Awhile back, Ubuntu announced a mobile and embedded edition of it's popular Linux distribution. The buzz was around the possibility of Ubuntu Mobile showing up on future UMPCs. The news caught my eye, but didn't really get my attention until the plans for Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) were announced:
"Ubuntu 7.10 will be the first Ubuntu release to offer a complete mobile and embedded edition built with the Hildon user interface components" (developed by Nokia for the Maemo platform.)
Now that's interesting. Could it be that we'll see Ubuntu Mobile booting on Nokia N800's? It's certainly a possibility -- and one that could bring a larger breadth of software to Nokia's mobile Linux tablets.
However, as interesting as it may be if Nokia adopts Ubuntu, the possibilities for wider Hildon support didn't hit me until my drive home today. It was one of those obvious moments. I had been using my Nokia N800 while walking to my car, so the touch- and small-screen friendly UI was fresh in my mind. Then I started thinking about my Car PC. It uses a 7" touch screen and runs Ubuntu (a full distribution, with a UI designed for full-size monitors.) Running Gnome on my cheap, in-car 7" monitor makes for a pretty lousy experience. Text is hard to read, and everything is too small to click on. However, if this news is right, Ubuntu 7.10 will change all of that. I'll be able to run Hildon on my Car PC! That's killer. Imagine having Canola running in-car, sitting on 100GB of multimedia...