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Ubuntu for Android
Canonical's Ubuntu for
Android offering has been announced. "Ubuntu for Android
provides a full desktop experience, including office software, web
browsing, email and media applications, on Android phones docked to a
screen and keyboard. Thanks to tight integration with the Android service
layer, the transition between the two environments is seamless, making it
easy to access the phone's services from the desktop when docked."
The target audience at this point looks to be handset manufacturers rather
than end users.
(Log in to post comments)
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 17:40 UTC (Tue) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
That's actually a very cool hack.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:22 UTC (Tue) by fuhchee (subscriber, #40059) [Link]
Can someone point out how this works?
Is it ubuntu userspace running on the android kernel? Is it dual boot?
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:27 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Article forthcoming shortly.In short: it's kind of like running Ubuntu within a container on the Android kernel. It will behave a lot like a dual-boot system, with the exception that both systems can be running simultaneously.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:28 UTC (Tue) by davidm (subscriber, #35) [Link]
No, not dual boot, Ubuntu user space is running on the Android kernel at the same time as Android is running. Android drives the phone screen, Ubuntu drives the external screen(s).
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:33 UTC (Tue) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
This is relatively straight-forward. I was actually presenting something similar at the Android Builder Summit last week: http://www.slideshare.net/opersys/leveraging-androids-lin...
There's no reason you can't run several stacks side-by-side on the same kernel (Android+Ubuntu+Angstrom, etc.) The key issue is I/O and, more specifically, display. So long as these stacks are rendering onto separate framebuffers then it's just a matter of making sure the filesystems can coexist -- an easy matter for chroot.
And in this case, it looks like Android and Ubuntu are indeed rendering to completely different framebuffers.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 23:57 UTC (Tue) by cpuchip (guest, #83032) [Link] http://sites.google.com/site/androidnothize/nebtop/webtopHe discusses there how webtop is started by motorola phones. It gives really good insight into how the environment is setup. In my opinion this is exactly what canonical is doing (some of the graphics is shared between the two *like receiving a phone call*) only it's scaled way back so all you get in a file browser, firefox browser, pdf viewer and android in window (mobile view).
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 17:42 UTC (Tue) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
I am pretty impressed by the way canononical does, to get into consumer household.Good job!
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 18:23 UTC (Tue) by alogghe (subscriber, #6661) [Link]
This looks very cool and I'd love this feature on a phone (I'd buy a new one specifically for this if it had a hard keyboard).
What is the x86 story though?
I'd love to install cyanogenmod alongside an ubuntu desktop on my laptop.
Oh my yes Posted Feb 21, 2012 18:37 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
I'll take two, please.
Now all we need is a wireless "dock" and everything will be awesome.
Oh my yes Posted Feb 22, 2012 11:04 UTC (Wed) by mchazaux (guest, #64024) [Link]
Bluetooth mice and keyboards have existed for a long time ;-)
Oh my yes Posted Feb 22, 2012 15:49 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
Sure, but bluetooth monitors have not. Plus, it should Just Work(tm) with minimal setup.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 18:38 UTC (Tue) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
Excellent idea indeed!
I've recently been running Linaro Ubuntu on pandaboard, which should be similar performance class if not superior to most smartphones. I must say it's pretty amazing as a development environment / WIP, not yet ready for end users though.
My main concern would be rootfs speed. On a class 10 SD card it's unbearable, mainly caused by too many daemons running in Ubuntu (some of them could probably be easily thrownn over board). On an external USB harddrive it starts to get usable, but would any phone have equally fast flash available?
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 7:31 UTC (Wed) by Da_Blitz (guest, #50583) [Link]
This may not be due to daemons but due to the nature of SD cards which have nice high sequential speeds but horrible horrible random write performance
one of the ac100 guys did an article on this
check out the 900KB/s write performance on the TEAM class 10 from the 2nd link (4KB write), choice of SD card or USB stick can have a huge impact on performance
the internal eMMC (toshiba eMMC) has similarly bad performance
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 12:32 UTC (Wed) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
Of course the root cause is the SD speed. That's why I use a USB HD at the moment. But if you have the memory you have (like eMMC in some phone), the first thing you can do than running less software. E.g. updating some indexes for Ubuntu software center or whatever it is called causes 10-20 minutes of 95% IOwait if my rootfs is on SD. And because I don't think that this system has any IO prioritization, it means that starting a new process during that time will be a horrible user experience
The second thing would be writing smarter software, but that tends to be hard... (making your IOs prioritized properly and serialized as much as possible)
The third thing could be replacing your storage device. Worked for me on the pandaboard and for the AC100 guy you refer to. But will not work for Canonical's target group of Android phone owners.
Thanks for the links. While the slowness of most flash media is well-known, his detailed comparisons look indeed interesting (although I might have a couple questions on the methodology...) Should try how my own media compares.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 14:55 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>updating some indexes for Ubuntu software center or whatever it is called causes 10-20 minutes of 95% IOwait if my rootfs is on SD
Assuming this has the same cause as the equivalent problem on Debian (apt tries to be very safe about its operations and syncs very frequently) you would probably find that libeatmydata would solve that.
Of course, it's called that for a reason...
Ubuntu on slow flash memory Posted Feb 23, 2012 6:58 UTC (Thu) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
One background program (there are also others) in question is
http://packages.debian.org/sid/apt-xapian-index
so I don't think there is any need to by safe in its operations, because no critical info should be updated. But of course "no need" doesn't guarantee that it doesn't happen.
Thanks for the hint with libeatmydata. (For now I have my rootfs on an HDD so there is no need to have "my data eaten". But I'm sure it will be handy sometimes in the future.)
Use Logging FS to avoid random writes? Posted Feb 23, 2012 11:00 UTC (Thu) by gmatht (guest, #58961) [Link]
I would have thought with a logging fs you could pretty much avoid the need to ever do random write (assuming you always have unfragmented free space). Apparently, Nilfs can significantly outperform other filesystems on sdcards: http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/meego-dev/2010-May/00225...
Use Logging FS to avoid random writes? Posted Feb 23, 2012 22:45 UTC (Thu) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
> Apparently, Nilfs can significantly outperform other filesystems on sdcards
One of the nice things with Linux, you don't run out of filesystems to try too quickly.
Maybe the Linaro Ubuntu guys haven't (yet) spent too many thoughts on that issue. They were running ext4 (IIRC), haven't checked whether logging was on, but at least the noatime mount option was *NOT* in use (I changed that). Probably they just took what is in the standard Ubuntu desktop.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 18:39 UTC (Tue) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
This is just awesome! Unity integration seems to be great.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 18:52 UTC (Tue) by cpuchip (guest, #83032) [Link] I don't know how familiar you all are with Motorola line of devices but they have had Ubuntu running on their phones since the Atrix (Feb 2011)for those interested.http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/WEBTOP/Meet-WEBTOP if you're got an Motorola Atrix 4g/photon then you're running Ubuntu 9.04 in an hd dock/lapdock Motorola Atrix 2/bionic/droid razr I believe is running Ubuntu 10.10 if you have a rooted device then you can do two things to it to get those Ubuntu partitions more full function Webtop2sd (makes the SD card on your phone the /osh (or root) partition for webtop (Ubuntu)) and gives your lxterminal and then webtopscripts (version 1.6 now?) will enable apt-get to work. webtop2sd 2.0.1:http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1119557 webtopscripts 1.6: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1192488 I really wished that Motorola would have made webtop more full function as a product. It has so much potential. they've released the source code for some of the software in webtop here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/motorola-webtop.motorola/
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 19:29 UTC (Tue) by cpuchip (guest, #83032) [Link] By the way, That phone they used to do that with is the Motorola Atrix 2:http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/373024/canonical-puts-ubuntu-on-android-smartphones
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:31 UTC (Tue) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Neat. What's interesting to me is that with the right connectors, even a stock Android device makes for a passable basic desktop. I had actually been thinking of upgrading my current nexus one to something more powerful in order to try something like this. I think the only thing we really need now is for Android hardware vendors to come up with some kind of standard (and more importantly, open) dock or connector to make it easier to hook up keyboards, mice, monitors, etc while still supplying juice to the device so it doesn't die.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:11 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
USB OTG would probably work. Maybe a USB 3.0 version.
For using a Android system as a laptop replacement I'd wait and make sure that the keyboard situation gets sorted out correctly. The logical choice for a Android system would be a Bluetooth keyboard and plenty of them are out there already for iPad users.
The problem is that with Android 2.0 keyboards are only partially supported and with regular Linux systems the most common, cheap, bluetooth keyboards have lots of issues with multiple key presses, repeating keys, and fn keys and whatnot. Something about the way the controllers are doing things incorrectly works fine with OS X or Windows, but screws Linux/X Windows all up.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:27 UTC (Tue) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]
What do you mean with "the keyboard situation"? It works pretty well - I'm writing this on my Android phone using a Keyboard and mouse connected via USB.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 22:25 UTC (Tue) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Are you able to attach to a monitor and power the device at the same time? if so, could you post what the hardware combo is (phone, cables, etc).
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 22:48 UTC (Tue) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]
I haven't yet tried to attach a monitor, because I don't have a MicroHDMI cable yet, they seem to be a bit hard to come by. However, I don't see why it wouldn't work at the same time; the USB and HDMI connectors are distinct ports. The phone is a Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro, for the USBOTG I'm using a standard Micro-B to A adaptor.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 1:59 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
whats your setup?
closed? Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:39 UTC (Tue) by mlinksva (subscriber, #38268) [Link]
"The other problem is that while Canonical is pushing the build to hardware manufacturers and mobile carriers, it has no plans to release it to the general public for independent development. This means that you won’t see a CyanogenMod ROM with this functionality built into it. While Ubuntu is open source, Canonical plans to control the release of this version. It’s possible that, given the ingenuity of Android users, one day there will be a leaked build, but such a thing wouldn’t be endorsed by the company." -- http://www.extremetech.com/computing/119031-canonical-rev...
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android/commercial-info seems to be the relevant page, doesn't say much.
Neat idea though.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:10 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link]
That looks a bit like Always Innovating instant switching :) (http://alwaysinnovating.com/products/aios.htm)
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 21, 2012 21:36 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I dunno, I think this kind of thing could be the future of computing. Phones are getting enough CPU, Memory and Storage that they can handle all your computing and personal data storage needs. The main problem these days is that you don't want to interact with just a tiny touch screen, sometimes you need a larger screen, keyboard and pointing device.
Having a portable computer that has all your apps, files, settings so that you have them with you everywhere you go has been imagined for 30 years but the technology just wasn't there to deliver but that is changing right now. The problem is being solved from both ends, by online software services (the entire reason the Internet was funded in the first place) and by more powerful and portable computers. Online stuff is great when you have super fast wireless data everywhere but that just doesn't describe real life, there is a need for local data and apps for the foreseeable future.
The main problem I see with getting this off the ground is making sure that the computers are easy to connect with input/output devices like screens, keyboards, scanners, printers, etc. If each phone requires a proprietary dock connector or a lot of uncommon adapters it's going to be too difficult to use and unreliable. A multivendor standard dock connector that could be supported by screens and keyboards would be a good start.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 0:51 UTC (Wed) by aryonoco (subscriber, #55563) [Link]
Here is a great demo of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&...
Yes it uses the same mechanism that Motorola developed for running WebTop, but webstop was/is a very limited environment compared to this, which really feels like full Ubuntu.
This, combined with a fast ARM Cortex-A15 processor, will be very tempting to upgrade to by the end of the year.
Ubuntu for Android Posted Feb 22, 2012 10:40 UTC (Wed) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]
Youtube says: "This video is private. Sorry about that."
It worked a few hours ago, when I saw it on
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