My experience with Ubuntu Touch: an open source linux OS for mobile
What is Ubuntu Touch
Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, now being developed by the UBports community. Imagine a mobile OS built on the familiar and powerful Linux foundation. That’s Ubuntu Touch in a nutshell. It offers a desktop-like experience on your tablet/phone, complete with multitasking capabilities and a focus on security and privacy. Unlike the usual Android or iOS, Ubuntu Touch is open-source, meaning anyone can peek under the hood and contribute to its development.
The idea of Ubuntu Touch
Ubuntu community wanted to achieve Convergence. Basically, your phone is powerful enough to function as a desktop as well, just stick it to a bigger screen. What Samsung has done with Dex. It also aimed to offer an alternative to the dominant mobile OSes. The developers envisioned a platform that prioritized user control, privacy, security and customizability. They wanted to move away from closed ecosystems and create a space where users could truly own their devices and data.
Ubuntu Touch is designed primarily for mobile devices. However, imagine connecting your mobile device to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and having it instantly transformed into a desktop experience. This is the goal of Convergence, an experimental feature for a unified experience on all devices.
Why I wanted to try Ubuntu Touch
Well, when I was first introduced to Linux (Ubuntu) in 2010 during my college years I was amazed to know that there exist a community who gives away an entire OS and it’s code for free. And since then Ubuntu has been my primary OS on my personal laptop. I love to do development, write scripts, browse internet and fiddle with terminal (yes, I have 100+ aliases on it).
When I got to know about Ubuntu Touch, I was super excited, but very few devices were supported and when canonical withdrew it’s support from it in 2017, UBports community rose up to keep this idea alive and I wanted to become a contributor to this noble cause. And the idea of my favorite Linux distro on a portable small device was exciting enough to compel me to buy a brand new Lenovo Tab M10 HD (2nd Gen) and experiment with it.
Installation Process
It was very difficult for me as I use Linux and my tab was not supported. There are no mediatek drivers for Linux and there’s no community support for the tab I was afraid to brick the tab, but eventually I was able to do it. I have created a gist for the process, interested folks can go through it. But if you use Windows, it would be simple for you, just go through the steps mentioned at the official website.
Experience
So far the experience is very smooth as the tab’s configuration is on the higher end, the battery backup is amazing. The Tab’s storage can be directly accessed same as a USB on my laptop. I’m able to use the tab as a ultra portable desktop with a compatible keyboard. Multi-tasking is very easy like switching between windows, running processes in terminal, browsing the internet.
Ending note
I haven’t tested all the features like putting a sim and checking connectivity/calls etc, but there would always be few hiccups. Even officially it’s mentioned that notification light, SMS/MMS, etc are not supported. But hey, I never intended to use it as a phone, so things worked out just fine for me ;-)
Installing Ubuntu Touch can also lead to bricking your device, so be careful when you’re following steps to install.
Happy to help if anyone wants to reach out to me for trying Ubuntu Touch!
