Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Ubuntu Wants to Find Its Way Onto Tablets, Too

After already detailing its plans to put its Linux software onto phones, Canonical on Tuesday is showing its vision for Ubuntu-powered tablets.

“Multi-tasking productivity meets elegance and rigorous security in our tablet experience,“ Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said in a statement. “Our family of interfaces now scales across all screens, so your phone can provide tablet, PC and TV experiences when you dock it.”

Ubuntu is among a crowded field of challengers seeking to provide an alternative to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The field of competitors includes Microsoft, with Windows and Windows Phone; BlackBerry with its BlackBerry OS; and Samsung, which has been developing its own mobile Linux plans, in addition to its Android and Windows work.

Ubuntu hopes to win some hearts, minds and design awards with its product, as well as support for multitasking, multiple user accounts and other features. Like BlackBerry 10, Ubuntu relies on using gestures rather than physical or software buttons to move among and within applications.

It is also making the pitch that it is offering a single user interface that can run on phones, computers, tablets and TVs.

Its tablet-specific work focuses on devices with screens from six inches to 20 inches.

The company plans to offer a developer preview of its tablet software on Thursday, and instructions on how the operating system can be installed on the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, along with the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus phones.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik