Items tagged with Ubuntu
As recently as last month, it appeared that the Ubuntu smartphone would be delayed until 2015, but suddenly Canonical announced that it has secured manufacturing deals that will being the handset to market yet this year. Canonical has agreed with Spain’s bq and China’s Meizu to market the Ubuntu smartphone globally. Everything is already under development, and at some point this year customers will be able to purchase the handset online from bq, Meizu, and Canonical itself. In terms of carrier support, there are 16 members in the Canonical Carrier Advisory Group, including Deutsche Telekom, KT, SK Telecom, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Vodafone. “Ubuntu introduces a new UI paradigm...
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If Canonical is ever going to establish Ubuntu Touch as legitimate contender among mobile operating systems, it's a journey that won't truly begin until sometime next year. That's because the first Ubuntu Touch smartphone isn't likely to launch before 2015 even though Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said last month that we should expect Ubuntu Touch devices in 2014. Canonical community manager Jono Bacon offered up the revised ship date in a Reddit Q&A, adding that Ubuntu Touch is embarking on a long road with many components. "I would be surprised if we see anything like this before 2015. When the major OEMs/carriers ship, this is when many of the ISVs will be on-board too," Bacon said....
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We haven’t heard much from Canonical about its Ubuntu for mobile since its ill-fated $32 million crowdfunding attempt, but it appears that the company has finally found a hardware partner for its mobile operating system. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth dropped the news to CNET: "We have concluded our first set of agreements to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones. We've shifted gears from 'making a concept' to 'it's going to ship.' That has a big impact on the team," he said. Shuttleworth declined to name the manufacturer, but he did say that Canonical is actively in talks with four major brands that sell phones all over the world. If that’s indeed the case, the mobile market will get...
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A couple of weeks ago, we talked about Dell's latest Ubuntu notebook, the XPS 13 "Developer Edition", also dubbed "Sputnik 3". This is the kind of notebook that most Linux fans would love to have; it packs in a fast Intel Core i7 dual-core, a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and a crisp 1080p 13.3-inch display. As fantastic as the XPS 13 is, though, its $1,549 price tag puts it out of range for a lot of people. The upside to that is that Dell offers a decent range of other Ubuntu notebooks, but as mentioned in the earlier post, things could be improved. With Dell tackling the high-end, what about the low-end? Or perhaps, ultra low-end? ASUS is on it. In an announcement this week from Canonical, we learn...
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When Dell first began offering Ubuntu-flavored notebooks, it was unclear whether or not it was a venture that the PC builder would stick with. Admittedly, it seemed at first that Dell was just testing the waters, to see if the supposed demand was real. To date, the company hasn't littered its lineup with such offerings, and it's especially weak in the mainstream consumer side, but things have certainly gotten better since the initial release. Where you'll have your best luck of scoring a nice Ubuntu-powered Dell notebook is on the business side, with the Latitude series. Or, if your goal is great performance in a small form-factor, there's been an XPS model available as well, dubbed "XPS 13 Developer...
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When Windows Vista first came out, it was plagued by problems, including performance issues and compatibility woes (most of which were resolved with the first Service Pack). At the time, there were some who predicted that Linux would supplant Windows as the mainstream OS. That didn't happen, of course, partly because SP1 solved most of Vista's issues, and also because user friendly versions of Linux weren't quite ready to hold Aunt Mabel by the hand. Plus, it wasn't the platform of choice for gamers. Are we on the verge of a revolution now? Probably not, but Linux has definitely improved in every area since those days. What's more, gaming support and performance is fast becoming center stage,...
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First, let’s get this out of the way: Canonical’s tantalizing Ubuntu Edge superphone is not going to happen. The company’s Indiegogo campaign to raise $32 million, which we’ve written about a time or two, didn’t hit its intended goal. In fact, despite smashing a crowdfunding record with $12,812,776, Canonical was still roughly $20 million shy of raising enough cash to fund the ambitious project. The company said from the get-go that if it didn’t secure all $32 million in funding, it wouldn’t attempt the project at all. That’s fair enough--if you’re going to do something, you should really do it right, especially using millions in other people’s...
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When the Pebble smartwatch hit Kickstarter looking to raise $100,000, nobody could have guessed that it would annihilate crowdfunding records and end up generating $10,266,845 in pledges. It’s far less surprising to see Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge superphone--a smartphone with tantalizing features--rack up the dollars in crowdfunding support on Indiegogo, and in fact the Edge has beaten Pebble’s record, according to Canonical. At the time of this writing, the Ubuntu Edge smartphone campaign has generated $10,485,825--with 6 days to go. That’s a staggering amount of money, to be sure, and the fact that it’s all crowdsourced is all the more impressive. Still, there’s...
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Canonical announced that its Ubuntu Edge superphone has a permanent (until the end of its fundraising campaign) price tag of $695. “No limited quantities, no more price changes,” reads a post. “You wanted a more affordable Edge, and now you’ve got it.” It’s a pricey device, no doubt about it, but the Ubuntu Edge promises incredible specs, including the fastest possible mobile processor (which is TBD), 4GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, unscratchable glass, a 4.5-inch display resolution of 1280x720, stereo speakers, dual-LTE and GSM, and more. It will also be unlocked, and it will dual boot to Android and Ubuntu mobile with an Ubuntu Desktop OS on board,...
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Canonical is taking a progressive, innovative approach to its invasion of the mobile industry. We’ve seen its Ubuntu for mobile in action, and the OS is slick and smooth, but the company is working on hardware, too, which is taking the form of the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It’s still a prototype, but the thing looks impressive; the look is classy, with understated, sharp slanted angles, and future models will be built of a single piece of textured metal. Canonical says that it will have a 4.5-inch display made from sapphire crystal instead of glass (which allegedly only diamonds can scratch), the fastest quad-core mobile processor available, at least 4GB of RAM, and at least 128GB of...
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Whether it’s for the lulz (as they say) or for more nefarious reasons, the Ubuntu forums have been hacked. Canonical posted the message via a splash page where the forum site is usually located. “There has been a security breach on the Ubuntu Forums,” reads the page. “The Canonical IS team is working hard as we speak to restore normal operations.” Canonical didn’t mince words about the extent of the damage, either, stating that the hackers made off with everybody’s username, password, and email address in the database. This is when using different passwords for all of your many services pays off, because Canonical advises users who have used their same...
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It's tough to say at this point whether or not this move is more than just a PR stunt, but Verizon Wireless is the latest member to join the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group. Considering that VZW is America's largest mobile operator, that's a lot of notable weight being put behind an open source initiative. The carrier has professed that it will work closely with the group in order to "shape Ubuntu into the most compelling new, alternative platform for mobile. Samir Vaidya from the Device Technology team at Verizon Wireless said: “Verizon Wireless is joining Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group to participate in technology discussions around this new platform, which has the ability...
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The "Unity Dash" in Ubuntu has always been designed around the goal of delivering relevant information to the user, but come version 13.10, due out in October, things are about to become vastly improved. With that release will come 50 brand-new "Scopes", along with a "SmartScope" filtering service. With these, users will be able to fine-tune their results like never before, and also access a bunch of information that wasn't previously possible. Peering into a screenshot provided by the folks at OMG! Ubuntu, we can see many Scopes that should prove useful to a great number of users. While we won't list them all, the most notable ones include Wikipedia, Firefox Bookmarks, Flickr, Dictionary, SoundCloud,...
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It wasn't all that long ago that mainstream gaming on Linux was virtually unheard of. Sure, solutions like WINE have been around for awhile now, but it's only recently that developers and gamers alike have truly started to embrace Linux as a viable platform. Even Dell is getting in on the action by announcing a lower priced version of its Alienware X51 with Ubuntu. The Alienware X51 is a small form factor gaming PC about the size of an Xbox 360 console, only much more powerful and flexible. We were so impressed with the machine that we gave it an Editor's Choice award at the conclusion of our autopsy (check out the full review). If you're willing to trade Windows for Ubuntu, you'll save a Benjamin...
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