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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
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...Read more...
Remember Tizen? It’s the open source mobile operating system that Samsung and Intel partnered on back in 2011 (and may be actually running on handsets this year); formerly, it was MeeGo (which was famously scrapped the same day it debuted on Nokia’s N9 handset), and before that it was called Moblin. Many have either forgotten all...Read more...
It might not come as much of a surprise, but according to a recent survey conducted by EE Times, Linux continues to tear up the charts in the embedded market (embedded refers to special-purpose PCs found in things like TVs, media players, cars, machinery and so forth). Between 2012 and 2013, companies began to shift...Read more...
When Canonical debuted its "Ubuntu Tablet OS" last week, company CEO Mark Shuttleworth helped show off its many features in a six-minute video. And what we saw at CES2013 first hand was impressive - an OS that tries to do things a bit different, and uses all four edges to make navigating the OS' different functions an...Read more...
It’s not the first Dell notebook running Ubuntu, but the latest model that Canonical is talking up differs from past Ubuntu laptops in that this is a Dell XPS 13 packed with killer components. All too often, Ubuntu gets plopped onto lower-end notebooks (see: the entire failed netbook craze), but this one rocks...Read more...
It’s a big day for Canonical, maker of Ubuntu; in addition to today being the official launch of the Ubuntu-optimized Steam for Linux client, the company announced that the Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu for smartphones will be coming on February 21st (along with tools for flashing devices). It looks like...Read more...
It’s only been a matter of weeks since Valve announced that Steam for Linux was in beta, but it’s apparently all polished up and ready for action. You can now grab the Steam for Linux client, which is compatible with Ubuntu versions 10.04-12.10, for free from the Ubuntu Software Center. This is a huge deal for folks who love...Read more...
Just how important has Linux become? Very. Just weeks after hearing that Steam would be launching for the world's favorite open-source desktop OS, AMD has just announced new Catalyst drivers made specifically for -- you guessed it -- Linux. The Catalyst 13.1 Proprietary Linux Graphics were just let loose into the...Read more...
Although Canonical is still hunting for OEM partners to develop handsets for Ubuntu on smartphones, the OS is alive and well, running smooth and pretty on prototype handsets at CES 2013. The Canonical folks were kind enough to give us a demo, which you can see below: Note in particular the lack of any hardware button...Read more...
Ubuntu is absolutely the most well-known flavor of Linux over on the desktop side, but it's far from owning a huge swath of the market share. But can Canonical make inroads in the mobile market? The image shown here may look like your average Galaxy Nexus, but look a little closer at the screen: that's not Android. That's Ubuntu. The fabled...Read more...
Think Ubuntu could make a great tablet OS? So does Canonical, and it sure looks like Canonical is jumping into the tablet OS market today. Ubuntu's website features a giant clock that is counting down to 1PM EST today, with a hint that can only mean touch-friendly Ubuntu tablets are in the future. Actually, it's not too surprising to...Read more...