Will there be an Ubuntu tablet?

[Thelinuxgeek]

I recently heard that, for all intents and purposes, Unity was basically a test version (Alpha?) for a touch screen or tablet version of Ubuntu. Is there any truth to these rumors?

[Paqman]

I recently heard that, for all intents and purposes, Unity was basically a test version (Alpha?) for a touch screen or tablet version of Ubuntu. Is there any truth to these rumors?

Not really. Unity was designed for a mouse and keyboard, not touch. There has been some work done on improved touch packages in the last couple of releases, but Unity would need some work to be adapted for a touch interface.

Apparently it is quite modular though, so it's not necessarily a lot of work. I'd imagine this was a design decision to build it that way (another reason to move away from Gnome 2?). I would be surprised if it wasn't being worked on already, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Greenborn]

Hmm. An Ubuntu tablet. Not a bad way to get Linux out to the masses. Limited hardware with a locked down OS. Not very open source but very practical.

[Copper Bezel]

I think that's been done, but it's called Android instead. = ) An Ubuntu machine is very unlikely to be "locked down." Even the demo TVs were basically full PCs stuffed into the back of a television.

I'm curious to see how much of the Windows 8 PC market is x86 and how much is ARM. Since a Windows 8 ARM device is essentially a Microsoft iPad, pretty locked-down, Linux users are going to need to stick to x86 devices unless someone, like Canonical, can get some Linux slates into distribution. (This also means that if x86 tablets don't take off, all the pretty work put into making Gnome Shell tablet friendly is going to have been for nothing, since Ubuntu doesn't use it and is the only desktop Linux that has any chance of being distributed preinstalled on ARM. But I don't see this as likely, because the limitations within Windows 8 ARM, particularly the lack of a "desktop" mode, are likely to push consumers and manufacturers back to x86.)