Ubuntu Touch OS

[John]

Canonical appears to be getting ready to release a fully touch-enabled Ubuntu Linux operating system. Will Ubuntu tablets and smartphones be far behind?

2013: The year of the Ubuntu Linux tablet and smartphone?

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth ushered in the new year with a promise to his followers that the Linux desktop will be retrofitted for mobile devices and the cloud.

Seems to be the imperative, particularly as tablets and smartphones increasingly replace the desktop PC and the cloud becomes the storage mecca of the next generation.

Here's his holiday message, published the day after Christmas:

"Unity in 2013 will be all about mobile – bringing Ubuntu to phones and tablets," Shuttleworth wrote on his blog. "Shaping Unity to provide the things we’ve learned are most important across all form factors, beautifully. Broadening the Ubuntu community to include mobile developers who need new tools and frameworks to create mobile software. Defining new form factors that enable new kinds of work and play altogether. Bringing clearly into focus the driving forces that have shaped our new desktop into one facet of a bigger gem."

He continued about the cloud:

"It’s also why we’ll push deeper into the cloud, making it even easier, faster and cost effective to scale out modern infrastructure on the cloud of your choice, or create clouds for your own consumption and commerce. Whether you’re building out a big data cluster or a super-scaled storage solution, you’ll get it done faster on Ubuntu than any other platform, thanks to the amazing work of our cloud community."