Ubuntu 10.10-Powered Tablet in the Works
A tablet sporting Ubuntu 10.10 (or Ubuntu Light) was caught on film.
Giz-China has acquired screenshots of an upcoming Ubuntu Netbook 10.10-powered, 10-inch tablet from an unspecified manufacturer. Aside from a few hardware specs, the details surrounding the mystery tablet are rather slim, providing no indication of a targeted release window or cost. That said, the device may get a formal showing next month at CES 2011 if it's actually legit.
The leaked images follow previous reports earlier this year that Canonical, the company behind Linux OS Ubuntu, was working on a lightweight, tablet-friendly version based on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Chris Kenyon, Canonical's vice president of OEM services, said the OS would offer a simplified user interface (Unity) that provided quick access to the most-used applications. There would also be on-screen keyboard features and compatibility for multitouch drivers.
Reports also indicated earlier this year that the tablet OS would be merged with the netbook OS under the "Ubuntu Light" label. Currently Canonical already offers a version of Ubuntu Light, however it's listed as a quick-boot companion to Windows and as a lightweight OS for netbooks and PCs-- Dell just shipped the Inspiron M101z netbook earlier this month sporting the Ubuntu Light OS alongside Windows 7 Home Premium.
"It's perfect as a companion to Windows for a fast web experience or as a standalone operating system for use in mobile or embedded devices," the description reads. "Typical startup times are seven seconds on a device with a solid state disk drive (SSD). Boot times can extend up to 20 seconds on hard disk drive (HDD) machines."
The mystery tablet currently shown in the latest batch of images supposedly sport an Intel Atom 1.6 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 32 GB SSD. Kenyon previously stated that tablets with the Ubuntu OS would become available in late Q1 2011. If that still holds true, there's a good chance we'll see Ubuntu-powered device at CES 2011 next month followed by a retail release before April.
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I have zero interest in this unless it offers better battery life, faster performance, etc over a windows counter-part.
Fantastic News (if true).
I use Ubuntu a lot & would love to use it on a Tablet. 2011 looks bright & fun.
@Aftcomet 'unless it offers better battery life, faster performance, etc over a windows counter-part.'
Better battery life than Windows!!!! Now that should be easy -> Try iPad, Notion Ink, ARM tablets .....
Very good news. Looking forward seeing it when it gets released soon.
I don't understand why you'd need a stripped down version. I have the full version of 10.10 on my netbook, Asus EeePC 1005HAB. It runs great, it's fast and with the advanced power settings I can get over an extra hour out of the battery than Windows XP (originally on it).
Since Windows has yet to run on an ARM tablet... it has infinitely greater battery life.
Or I could just say there is no windows counter-part.
Since Windows has yet to run on an ARM tablet... it has infinitely greater battery life. Or I could just say there is no windows counter-part.
This particular slate is going to be Atom-based, though. Hopefully it will have decent graphics drivers, I hear the Unity interface is a bit heavier than the old Netbook Remix interface.
Ubuntu is good operating system it would be better than windows on this type of system could go browsing all the porn sites with fear of getting a nasty virus or Trojan
Why oh why should I use a linux powered X86 tablet ?
The whole point of using linux on a tablet is that you can have a widely supported OS on a powersipping ARM chip.
This is what Unity was made for. It's in the current netbook release, but didn't really shine there. Everything about Unity just shouts 'touch me!'.
Windows on tablets is clunky. It's slow, it's UI doesn't work very well with touch and most of its functionality is hampered. Unity on the other hand works very well on tablets, especially given the upcoming support for multi-touch.
The only problem is that Natty Narwhal will bring Unity to desktops. I've got nothing against it, but I don't see it working on a massive widescreen monitor. Fortunately, it's still Linux. Don't like a part of its UI? There's an app/script/whatever for that!
That is the p07 China Tablet. It also runs windows
Tablets and Linux. FINALLY a more practical use for an awesome operating system that nobody uses. I hope we see more Linux clients in the future.
Ubuntu gets too much press, but this seems a positive development if it turns out to be real. Other linuxes like Mint or PCLinuxOS often work better for the average dabbler into the linux world. You may think you're a geek because you play state of the art games with sli/crossfire etc, but you will never be a true geek until you grok linux. I suppose the ultimate would be successfully installing Gentoo or the dreaded LFS (linux from scratch). Hehe... that being said, Mint or PCLOS are as easy to install as any windows program, as long as you understand partitioning. 10 minute install and friendly dual boot with windows of any flavor. Try that when installing windows... it'll make any linux partitions you may have invisible. Search youtube for Steve Ballmer and get ready to laugh until you begin to cry. It's fun!
I don't understand why you'd need a stripped down version. I have the full version of 10.10 on my netbook, Asus EeePC 1005HAB. It runs great, it's fast and with the advanced power settings I can get over an extra hour out of the battery than Windows XP (originally on it).
Same here, dual boot it on my net book. I only keep XP because of iTunes.
My main issue with Ubuntu is that they appear to be aiming towards Unity and Wayland... both unproven as of yet. To expect Windows refugees to make sense of either of these seems worthy of ridicule... but maybe they'll be able to iron out any difficulties by the time 11.04 is released. I'll always be a Mint fan (especially now that the Debian based version is available in 64bit), but I must give Ubuntu credit for marketing strength if nothing else.
Same here, dual boot it on my net book. I only keep XP because of iTunes.
Why? A lot of linux media players have iPod support
Why? A lot of linux media players have iPod support
I wasnt aware of any that support syncing of apps and movie rentals. Theres more to ipods than just mp3s. Especially when you consider that standard ipods make up only a very small percentage of Apple's pmp sales. Thats a huge change from just a few years ago.
Claudecat, Wayland is purely on the back end, it won't make a bit of difference to the end user (except for greatly improved performance, of course). X11 is outdated, the top feature of X11 is that it can allow you to run applications over a network, which no longer has value, since the modern standard is to just write a web application that can be run in any web browser.
Future releases of Unity are mostly just bringing some 3d Compiz bling to the desktop without requiring the user to learn 1000+ hotkeys to initiate the FX. This lowers the barrier to entry for being a L337 Linux g33k with a desktop cube that spins around. Besides, it's just another taskbar to click on, there's not a whole lot to get your head around.
I tried Unity on a netbook with ATI graphics, and it was buggy, so I switch to Kubuntu with the KDE desktop. For tables, I would go with Android, it is open source as well and looks to have a wider market share. I do recommend Ubuntu/Kubuntu for Desktop use though.
Claudecat, Wayland is purely on the back end, it won't make a bit of difference to the end user (except for greatly improved performance, of course). X11 is outdated, the top feature of X11 is that it can allow you to run applications over a network, which no longer has value, since the modern standard is to just write a web application that can be run in any web browser.Future releases of Unity are mostly just bringing some 3d Compiz bling to the desktop without requiring the user to learn 1000+ hotkeys to initiate the FX. This lowers the barrier to entry for being a L337 Linux g33k with a desktop cube that spins around. Besides, it's just another taskbar to click on, there's not a whole lot to get your head around.
First of all, Wayland will have noticeable effects on the user. For start, all current gen closed source GPU drivers are rendered useless by Wayland. Second, it is yet unsure that all existing applications will work on Wayland (most will, but Wayland can't guarantee full compability. At least not yet)
And when it comes to Unity, that's another thingy I'm not too fond of. Unity is quite bugged and slow at the moment, but I'm sure that'll change soon enough. What I do question though, are Unity's open source credentials. While it is based on the open source GNOME interface, it's not fully open source.
OK Silmarunya, if I may summarize your post:
Wayland + Unity will make a huge difference to end-users if they screw it up and break everything.
Geez, man, the current natty build is crap, and Wayland isn't even a finished product yet, but I think the intent was to fix a lot of that stuff before it goes into a release, use some common sense....
x86 tablet ? not interested