscreen are a particular problem, as is battery life.
At least on the high end Lumia 950 (but not the budget models, yet), WP10 is supposed to have a feature that switches when docked, giving you an ARM desktop experience. I'm not sure what the limitations are in terms of supported APIs and naturally x86 won't run.
If they could run any Win32 application compiled for ARM they might have a contender. But if it's as restricted as Win RT, maybe not.
Canonical calls their competing technology Convergence and will run anything from LibreOffice to GIMP.
I got a refurbished T100 for $120. And it runs Ubuntu pretty solid (16.04 development version) and has a pretty interface. Can't say that about Windows. Windows kept freezing up randomly.
I'm just happy 16.04 has native 32 bit EFI support, something all of us with Bay Trail Atom tablets have been waiting for a long time.
Well for a start, you're a generation behind - Cherry Trail was all the rage in 2015 in products such as Surface 3. A Surface 4 with a Willow Trail SoC will be released in time for Christmas, no doubt.
I looked at these Bay Trail tablets when the supermarkets here had them on sale. I decided even for $AU99 they were trouble. :(
I have an iPad, a MS Surface and a Motorola Xoom tablet. I'm good for now with all the tablets. BTW the Motorola Xoom is pretty much already a Linux Tablet and the iPad is basically BSD at it's core. So why do I need an Ubuntu tablet in my life? If I need a new tablet I can get a current version of Samsung's tablet used on eBay for between 100 and 150 dollars and that would be like for the 32gb model.
Paul E. Bahre
What specifically don't you like about the different tablets you have tried? Perhaps the community can help out.
I liked the Nexus tablets, and my kids seem to enjoy the Amazon Fire tablets they got for Christmas, but I can't say I have ever disliked a tablet I used. My memory on tablets goes all the way back to 486 tablets an inch thick with resistive touch screens, so I have been using tablets a pretty damn long time.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
For the average user, that is what is needed, and it is why Android is such a popular Linux port, also this is the reason Ubuntu is so popular. If you want to get down into the weeds like that, you need to root the phone, then you have full access to the underlying configuration files, so you can break your phone any way you please.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You might want to qualify that as a Asus Transformer T100, as I don't think you loaded Ubuntu onto a pickup truck:
https://www.google.com/search?... :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It's Ubuntu, it's a tablet... This would have been great a few years ago. Glad I'm not on the hook for this one. Someone will lose a bunch of money.
The user interface, the lack of security, the lack of choice, the inability (unwillingness) to make mobile apps functional, etc etc etc... Yes, I expect preferences.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."