Canonical Announces New Ubuntu Mobile OS for Tablets
At CES 2013, we got our first look at Ubuntu's smartphone OS. However, it seems the company isn't going to draw the line at phones. Today, Canonical introduced its Ubuntu Tablet OS.
Tailored for a range of screen sizes, the Ubuntu tablet OS allows for multiple password protected user accounts. This means you can share one tablet amount multiple family members. It also has a guest mode that allows anyone to borrow the tablet or pick it up for quick use. Similar to the phone operating system, favorite applications appear on a dock-like bar on the left edge. The home page displays commonly used apps, frequently contacted people, and recently played music.
We're waiting to go hands on with the Ubuntu tablet OS on an HTC tablet, so keep an eye out of that in the afternoon. We were extremely impressed with the polish of the phone OS when we tried it out at CES. It manages to do something different from both iOS and Android, and while those systems are tried and true, there's still plenty of room for innovation.
Check the video below for an overview of the tablet OS.
Keeps the big boys on their feet.
I use Ubuntu at home for my living room pc for music mostly. They seem to be serious in terms of covering the tablet and smartphone market. Ubuntu phones should be coming by end of the year.
And no, Ubuntu tablets won't cost half of surface pro for the same hardware. Anyone hoping for that will be very disappointed. That being said Ubuntu should run fine on arm architecture so getting it as an option on a Surface RT tablet sounds interesting.
I was refering to the multitude of processors Ubuntu runs on... Windows 8 doesn't run on arm, only the stripped down version on RT. That's why it should cost half as much of a pro and still offer desktop applications at reasonable (not as fast) speeds.