If you have ever heard of Linux, then you probably know of Ubuntu. In fact, Ubuntu has become the most popular Linux distro (version). It’s initial release was in October of 2004 and in October of 2012, 12.10 Quantal Quetzal was released as the most recent stable build of Ubuntu. Now, with the personal computer market heading into handheld, Ubuntu is coming to retail in Q4 of 2013.

This news, written along Ubuntu’s website, was backed up by Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, when he stated that “smartphones running the open source Ubuntu operating system will be available to customers beginning in October 2013″.

Ubuntu’s main goal is to create one platform for phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, the cloud, and your “supercomputer”. Now that Ubuntu TV was announced at CES 2013, Ubuntu for phones and Ubuntu for Android are the next steps for Mark and his companies.

Developers will be able to get their hands on Ubuntu in February with a version that was built for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. All in all, the entire platform looks very clean and extremely intuitive. If Ubuntu Phone can land on good hardware, it may have a chance at competing with Android and iOS. Are you looking to forward to the Ubuntu Phone launch? Will you be buying an Ubuntu phone when it comes out? Let us know in the comments below.

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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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