Ubuntu will eventually run on mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, TVs, vehicle smart screens and kitchen appliances, promised Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth.
Canonical
is planning on throwing its hat in the increasingly crowded mobile operating
system space, according to the company's founder.
Ubuntu
will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart screens by 2014, Ubuntu's founder and
Canonical CEO Mark
Shuttleworth wrote on his blog Oct. 31. The desktop interface in the latest
version of Ubuntu released this month, Ubuntu 11.10, "was designed with
this specific vision in mind," Shuttleworth said.
"By
14.04 LTS Ubuntu will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart screens from the car
to the office kitchen, and it will connect those devices cleanly and seamlessly
to the desktop, the server and the cloud," he wrote. Canonical expects
this long-term support version of Ubuntu will be ready to hit the market in
April of 2014.
Unity
is intended to provide a single core interface framework that scales across all
screens and supports all toolkits, according to Shuttleworth. The investments
Canonical has made on interfaces would translate well to touch-screen
scenarios, and "with a little love and attention, will work equally well
in mouse, keyboard or stylus-driven environments," Shuttleworth wrote,
adding that there will be no screen size restrictions for Ubuntu.
"We
will see our work on the Ubuntu platform land in a variety of formats current
and yet to be invented," he wrote.
Along
with regular updates to the Ubuntu operating system twice a year, Canonical
releases long-term-support versions of its server and desktop versions of the
Ubuntu operating system, which are supported for five and three years,
respectively. Canonical released version 11.10 earlier this month, with the
Unity desktop as the default interface. The next release, Ubuntu 12.04, will be
the first LTS version to have the new Unity desktop interface.
There
is a lot of competition, including Apple's iOS, Google's Android OS and even
Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. Research In Motion will still be trying to
compete, and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 will feature both a desktop
interface and the company's mobile Metro UI. Even so, Shuttleworth sees
possibilities because most users are no longer "exclusively loyal" to
a single technology provider and are willing to run a "diverse" set
of devices running various operating systems to get online.
"There
is no winner in place yet. This opportunity remains wide open, but only to
products that deliver excellent experiences for users, across a full range of
device categories," Shuttleworth wrote.
Shuttleworth
said the "storage, syncing and sharing capabilities" of the Ubuntu
One personal cloud service are "not just a convenience but a
requirement" as users increasingly share content and use diverse devices,
perhaps as a reference to Apple
launching the iCloud service. Ubuntu One's support for other operating
systems shows "the ability of Ubuntu to play nice with others," he
said.
Noting
that Canonical has good relationships with Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and
ARM, which will make chipsets that will power future devices, and with PC and
device manufacturers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Lenovo, Acer and IBM,
Ubuntu is well-poised for the market, he said. Canonical will have to
"provide the heavy lifting" to get in the ballgame, but there will be
opportunities for the broader community to get involved, according to
Shuttleworth.
"We
are determined to bring more free software to more people around the world and
building that future hand in hand with device manufacturers is the best way to
do it," he wrote.
More
details will be released at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Fla., from
Oct. 31 to Nov. 4.
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