Canonical – the people behind Ubuntu have announced that they will be launching a new Ubuntu operating system for phones in 2014. This OS as you may guess is Linux based and uses the same kernel as the Android OS. This means with a bit of tweaking your Android phone will also be able to run Ubuntu OS.
The OS has been shown working on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus (further proof that the OS is compatible for current phones). It seems as if the OS is aimed at developers, might also be very handy to quickly SSH into servers etc. I reckon? I’m sure there would be a lot of tricks and tweaks you could further implement as we all know Linux itself is open source.
The new Ubuntu OS for mobile phones uses an innovative touch screen based interface which doesn’t use any buttons. The OS also incorporates swipe gestures so expect to be using your screen in various ways while running this OS. It also takes advantage of multitasking which it seems to do flawlessly even in this early stage so the operating system itself does look very promising.
The OS will be supporting apps written for Ubuntu OS, unfortunately Android applications will not be supported. Then again as mentioned previously maybe with some tweaks we might one day see that happening? Lets wait and see.
Here is a video showing off the new OS on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus: skip to around 7 minutes to see it in action!