Report: First Ubuntu Tablet To Be Unveiled At MWC 2016

prisoninmate writes: Canonical has been working on expanding the capabilities of Ubuntu Touch for a long time now, and it appears the company will reportedly unveil the first dedicated Ubuntu tablet device this year, during the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2016 event. Canonical has been working on implementing support for X11 apps on its Ubuntu mobile operating system, allowing users to run any graphical software that is currently in the Ubuntu repositories, such as GIMP or Firefox.

YAWN

[binarylarry]

More vaporware.

I use Ubuntu but jesus this shit is getting old.

Re:

[binarylarry]

Also I'm pretty sure Nokia had tablets running X11 like 10 years ago?

Re:

[SeaFox]

I agree, Browsing this story on my Windows 8 (not RT) tablet on Firefox.
When's the future coming again?

More Ubuntu vaporware?

[tetraverse]

@binarylarry: "More vaporware .. I use Ubuntu but jesus this shit is getting old. ref [slashdot.org]

I see, how do you know this ;)

"Mundo Reader, S.L., trading as bq, is a Spanish producer of smartphones, tablets, electronic readers, and 3d printers founded in 2009.[1] In 2014, the company had a total revenue of 202.5 million euros"

Re:

[Vanderhoth]

I'd give them the benefit. I use Ubuntu as well and have been looking forward to Ubuntu Phone or Ubuntu on a mobile device for awhile, two to three years at least. I'm looking forward to the day my phone can literally be everything for me. Get a docking station at home and work, use it as a phone/camera/video cam/calculator/mobile browser on the go, snap it into the docking station and have a full blown PC with a full OS I can work on.

Ideally, the docking station could be shaped like a laptop with a full

how does it in any way an improvement?

[Lead Butthead]

In the age of sub-100 dollar tablet, how is this product in any way superior to the existing solutions?

Re:how does it in any way an improvement?

[youngone]

I don't really see how it is better. My question is why would I want to run GIMP in a touch interface.

That's the same confused mistake Microsoft made with Windows 8, is it a touch interface, should I use a mouse, what the hell are these great big tiles for?

Re:

[unixisc]

Most existing tablets that are not iPads or Surfaces are Androids, which DO run Linux. So how again is Android a proprietary OS?

Re:how does it in any way an improvement?

[greenfruitsalad]

there's gnu/linux and there's googlecrap/linux. i, for one, want as many parts of my OS to be free as possible. i don't really care if my image editor is free or not but when it comes to my OS and communications apps, i want those open and free.

btw, in android, aosp apps have 1/10 the functionality of their closed sourced googleapps versions. i know, because i'm paying the bitter price of freedom. i run cyanogenmod without any gapps, with fdroid and amazon as my software sources.

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[unixisc]

Instead of the 'googlecrap', you could take Replicant or Cyanogenmod. At least from the latter, one would be able to run Android apps. What exactly does one run on Ubuntu Touch? Firefox?

Re:

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

It's not a mistake. Do you have a touch version of gimp handy? no? That's the problem. For gimp the idea is that you use the keyboard and mouse and you can use it as a completely "traditional" computer. but you can use it as a tablet for the stuff that works well with that... those are going to be other apps, because of the need to allow for humungous fingers that blot out half the screen whenever you do anything, rather than mouse pointers. The only way to do convergence is to let both worlds live toge

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[KGIII]

It's Ubuntu. I'll try one and then by as many as another half dozen for me and 64 of them tor the elementary school in the village.

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[nnull]

Not really superior to anything. If anything, I see it as a complete and utter failure for linux and the opensource community again to get into the tablet and phone market where it ended up being dominated by the big manufacturers. So, now we have completely locked down proprietary hardware where none of the opensource OS's will run on and the manufacturers pretty much dictating to us this is how it's going to be from now on. Samsung is a great example of this.

Sounds great

[FunkSoulBrother]

This actually might get me to look into tablets. My requirements are basically being able to run adblock, and access to the filesystem. Oh and not being produced by a literal advertising firm.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You could have done that a long time ago:

Buy Windows Tablet
Install VirtualBox
Install Ubuntu guest
Run said guest in full-screen mode

You're welcome

Re:

[FunkSoulBrother]

What would the battery life be on a solution like that? Just because I don't like Apple locking down my devices doesn't mean that I don't like very long battery life and solid hardware design (minus the lack of ports)

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[Anonymous Coward]

They're similar to ARM tablets these days, genrally in the 7-11 hour range for light usage. Intel has made *massive* strides in power consumption over the past few years (unlike their performance).

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[LichtSpektren]

I wouldn't classify Google as an "advertising firm", but on Android tablets, you can sideload Adblock Plus or Adguard (I can't get the former to work on cellular data, but the latter works like a charm for me). 6.0 has a file explorer built into the settings, but there's also a myriad to download from the Play Store.

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase]

You wouldn't classify Google based on its core product? Why?

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[Lunix Nutcase]

Then you've had that since XP tablets more than a decade ago.

sub $100? sub $50....bought a new one for $35

[turkeydance]

next, they'll be free in a box of Cheerios.

I would love an Ubuntu tablet

[LichtSpektren]

I would get an iPad Pro or the Pixel C but the office apps on them are crippled (I regularly use regex, mail merges, macros, etc.). So an Ubuntu tablet with an attachable keyboard would be perfect for my usage. Looking forward to it!

Re:I would love an Ubuntu tablet

[Lumpy]

You have been able to have one for years. Just go buy a intel based tablet and install ubuntu.

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Buying an Ubuntu tablet won't necessarily fix the blob issue.

Last I checked Ubuntu Touch was running a stripped down Android HAL inside an lxc container to provide hardware access, with Mir and other services bootstrapped via libhybris.

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[drinkypoo]

AFAIK the EEE Slate is all-supported. It's kind of old now, but I think you could get them with an i5, and they had wacom combo pen/multitouch displays. My lady has a Fujitsu T900, which is the same thing with an i7, but it's super-bulky. Still cheaper than a Cintiq.

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[4im]

I would get an iPad Pro or the Pixel C but the office apps on them are crippled (I regularly use regex, mail merges, macros, etc.). So an Ubuntu tablet with an attachable keyboard would be perfect for my usage. Looking forward to it!

Question: why not go the laptop / notebook / ultrabook / whateverthecurrentmarketingnameis route instead, if you need a physical keyboard anyway? Or, in case you don't need mobility, a classic desktop PC? You can usually run Ubuntu just fine on these. You know, right tool for the job and all...

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[swb]

I loved my iPad but decided I needed a portable real computer so I got an Asus Zenbook.

I might have gotten another iPad if they had supported a BT mouse, but they didn't, and for the cost of an iPad Pro I ended up with a much more flexible computer that's not really any heavier to carry around and is light years more flexible. Plus I have a TB of storage (I swapped in a new SSD), and if I really miss the iPad, I can always just use the web in full screen mode with the touch display.

Battery life isn't quite

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[umafuckit]

I would get an iPad Pro or the Pixel C but the office apps on them are crippled (I regularly use regex, mail merges, macros, etc.). So an Ubuntu tablet with an attachable keyboard would be perfect for my usage. Looking forward to it!

It's called a laptop.

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[AmiMoJo]

What's wrong with a Surface Pro? That will run full office apps, or Ubuntu.

First commercial product.....

[Lumpy]

Ubuntu runs brilliantly on the Microsoft Surface line. it in fact runs better than Windows 10 does. and I've been running ubuntu on Fujitsu Stylistics for well over 6 years now.

honestly building a dedicated tablet for it stupid. just install ubuntu on one of the China $199 core duo surface tablets and call it done.

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[bazorg]

Ubuntu on Surfaces runs better than Windows? Care to expand on that? Sounds like a fun afternoon project.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu on Surfaces runs better than Windows? Care to expand on that? Sounds like a fun afternoon project.

It's pure hyperbole. It's like saying Ubuntu runs better on a Mac than OS X. In both situations Microsoft/Apple are the folks who designed and built the devices and hence would no doubt ensure that their own OS mated perfectly and smoothly with the hardware. Ubuntu on the Surface has no such luxury as anything that doesn't immediately work has to be reverse-engineered, with no gurantee of full functional

Re:

[umafuckit]

This has certainly been my (limited) experience with Linux on Apple laptops. I've had annoying touchpad behavior and random failure to enter suspend on lid close (about 1% to 5% of the time). Twice I put the machine in my bag and pulled it out very hot because it failed to suspend.

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[Lumpy]

Ubuntu on surface doesn't have the well known wifi chipset problem that causes disconnection or low bandwidth, it will also sleep properly as windows 10 still has some Surface sleep issues that will turn it into a backpack heater, it also runs faster.

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[Lumpy]

I'm a MAC zealot you insensitive CLOD!

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[Anonymous Coward]

So is Unity, and FirefoxOS, open source is no better, if anything, it's worse. A tablet is NOT a desktop, just as a desktop is NOT a tablet, Continuum caters for both, what does Ubuntu give us? A desktop on a tablet, the SAME thing we CRITICISED Microsoft off with Windows 8 and 10, so they give us BOTH with Continuum as a means to unify and transition between. What has Ubuntu given us? This piece of tripe.

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[unixisc]

But Unity is a better interface for tablets than for desktops. If anything, Canonical might have some better luck here, except that Android already has all the apps

Please Canonical -

[MrKrillls]

Please Canonical, please release this tablet worldwide. Please don't exclude important markets like was done with the phones. It is frustrating to have Linux phones only partially available (not full functioned in US). I am dying to use Linux for all my computing needs.

Innovation

[manu0601]

Times are weird, as we are proposed running decade-years old technology as a new feature.

Stop Using Mir

[StormReaver]

I wanted to buy an Ubuntu or KDE tablet, but they both have major problems: Ubuntu Touch uses Mir, so can't run Java. Plasma Mobile support for tablets is very sparse, and the ones it supports are very expensive.

I'm getting really tired of Android (iCrap isn't an option under any circumstances), and want a tablet that will run plain Java and is Free (note the difference between Free and free). Microsoft Surface does Java great, but ewwww Microsoft. And the Surface is too expensive.

Give me a Free tablet

Too Late

[Ayanami_R]

So non convertible tablet sales are tanking, and they're still going to go ahead with this... OK. So late to the game.