Things are happening, gears are in motion

Nov 25, 2014 10:18 GMT  ·  By

Canonical is working to complete their idea of convergence with the launch of Ubuntu Touch, a new operating system for mobile devices. The desktop flavor of Ubuntu will eventually share the same code with the mobile one, and their plans go even further than that.

Ubuntu will soon become an ecosystem with a single code base, one that can run on any supported platform without any major changes.

The same should also be true for the apps, although that also involves app developers, not just the Canonical team. This convergence plan is no longer just theory, it's happening now, so it's only natural to take a look beyond the immediate future.

So, what are the plans for the Ubuntu convergence after it will actually work? One of those plans is actually something proposed by Canonical a couple of years back that didn't really take hold.

The proper infrastructure for it wasn't ready, but that's changing now. We're talking, of course, about turning a mobile device into a miniPC, by connecting it to a monitor.

Ubuntu Touch as a mini PC

Your regular smartphone is powerful enough to power a full OS, so it's not an unreasonable target, but the technical challenges for this kind of functionality are not trivial.

In fact, it will take a great deal of dedication to make it work, although Canonical has already shown a proof of concept for their Ubuntu for Android project. Unfortunately, that particular initiative has been shelved for now, but the idea still stands.

A user asked the Ubuntu Touch team a similar question, as he wanted to know if this kind of feature was still being considered, and it looks like they haven't abandoned the idea. They just don't know when they will be able to implement it.

"I just saw an alpha of windowing in Unity 8 for Desktop and also recently, developers are already seeking help for testing the full shell rotation for Unity 8. I'm really getting excited and would like to know if there are already plans for the switching of Phone/Tablet UI to Desktop Mode when connecting to a monitor? Especially the devices planned to be supported while developing it," said Nick Luigi Eusebio on the Ubuntu mailing list.

The response came from Michael Zanetti, a software engineer at Canonical. "There are definitely plans. However, it's still a long way to get there. As you've seen, we started the work on the desktop mode now. Keeping the convergence goal in mind we'll work towards that but I can't give any dates on when it will be ready for testing."

It's good to know that Canonical is still considering this as an option. Now that both Microsoft and Apple are clearly working on their version of convergence, this kind of feature will definitely set Ubuntu apart from everyone else.

This is the old Ubuntu for Android concept. It's not exactly identical, but the basic idea remains the same.

Ubuntu for Android (5 Images)

Ubuntu for Android
Ubuntu for Android workingUbuntu for Android with Unity
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