The world’s first, official Ubuntu Tablet was announced to the world one year ago today.
Yup, twelve months ago Linux fans were getting worked into a frenzy over the Bq Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet, a device the marketing claims offered ‘everything you need from a PC in a tablet’, with Canonical CEO Jane Silber saying the device brought :“…everything you’ve come to expect from your Ubuntu PC [on] the tablet with BQ.”
Sadly, the early hands-on impressions and reviews of the Ubuntu Tablet revealed that the promotional slogans were snappier than the tablet’s actual performance, with GUI lags, stutters and crashes peppering the paragraphs of early reports and reviews.
Bq recently sold the last of its Ubuntu Tablet stock, meaning it’s a little more difficult to get one if you missed out last year. You can, on occasion, find a second-hand one for sale on eBay and, in theory, it may be possible to flash an Android version of the tablet with the various Ubuntu Touch images.
M10 Tablet: Future Developments
The M10 Ubuntu Tablet runs Ubuntu Touch, which is based on Ubuntu 15.04, which is no longer supported by Canonical. This means some of the pre-loaded desktops applications (most notably Firefox) are outdated by today’s standards, and cannot be easily updated.
Although the version of Ubuntu (which we refer to as ‘ubuntu touch’) that ships pre-installed on the M10 (and the Ubuntu phone) is unlikely to receive any major new features or developments going forward, the tablet hardware itself isn’t obsolete, not when it comes to Ubuntu.
Work on a Snap-ified version of Ubuntu (and based on Ubuntu 16.04, and which we refer to as ‘ubuntu personal’) for the M10 is, Canonical engineer Lukasz Zemczak recently confirmed, under active development.
Did you buy the M10 Ubuntu Tablet? Do you still use it? Does it offer you ‘the power of a PC’ when you need it? Let us (and other readers) know in the poll and comments space below.