I want to be really excited by this because this seems very cool but the mediatek processor and the 2 GB of RAM makes this a lot less interesting. Mediatek usually provides a closed off, low price, low performance chip which kind of clashes with what I want from an Ubuntu device.
I felt the same, especially after the ubuntu phone stunt on kickstarter which had 4GB of ram.
Maybe what we are both looking for is a tablet like the microsoft surface, but running essentially ubuntu.
For that matter, any tablet that can compete with the microsoft surface and run an operating system that is both great for developing and great for touch and mobility.
Apple is only a few steps away in my opinion. If only they would open up the iPad Pro so that developers could use if for development. It might even bring with it a new shift in UI for developers :)
They likely won't open up any iPad. It seems they will merge (replace) OSX with iOS. I saw this coming years ago. If I were a developer using OSX I would seriously ocnsider a switch to another unrestricted OS.
I love Apple hardware, and OSX is much nicer to use as a polyglot developer than Windows. A workmate of mine runs linux on his macbook pro, and it's really a pain. Apple has put so many thousands of hours into getting the trackpad working smoothly, while the linux drivers seem to have been hacked together during a weekend and are truly awful. Things like ignoring thumb input, scroll speed and tracking speed are terrible, just to mention a few.
I've been interested in evaluating Mediatek processors for desktop usage for a while now. I think this tablet offers the best opportunity (and lowest friction) to do this due to who they're target this at: developers and open software folk (unlocked, open software).
Hopefully, this'll turn out a positive experience and more OEMs hop on board.
What was your intended use of an Ubuntu tablet? Server-farm? Gaming?
I am pretty excited, but it is Linux on a tablet, which is kinda the worst of the worst from a performance perspective. Hopefully this marks the beginning of an increasing trend of more open & capable Operating Systems on our mobile devices.
I'm concerned the browser will crash after you open 3 tabs.
Ubuntu Desktop is really really memory hungry. It is currently using 8gb RAM on my Desktop which has been steadily increasing since last restart.
The only thing you can possibly do on this thing is use a not very power hungry text editor. No VMs, no machine learning, no data processing and no games. If they had maybe 8gb RAM, 128 gb storage with a faster CPU, it might have been interesting.
My Ubuntu desktop at work has 2GB and has been up for ~300 days (uptrack-patched) for development work. The phone version only has 1GB and doesn't crash when the browser has three tabs open.
