Linux never dethroned Windows in the PC market, but can it challenge Android in the mobile space? The more tech-savvy among you probably know that Android.
The more tech-savvy among you probably know that Android is based on the Linux kernel. But it is nothing like a typical Linux that you may have seen on PCs – or on smartphones.
Nokia and Intel spent a lot of time and money trying to launch a Linux-based smartphone operating system. The Nokia N9 saw the two companies join forces to create MeeGo, the union of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin. However, it was caught between Symbian and Windows Phone and never lived up to its potential.
There were followups like Samsung’s Tizen, a successor to MeeGo that powered some phones in the past, some smartwatches until recently and is still being used a smart TV platform. There was also Firefox OS, which borrowed Android’s Linux core to speed past the most difficult parts of OS development. But unless you dug into the internals, you may never have known about Tizen’s or Firefox OS’ Linux lineage.
Canonical, the company behind one of the most popular Linux distributions, tried to bring its principles of free, open-source software to the smartphone field with Ubuntu Touch.
Version 1.0 was released in 2013 and was based on Ubuntu 13.10. It ran on phones like the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4. A later version was ported over to the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition. But these were just tech demos primarily aimed at developers.
Canonical itself wanted to build the first-ever Ubuntu Touch phone and in 2013 it turned to IndieGoGo for help with funding a first batch of 30,000-40,000 units. The goal was set at an ambitious $32 million.
At the heart of that campaign was a phone named Ubuntu Edge. It was not intended for retail sales, it would be available only to backers. This was supposed to be a technology demonstrator that paved the way for other Ubuntu phones.
The phone had fairly powerful hardware. An unnamed “multi-core CPU” was hooked up to 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage (remember, this was in 2013) as well as a 4.5” HD display. For comparison, a Galaxy S4 from the same year had only 2GB of RAM and up to 64GB storage.
But that’s not all, using its MHL connector, the Edge could connect to an external monitor over HDMI and turn into a desktop PC. The phone’s connector could simultaneously do USB On-The-Go, so you could hook up a keyboard and a mouse too. Unfortunately, these mobile-to-desktop transformations never seem to find an audience. Microsoft’s Continuum was similar – except based on the far more popular Windows – and it flopped.
