Ubuntu on Android

Interesting concept. Plug in your Android phone with Ubuntu for Android into a dock connected to a screen and keyboard, and you have a Linux desktop. While, that is interesting, an Ubuntu Webtop would be even more interesting.

My blog: Mobile Raptor: Ubuntu for Android: Will convert your phone into a CPU

 

So it uses Unity on the desktop, and *not* when it's in mobile mode?

Well... why the hell did they make Unity then?!? Wasn't the point to have a unified mobile and desktop UI?

 

When you use the phone, you see Android. When plugged into a dock you see Unity.

Unity... well I always felt was to "emulate" OSX in an effort to convert more users.

Another point of view is that Gnome was leaving 2.x in favor of 3.x and Canonical did not like Gnome 3.x so they could either go with KDE or some other desktop or build their own Gnome based UI.

I think with this new direction a more Android looking interface converted to a desktop would make more sense to have a unified phone and desktop OS.

Kind of what like Apple and Microsoft are doing.

 

No, no, I get that. What I don't get is why, in what is AFAICT the canonical use case for Unity, Ubuntu isn't using the very UI that they pitched as a "one size fits all" design.

 

The current concept:



Running Linux on one of these would be interesting:



I think Canonical's plans for Unity include Ubuntu only devices. Desktop, laptops, tablets and even smartphones. Basically, Unity has to be touchscreen friendly since Canonical expects it to be in touchscreen devices one day.

I don't think Ubuntu for Android is the end all of Unity. It is just one more way to get more people on Ubuntu.

 

One thing that wasn't mentioned was whether a user's session is transferrable between Android and Ubuntu. If I had an Android app open and plugged it into the dock, would I still have access to that app in Ubuntu? Or if I was doing something in Ubuntu and then got up and left home, would I be able to seamlessly resume my work on my smartphone?

This is biggest weakness of Motorola's Atrix webtop - programs are isolated to their respective environments, so essentially you're still carrying around a separate smartphone and laptop.

Hopefully this new approach can offer true convergence

 

I don't have an answer for you. I think it depends if Ubuntu will launch as app in Android (in a virtual machine?) or as a separate OS.

...but that brings up another issue. Will the phone be able to recieve calls whille running as a desktop.

 

Interesting, but until we see a few details, I'm not going to get excited. Yes, I remember the Motorola Atrix, and I also remember than the excess inventory of Atrix Lapdocks were liquidated for something like $50!

Unity would actually work fairly well on a large touchscreen device, but I'm really not sure about Ubuntu on ARM. There are devices out there, but not the newest ARM hardware, and in some cases, you see admonitions from the manufacturer pleading you not to update the distro.

 

We should find out more at MWC. And am guessing this first effort would be far from perfect. It is nice to see Canonical breaking some new ground rather than launching a "me too" tablet.

 

My guess is that they may have used the hacker way with a little more. You can already run almost any linux distro on android using chroot environment.

All that would be need is a way for the two OSs to communicate so that they switch when in a dock.

Vary similar to an idea i had a while back. still a cool idea but may not be perfect.

 

It looks more promising than expected.

Canonical Puts Ubuntu On Android Smartphones - Slashdot

 

Thats interesting, that makes me question if they would be using chroot as i mentioned earlier as the most common way to connect to it would be over VNC.

I wonder how this things is running under the hood, i would imagine that it would be very inefficient to run a VM. I also wonder what state the OS not being used is in, does it go to sleep or is it cranking away zapping battery/performance?

If it is chroot and they found a way to seamlessly combine the OSs' user spaces, i want to know how they do it, and which OS is hosting the other eg is android running and Ubuntu is on top or vise verse?

I really hope they tell how they achieved this and soon, i might want to implement this my self and i wonder if the Linux OS could be different, im really liking Arch Linux right now.

[off topic (kinda)] Has any one tried running android in a chroot environment on Linux?? if Linux can run on android i would have to assume android could run on Linux.