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Ubuntu for tablets

ubuntu.com

159 pointsbpierre63 comments

I don't understand their branding. I'd love to buy "The Ubuntu Tablet", I don't really want to buy a "BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition". It doesn't sound like I'm getting something from Canonical, but instead some alternate edition of a device by a company I don't know of. Especially since this is the only model being launched, why not offer a definitive edition?

It's like if Google had called the "Google Nexus 6" the "Huawei Nexus 6P Android Edition"

Really good point, but I think Canonical is wielding much less influence in their hardware relationships than Google can, thus the <hardware manufacturer><software developer> official name.

It seems childish to want your name first, but I believe it means a lot to some companies.

My guess is that this is just their launch device.

I bet they will add other tablets from other manufacturers over time. Like with normal laptops, you can choose the hardware based on your needs. To me the software is key, not if the tablet is Ubuntu-branded.

The M10 is an existing device sold with Android. You are getting an alternate edition of a device by a company you haven't heard of. (Confusingly the full device name is either M10 HD or M10 Full HD, with 800p or 1080p displays, respectively; the Ubuntu one seems to be the Full HD model.)

The Nexus 6P is not available in another edition. But Google did, in fact, sell other devices much like you describe, though they were called "Play Edition" (running a non-customised stock Google Android).

> The M10 is an existing device sold with Android.

Ah, when I googled it, the first page only had results related to the Ubuntu announcement, so I wasn't aware. That confirms my suspicions though.

I know it may not be entirely rational, but because of that, it feels like I'm buying into a fragmented device line. Like when buying an Android phone or Windows computer, you have to research brands and be careful you don't get a device that some crappy OEM filled with crapware or bugs/incompatibilities in the hardware. Like BQ will have more overall control over the device experience than Ubuntu.

>But Google did, in fact, sell other devices much like you describe, though they were called "Play Edition" (running a non-customised stock Google Android).

Yep, and I personally hated that convention, it's the OEM and Google admitting "Our device is actually much better, when you remove our custom modifications". It also didn't do very well (but that may have just been because of the prices of Play Edition devices).

Canonical say the M10 is ‘the first in a series of converged devices’, suggesting that more hardware will be announced in the coming months.

I would buy an Ubuntu tablet in a heartbeat. I've been on a Mac for years now and I keep pondering the switch to Ubuntu but I'm having a really hard time justifying the investment in actually switching because these Mac's keep on chugging along.

The MS Surface is really appealing to me on form factor, but I won't switch to anything that doesn't have a Unix/Linux base. I really like the new iPad from a form factor standpoint...but I won't buy an iPad specifically because I'm not going to be coding on iOS.

An Ubuntu tablet would entirely fill my need.

Keep in mind that an Ubuntu tablet is likely going to run the arm version of Ubuntu which has far fewer packages and PPA repositories available than the amd64 branch.

Why not install it on your Mac and dual boot?

I've had a really bad time getting Ubuntu to play nice on my MBA. I don't really know a ton about the process so I just follow the instruction I find online but it never works well.

Surely you can cross compile or even compile on the target (albeit really really slowly).

For most packages this is a viable option for a more experienced user. But for someone just starting out it would unnecessarily complicate things and limit what they can do. For newbies it's important to remove as many potential stumbling blocks to make things as simple as possible.

Unfortunately there always seems to be one or two binary packages without any source available that I end up needing.

You can run Ubuntu on your Macs. I use this at work every day. Kubuntu, specifically.

I recently build myself an ebook reader from a Nexus 7 using Ubuntu Touch:

https://www.exratione.com/2015/10/turning-a-nexus-7-fhd-tabl...

Dealing with other tablets and Touch is pretty hit and miss - you might be able to get it to work, but more likely not unless you're pretty experienced in low-level hacking in OS and devices.

Certainly that hardware doesn't have enough memory to keep Beru happy all the time, which is a pain, but I'm prepared to put up with the minor inconvenience in exchange for not having an reader that reports everything I do back to central.

If an official Ubuntu tablet can be disconnected from their report-everything-to-central mechanisms to the same degree that Ubuntu on the desktop can, then an official tablet may be worth the additional cost just to use as a reader.

Nice! Do you have a video? I'm curious as to how smoothly it responds to touch.

No video, I'm afraid. It is responsive, but not as feature-rich or advanced an interface as Android or ioS, of course. My main complaints on that front are lack of some idioms and that it isn't as smart about what the intent of touches are in some situations. It is like venturing a good six years into the past in terms of overall polish of the interface.

Also the web browser in Ubuntu Touch is painfully lacking in features, and you can't yet put Firefox on there - but then I'm not using it for browsing.

Seems like taking a Nexus 7 and gutting its OS simply to make a privacy-conscious eReader is a waste of a perfectly good tablet. Wouldn't it be easier and probably cheaper just to get a "dumb" e-reader (i.e. some kind of Kobo)?

Well, it still does all the other Ubuntu things, and it is a cheap tablet. My survey of the ereader space didn't turn up anything I liked, or that seemed to come without strings. It is very possible that I missed an obvious and better.

Oh, this is kind of interesting. I mostly use my desktop workstation, with my Dell tablet serving as my portable thin client over ssh. I use Termux ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=... ) to get my essential command line fix and it really is a wonderful example of a quality Android app for people like us, but I'd still kill to have a real desktop Linux on my tablet. How I pine for the option to sometimes drop into a good old i3 session on my tablet...

Has anybody used the Android version of this tablet? It looks decent but it's hard to say and my Spanish is too rusty to read most of the pages that talk about it.

I'd kill for a superb physical keyboard with that dream tablet :)

The Thinkpad Tablet 2 with the bluetooth keyboard w/trackpoint that's designed for it and cygwin installed has been serving me well for a while now. Anything involving local I/O is pretty horrible, but as "get me an X11 setup I can ssh to the systems I'm working on" rig it's been lovely.

What's the battery life? That's a HUGE issue on mobile devices and it's something that you really have to optimize for. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned on the page (or, suspicious it's not good and was omitted on purpose).

Running generic Linux (as opposed to something highly customized like Android) makes me worry the battery life won't be that great.

Its a 7280mAh, which is ok. About the same as the old Samsung 10in tablets.

As for usage. Yeah I have no clue. BQ's Ubuntu Phone apparently gets around 2 days worth of use for most users, so who knows.

That makes sense, but if you can run 'real' linux apps instead of just 'tablet' apps you could be in for some hurt.

Would powertop be able to help?

You could use programs like that to figure out what the cause was. I'm just thinking that most programs for linux aren't written to be ultra-battery misers. The prevalence of laptops has probably helped, but I'd be willing to guess it's still a problem.

Ah, I was referring to the "Tunables" tab.

What's the price on this, does anyone know?

Also, typed Ctrl-F "linux" on that page and didn't find a single mention, which is interesting from a branding perspective.

Edit: Can this run, say LibreOffice or Gimp or any other Linux program?

Canonical has been pushing that for a while. Even the main Desktop page doesn't mention Linux.

I guess the rationale is that for the consumer market, it's just another word that confuses [even scares]. Therefore it's safer to omit.

Everyone who cares already know.

All of Ubuntu's mobile offerings have always been full GNU environments, so yes, it is very likely you could run LO and, say, Blender on this thing. You can already run them on a Nexus 4 with Ubuntu Touch too, but the screen might have impeded your usability a bit.

FWIW, the Android edition of the same device is 279 EUR MSRP.

Can you put this version of Ubuntu on existing tablets, or does it have to be an Extra Special Not Shipping Yet Ubuntu Edition Tablet?

Would someone in Shentzen please put this on generic $39 tablets and sell them on Alibaba? Thanks.

According to theverge[1], "Canonical’s engineers tell me that given the technical capabilities of Ubuntu’s users, they’ll soon find ways to get the OS on other devices."

1: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10914004/canonical-m10-ubun...

In the same way Ubuntu Touch / Plasma Mobile get really good support on the Nexus 4 and 5, it is likely this one will have an official image for the Nexus 7 / 9.

Will an Ubuntu tablet ever be able to match an iPad as far as power consumption goes? I'm a fan of both Ubuntu and Fedora but both do pretty poorly on my laptop with respect to battery life compared to Windows (and Windows battery life is pretty bad compared to a comparable Macbook in my experience).

I've not tried it personally, but I've read good things regarding Ubuntu's battery life on phones compared with Android. My understanding is that a lot of it is down to background apps being paused, like in iOS. I think the tablet mode would do the same, while the desktop mode won't, but in that cause you could probably plug in.

When you connect a mouse and keyboard, is it running "full" Ubuntu or the sandboxed mobile version? (i.e. is it like an iPad compared to a Mac or like a Windows tablet compared to a PC?)

I ran their developer version on an old Nexus 7 for a while, and it was more like the latter (Windows analogue). There is still a full terminal experience available even on the phone as I understand it, just a lot more proprietary software.

At one point, in the not too distant future, the mobile version will become the "full" Ubuntu version.

All Ubuntu mobile devices are running Unity 8, which is the next version of their desktop period written in Qt set to replace Unity 7. Currently they are still shipping Unity 7 on the desktop, though. Whenever desktop Ubuntu gets Unity 8, it would be able to shrink the screen down to a phone-like UI if you shrunk the display.

Great idea, let's see how well it is executed.

I signed up for email notification. I am a huge fan of iPad (I have a mini 4 and a Pro). This looks to be about a $250 product so the price is nice as well as being able to do software development on it with a keyboard. I do a ton of work on my iPad Pro (writing, research, SSH to servers) as well as reading and watching movies. A Linux tablet could be even more general purpose depending on how well it is executed.

It will be a more general purpose computing device. The point of convergence is that you can use it in either mode, 'consuming' as a tablet, or 'creating' with a keyboard.

But, _be reasonable_ with your expectations. It's not an iPad and won't have that polish. For a start there aren't _that many_ apps in the FOSS environment that are touch aware. Canonical has made a set, and provides a good development environment so that applications can be made touch aware. But, we're looking at Linux ala 2000, not ala 2015.

Sigh, I would love to try Ubuntu on my x86 based Lenovo tablet. But this is not that. This is tablet maker X trying to get unit volumes up by adding another OS choice other than Windows 10 (so I presume they only have ARM tablets)

The real news is that they are planning to release one with the following specs: http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/devices.

However, without a system to maintain it upright, and with those specs, the following marketing image, while very enticing, is a bit misleading.

https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/1273c568-tablet-overview-conver...

Can't they just have a stand on the back like the surface does?

Doesn't really give you a "laptop" experience, but at least you can still set up shop on a table.

Anyways, it sounds cool. To me, the specs seem pretty conservative so hopefully it's a low cost device. Something cool to hack on.

They're likely just contracting with an OEM to build the thing, and it's probably reusing a design of an existing Android tablet. It would likely be prohibitively expensive to get a bespoke custom designed tablet that has a kickstand like the Surface.

The Surface's hardware in general would be a great fit, as it is also very reasonably spec'ed for a laptop. Unfortunately, Linux lacks drivers for the touchscreen, camera, buttons and the typecover connection.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3xhmu7/just_i...

Depending on the model, Linux drivers do exist, even if they aren't all in mainline kernels yet. Just a week ago I booted [1] on my Surface Pro 3 from a pendisk (didn't even need to disable secure boot) and pretty much everything just worked, including the pen, touchscreen, type cover and sound. Note that Linux Mint is much closer to Ubuntu than Chakra, which is based on Arch Linux.

The only thing that didn't work so well was sleep (only slept the first time); that's sometimes the case even with "normal" PCs, I'm sure that can be sorted out given enough effort.

The situation is not so good with the Surface Pro 4... a matter of time, I guess. I've been reading even Microsoft is yet to get Windows working perfectly on it, so...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3w8du2/outoft...

There are hundreds of different types of tablet stands on the marketplace, some as simple as a V-shaped clip that the tablet rests on. People who fly all the time (a general excuse for sticking to the laptop form factor) could velcro or suction cup cup the tablet the seat in front of them.

It's cool to see a "working" tablet that uses a bluetooth mouse & keyboard combo that debunks the stupidity of the "convertable" machines that nobody buys which mostly seem to be an excuse to make a machine with a touchscreen to also have a trackpad.

Well I looked at the images for the phones and they all say 33 minutes of talk time on their lock screen. Why wouldn't they put a higher number or leave that off completely?

The tablet also says "33 photos taken". Maybe there's a significance to the number 33?

The 33rd degree is the highest degree of initiation into Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Clearly they are in on the conspiracy.

The big killer here is the lack of availability. I'd love to try an Ubuntu tablet, but this only for Europe. Given my issues with Android, I'd love to try an Ubuntu phone as well, but the only ones they sell, aren't available on my carrier or even in my country.

Heck, I wanted a Lumia 950... and Microsoft has decided not to support my carrier, even though the phone's hardware does.

A large part of why nobody has broken the Google/Apple duopoly seems to be that nobody can get another option in my hands.

Your right, but the routes to market for hardware devices are quite limited.

It's slightly easier to get tablets into market, but the major OEM's are very conservative.

For Phones the issue is that people buy hardware from their network provider - there are very few other routes to market. First, the network operators primarily focus on 'general' consumer users so they are conservative about the options they choose. Second their scale means that unless they believe they can sell _millions_ of units there's nothing in it for them. Finally, the rest of the market for mobiles is completely locked down - there are only a few alternative routes to market. All the software vendors (ie Mozilla and Canonical) have been trying to work with alternative (primarily online) providers.

The raft of issues is massive and far beyond the essential problem of creating software that's good enough!

Unity 8 is the reason why I bought a touch screen laptop 2 years ago, but it's just not production ready... Sported elementary OS from the SSD for a while, and o boy was it fast... I gave up on it and I've been using Windows 10 just because it works really well with the touch screen, but it's slow and annoying for any meaningful development work. Hopefully, Unity 8 is gonna be released soon.

Amazon.es has an Android version of the tablet with similar specs for €195:

http://www.amazon.es/Aquaris-M10-MediaTek-MT8163B-Lollipop/d...

The Ubuntu version has a faster CPU and better camera.

This is so awesome.

But the BQ Aquaris M10 still has a low resolution, compared to what most tablet users have come to expect. I deeply wish there were open source small (~10" diag.) high PPI touch displays outside of iOS or Android devices.

I found it hilarious they did not even mention this on the page. My first question was the screen size and I had to google the hardwares name to find it.

"using the micro HDMI port to connect to an external monitor"

If it can be made to be used as passthrough to be an external monitor, I'm sold.

I see the processor to be MT8163A. Is this an ARM chip or Intel? If ARM, does that mean only apps compiled for ARM can run on this?

MT = MediaTek.

If the CPU is MediaTek then pretty much by definition it isn't an intel. There are intel based tablets with a mediatek chipset though.

BTW, a cursory search seems to the suggest that MT8163A is a quad core ARM cortex A7 based CPU. [1]

[1] http://skinflint.co.uk/bq-aquaris-m10-full-hd-16gb-black-b00...

Yeah, it's ARM-based. Fortunately this isn't a big deal when the idea is to use a mix of new application created specificaly for this platform and existing open source applications, nearly all of which compile on and have been packaged for ARM.

I'm not buying one unless it sends all my interactions to amazon

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-deskt...

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