Is An Ubuntu Tablet In Your Future?

Ubuntu is well known as being Open Source software which you can download and install on a computer. And for those who have worked with it, there is an appreciation for just how well it works. And given the experience on the desktop, anything done on a tablet is going to have the same ease to work with along with some fairly advanced features for those who using it.

Canonical, the parent company for Ubuntu is announcing Ubuntu for the tablet. And with that comes a number of claims for the OS they will be delivering. We are getting a preview on what you can expect to see when the Ubuntu OS is shipping on tablets. And some of those things include merging of the smart phone, tablet and desktop into something which seems to be seamless. While this will be shipping on hardware later this year, you still may be able to start experiencing what it can do for you this month. It can run right now on selected Android hardware like the Nexus Tablet. But this is not for the faint of heart. Head on over to the developers site and take a look for yourself.

You can see a number of great features on their site, but one of the interesting ones is the claims regarding convergence between the Ubuntu tablet being a full PC and claims of being able to access Windows apps with a thin client. By having the exact same OS running on the Ubuntu phone, Ubuntu PC and Ubuntu TV, you get a single platform to run everything. This is what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8 and has some successes and some not so successful. Given what Ubuntu has done over the past few years in delivering their computer OS, they may well be in a better position to accomplish this.

In the video below, they demonstrate the ability to show things from your Ubuntu phone in a side panel of the tablet. Or the capability to take your tablet, attach a keyboard and mouse to turn it into a computer. Seems pretty impressive if they can deliver. We talked previously about coming smartphones using the Ubuntu OS to drive them. With coming tablets based on the Ubuntu OS, it looks like there is an organized challenge to Google. And that challenge is going be a big uphill battle to take away market share from Google's Android OS.

Ubuntu is working to provide for a comprehensive package by providing Ubuntu for the smartphone, Ubuntu for the tablet and Ubuntu TV. There is even Ubuntu for Android where they promote Ubuntu as being able to run on existing Android devices as we have already talked about. And it may be that simplicity and multiple platforms which will give them the inroads to convince people to give Ubuntu a try on either their smartphones or tablets.

If you have ever worked with Ubuntu as a desktop OS or even as a server OS, you know how easy they have made things to install and work with. If they carry that forward to the tablets, they are going to make life difficult for Google. Is an Ubuntu tablet something which you are will to consider?