Australia Tech Gadget: Ubuntu

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Ubuntu on Android becomes real, looks to take on Moto's Webtop experience

This, folks, is Ubuntu on Android. An honest-to-goodness, not janky or VNC'd, full build of the Linux distro powered by an Android smartphone.

We'll let that sink in.

Canonical -- the company behind Ubuntu -- today announced that it's bringing the full Ubuntu experience to multi-core Android phones in the same way that Motorola has attempted to extend its hardware to a more traditional computing experience with Webtop. That is, you'll connect your phone to a keyboard and display, and from there have full control over a proper Ubuntu experience, all powered by the phone. Because your Android smartphone is already running a Linux kernel, the marriage between your phone and Ubuntu is darn near seamless. The Ubuntu build actually shares the kernel from your phone and boots in parallel.

Canonical gave us a walkthrough of the experience, and it really couldn't be more simple. Dock the phone, and Ubuntu Unity fires up. Photos and videos are instantly available in the desktop experience.

But photos and videos are chump change. You've got full Chromium and Thunderbird apps. VLC. The Ubuntu Music Player. If it's on Ubuntu, it can be on your phone.

But the real power is in the ability to launch your Android apps within that desktop experience. Same goes for contacts. Or your network settings. Or your notifications. It's Android within an Ubuntu experience. And it's pretty slick.

As for hardware requirements, you'll need a dual-core smartphone with at least a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. You'll need 2GB of storage free as well, plus USB host mode and HDMI out (MHL adapters will work, Canonical tells us), plus video acceleration. Older phones need not apply, basically.

It's worth repeating that this is your phone powering Ubuntu -- not the Ubuntu desktop on your phone. We're going to get a close look at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona, Spain. Stay tuned. For now, we've got Canonical's full press release after the break.

More: Ubuntu

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Ubuntu Unveils New HUD Menu System, Dropping Traditional Menus

Ubuntu has unveiled a new innovative user interface system called Head-Up-Display (HUD) today which it has been testing, and has designed to replace the traditional menu system used by nearly every computer software application to date.

The new user interface has been designed to provide a HUD that would search through all the possible commands to find the action you’re looking for. Watch the video after the break to see the new user interface in action.

The new HUD is still currently in its early development stages at the moment but its hoped a similar user interface maybe ready to use in the Ubuntu 12.04 release expected to be released this April. Allowing you to invoke the HUD from any standard Ubuntu app that supports the global menu. But don’t worry too much as the the first public version of HUD won’t entirely replaces old-fashioned menus. Mark Shuttle worth explains:

“The desktop remains central to our everyday work and play, despite all the excitement around tablets, TV’s and phones. So it’s exciting for us to innovate in the desktop too, especially when we find ways to enhance the experience of both heavy “power” users and casual users at the same time. The desktop will be with us for a long time, and for those of us who spend hours every day using a wide diversity of applications, here is some very good news: 12.04 LTS will include the first step in a major new approach to application interfaces.”