Today Canonical unveiled their Ubuntu for tablets interface, and it looks every bit as intriguing as what they are attempting to do with Ubuntu for Phones.

The new UI is capable of supporting touch screens from 6-inches up to 20 and looks quite similar to Ubuntu for Phone. There are quite a few interesting features here, like the ability to run phone apps on the right side of the tablet while still running full tablet apps at the same time.

Multi-tasking certainly does look like a priority with Ubuntu for Phones and Tablets, something that personally I believe modern mobile platforms are largely lacking right now.

So when is it coming? Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a specific vendor at the moment, or at least if there is Canonical isn’t yet ready to reveal them. While hardware partners are certainly needed for Ubuntu to take off in the tablet world, the good news is you don’t have to wait that long to try it out.

Both Ubuntu for phone and tablet will be available as a preview starting this Thursday. The phone version will work with the Galaxy Nexus or the Nexus 4. The tablet version is compatible with the Nexus 7 or Nexus 10.

While there is a lot more juicy features about this platform, I think it is best to just watch the official video and let it do the talking to give you a more hands-on look:

I’m personally excited by this one, though I have a feeling it will continue the Ubuntu tradition of being more of a niche product more than anything, despite Canonical’s attempts to take the platform into the mainstream. What do you think of Ubuntu for the tablet, interested or not?

The post Ubuntu for Tablets Officially Unveiled appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

You know how when you get an Android, Windows Phone, iPhone or whatever else that it comes pre-populated with some basic apps? Someone has to make those. With Ubuntu Phone OS, Canonical is asking the Ubuntu Phone OS community to chip in, which is a departure from the earlier situation where Canonical was criticized for “an alleged closed doors approach to development.”

There are 12 core apps that will ship with the phone: calendar, clock, weather, calculator, email, RSS, file manager, document viewer, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Terminal and account manager. Canonical has already reached out for programming volunteers, but they are still looking for design suggestions for the apps themselves. In a sense, this is a crowdsourcing project.

If you feel like chipping in, then you can head over to the CoreApps page on the Ubuntu wiki, click on the app you want to work on, and contribute to the wiki.

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Last week we introduced to you the Ubuntu phone OS, and that has left us yearning for the ability to test drive it for ourselves.

The good news is that Alan Pope, engineering manager on the product, has now confirmed a version of the Ubuntu phone OS will be released for the Galaxy Nexus in late February for those brave enough to give it a go.

Hopefully with this limited release there will be enough hype created to force  at least a few app makers to consider crafting apps to the OS.  This will also give Canonical a chance to work out any early bugs in the OS.

It’s hard to know exactly what we will be in store for us with Ubuntu OS, but the possibilities for those wanting an easy-to-tinker open OS could be endless.  At any rate, having Linux distro in the palm of your hands is an exciting prospect and one that could open a lot of possibilities beyond the normal Android based handsets. Just don’t expect many (if hardly any) apps to work with your Ubuntu-running Galaxy Nexus when it first arrives.

As for commercial Ubuntu phone hardware? We are probably still looking at nearly a year before such hardware arrives.

Are you chomping at the bit to get your hands on the OS?

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Yesterday we reported that Canonical had a count-down to a new version/feature for Ubuntu. The banner hinted that the news had something to do with touch. Now we have official word, the news is that they will be showing off their Ubuntu phone OS at CES 2013.

Before you get too excited, they might showing off the device to entice developer interest, but they have already confirmed the first full-fledged Ubuntu devices won’t be making their way to the market until early 2014.

The Ubuntu phone OS promises that it will be highly compatible with Android devices, so hardware/phone makers won’t have to do very much to make versions of their hardware that run on Canonical’s mobile OS. The company also promises that the device will be build around the existing Android kernel and drivers, but won’t use a Java Virtual machine, and that means it will allow the OS to use “the full power of the phone” as they say.

Canonical’s chief Mark Shuttleworth says that “Ubuntu for Android” will be their first step towards truly entering into the mobile world. This special version will run on existing Ubuntu devices alongside Android, and will arrive sometime later this year. By 2014, they will have a true/full Ubuntu phone and promise it should be by a high-end Android device maker.

For now, the official developer phone for Ubuntu phone OS is the Galaxy Nexus, which tends to be a favorite for this kind of project, as even Firefox OS utilizes the G-Nexus for testing.

So what kind of special features does Canonical bring to the table? Canonical says that swiping in from the four different edges of the screen will let users switch apps and search for content, they say thumb gestures in general will play a big roll in navigation. Ubuntu hopes to provide a design that is quite a bit different from the competition and claims it will be able to handle multitasking at a level that other mobile operating systems can’t.

What do you think? Interested in the idea of an Ubuntu phone or not? For more details, check out Canonical’s official Ubuntu website.

The post Canonical Unveils Ubuntu Phone OS, Plans to Show It Off At CES appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There tends to be varying opinions about what Canonical has done in the Linux world over the last few years. Some users love the easier to use and more “pretty” design of Unity, the UI behind the popular Ubuntu OS. Others hate what Ubuntu has become with a passion.

Still, you have to at least give Canonical a little credit for turning Linux into a more mainstream OS in the last few years. While it is still certainly a niche, Ubuntu has appealed to many folks that don’t want spend the money on Apple’s premium hardware/software and are burned out when it comes to Windows.

Going forward, it seems that Ubuntu has many more changes in store. The Ubuntu homepage now prominently displays a banner that says, “So close, you can almost touch it” and is counting down to 8AM ET on Wednesday, January 2nd. More than likely, this pre-CES announcement will show what Ubuntu can bring to the table for mobile devices and even touch desktops and laptops.

For a long time, Canonical has been planning a push into mobile devices, so this isn’t all that surprising. What exactly these touch features and changes look like remain a mystery, however.

Don’t be surprised if at least a few devices at CES that utilize this touch-centric version of Ubuntu. Are you interested in the idea of a mobile/touch experience powered by Ubuntu or not?

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App Stores are where it is at. Google has one, Apple has two, so does Microsoft. Even Firefox has a marketplace. Now the ultra-small Raspberry Pi motherboard kit has one too.

The Pi Store is accessible both from the web or as a special app for Raspbian. At the moment there isn’t much there, with just 23 free apps. The team behind the Store effort is hoping it will grow as a resource for developers and consumers in order to make the already extremely flexible ARM computer even more useful.

For developers, there is even a way to charge for apps via the store, and there is a “tip jar” ability that lets users donate money towards developer’s app efforts even if they are technically marked as free.

Newer builds of Raspbian will have the Pi Store included, but those rocking an older version will need to manually install the Pi Store application.

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Earlier in 2012, Dell announced Project Sputnik. The main goal of the project was to build a great Linux laptop out of Dell’s XPS13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04.

Yesterday, Dell came forward announcing the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition. The specs are above predicted and are as follows:

• 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3517U (4M Cache, up to 3.0 GHz)
• UBUNTU Linux 12.04
• 13.3″ HD 720p
• 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
• 256GB Solid State Drive
• Intel HD 4000
• 1366×768 display resolution

Immediately, the only way to judge this computer is to compare it to the 13″ Macbook with Retina. The XPS 13 measures 6 mm (0.24″) at its thinnest point and only 18 mm (0.71″) at its thickest point.

On the other hand, the 13″ Macbook registers at 19mm (0.75″). Although the screen resolution does not equal the Macbook’s 2560-by-1600, the price is less than the starting price of the Macbook ($1,699.00) and it comes standard with double the storage and an i7 instead of an i5.

As for the software, Dell has reportedly worked extremely hard to ensure that quality drivers are available for all of the laptop’s hardware. Additionally, the XPS 13 comes standard with Ubuntu 12.04LTS, a group of developer tools and utilities, and two beta projects: the cloud launcher and the profile tool.

What do you think of the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, does it stack up against the competition?

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Today’s mobile environment is largely dominated by two operating systems, Android and iOS, although there are many more options such as Blackberry (and its upcoming B10), Windows Phone and Bada. With so many mobile operating systems is there really room for more in this increasingly crowded space? Mozilla seems to believe so, as it is getting increasingly closer to its final work with FireFox OS. For those that don’t know, this project started under the name Boot 2 Gecko and has quickly evolved from there. The idea of FireFox OS is to create a very open OS that uses the Gecko HTML rendering engine, a thin hardware enablement layer built on the Linux Kernel and a custom user face that completely is made up using HTML and JavaScript, called Gaia.

Mozilla is targeting in early-to-mid 2013 for the first handsets to feature its Firefox OS, all of which will likely be entry-level Qualcomm-based smartphones designed for newcomers to the smartphone world. For the moment though, anyone with a little compiling knowledge can get ahold of the nightly build updates of FireFox OS which can be ran with Mac OS or Linux with a little bit of legwork which includes fetching the Gaia code from its GitHub repository and generating a profile to make use of the environment.

So what makes Firefox OS different or worthy of your attention? In many ways, Firefox OS is a lot like Chrome OS notebooks- it is a web-centric operating system that aims to use web-based apps to accomplish many of the same things that other mobile operating systems are doing with native apps. Unlike Chrome OS though, this thing does have real functionality outside of always-connected web-use. Another key part of Firefox’s plan is to create a truly flexible mobile OS that is customizable from a carrier or vendor level, similar to Android, but perhaps with even deeper flexibility. At this point it’s hard to say one way or another if Firefox OS has a chance at making any ground, but the screenshots certainly show its come a long way, even if it looks a little like a cross between all existing mobile operating systems. For example, the black status bar on the top looks a bit like something out of iOS, the typography is reminiscent of Windows Phone 7 and it also seems to have a bit of an Android look going on as well.

If you are interested in trying it out and don’t mind jumping through a few hoops, Mozilla’s Wiki has a Gaia Hacking page that will help you get it up and running. It’s important to note that these images aren’t necessarily up to date as FireFox OS’s look-and-feel continues to evolve on almost a nightly basis, so getting the most current look and feel can only be achieved through compiling your own build for now.

It’s hard to say what Mozilla’s FireFox OS future will look like, but it’s an interesting project that’s worth following at the very least.

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The post Does Firefox OS Have What It Takes To Compete In The Mobile OS Space? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Freely available through their download page, this SD card image replaces the Debian squeeze image as their recommended installation. Remember that the Raspberry Pi box does not run without an SD card and said SD card needs to be imaged with the appropriate software. The update utilizes the floating point hardware on the Raspberry Pi to improve performance, most notably when it comes to the speed of web browsing.

No, the Raspberry Pi isn’t going to replace a full-fledged computer, but when attached to your TV and keyboard for some basic functions, it’s a great little $25 product. And the new Raspbian SD card image looks like it makes it even better.

[Source]

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He’s a cognitive science researcher and this has been a hobby interest of his for several years. Jansen first began work on the project in 2007, sparked by curiosity and looking to spark curiosity in others. With the second-generation model, he has loaded up a couple of OLED resistive touchscreens and plenty of sensors.

The new Tricorder can measure temperature, humidity, magnetic fields, atmospheric pressure, color, ambient light level, GPS location, and distance to an object. It’s actually pretty advanced and it all runs on Debian Linux. Power comes by way of six AAA batteries. Even better, Jansen is offering up the whole project for free for others to attempt. The schematcs are available through a TAPR non-commercial hardware license and the source code is available under GPL.

[Source]

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