The Ubuntu devs provide a powerful emulator

Nov 18, 2014 13:21 GMT  ·  By

The new Ubuntu Touch operating system is almost ready and it will be soon integrated in a number of devices. The good news is that users can see what the OS works and looks like without having a phone to test it.

One of the most important tools put forth by the developers is the Ubuntu SDK, which allows users to make and pack apps for the new operating system. It's based on the Qt Creator and it can in fact do a lot more than this.

It comes with a wealth of features and it would take us half a day just to go through all of them, but there is one that really stands out and that is really useful for people who want to see Ubuntu Touch in action.

The feature is called the Ubuntu emulator and lets people do just that, run the mobile version of Ubuntu inside the SDK. This is a very handy tool to have, especially if you are a developer and you want to test your application in the operating system, but you don't have a physical device.

Installing the Ubuntu SDK and running the Ubuntu emulator is easy

Ubuntu emulator sounds like it's something complicated to get going, but in fact it's quite easy to do. You only have to enter a couple of commands in a terminal an everything else is done with the help of a very friendly interface.

"The emulator is an instance of Ubuntu for phones and tablets that runs on your Desktop in a window instead of on a physical device. It looks and operates the same as Ubuntu on a phone or tablet, but you use a mouse to interact with the GUI instead of physical touch and swipe gestures."

"Ubuntu emulators are a great way to develop apps, particularly when you do not have a physical device that currently runs Ubuntu. Once an emulator is attached to the SDK, you can run apps on them, install click packages on them, and etc. just as if they were physical devices," reads the official wiki.

Just run these commands in a terminal:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppa
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-sdk
Now, users can launch the Ubuntu SDK from the Dash and go to the Device category. From the small + icon that can be found in the bottom left of the window, you can create an Ubuntu Touch system based on the Dev images or on the newer RTM images.

The installation will take a while, as well as the boot process, but in the end you should be able to see a large mobile screen with Ubuntu Touch running inside.

Enjoy!

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