Ubuntu mobile 8.0.4 now available to developers

Canonical has made the Mobile Internet Device (MID) version of Ubuntu available to developers. Developers can now make the necessary changes to their desktop applications to better match the smaller screen sizes and processing power of these devices as well as take advantage of the touchscreen interface to improve the user experience.

Ubuntu MID is based on the desktop version of the Ubuntu operating system but has the necessary tweaks made to run efficiently on smaller and less powerful devices like the Samsung Q1U which currently ships with Vista. We had an opportunity to demo this unit running on Vista with the standard 800MHz CPU and 1GB of RAM and the Q1U was really sluggish and not as responsive as we would like.

Hopefully, Ubuntu MID will be well optimized to make devices like the Q1U more usable as it will include a Gecko based browser, email, calendaring and media player specifically designed for these types of devices.

But does the recent announcement of Ubuntu Linux Remix and Symbian going open source possibly take some of the potential Ubuntu MID sales away?

Tags: canonical, mid, ubuntu