Canonical has unveiled the tablet interface for Ubuntu, and the key features of Ubuntu Touch — the version of Ubuntu that will run on ARM smartphones and tablets. The Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu, which you can install on your Nexus 7 or 10 tablet, or Nexus 4 smartphone, will be available to download on February 21.
The standout feature for Ubuntu Touch — if you believe Canonical’s hype machine, anyway — is side-by-side multitasking of Ubuntu phone and tablet apps. Ubuntu Touch (or whatever it ends up being called) introduces a new feature called “side stage” that looks almost exactly like split-screen mode in Windows 8′s Metro interface. The idea is that you can run a smartphone app on the smaller portion of the screen (which is portrait-oriented, like a smartphone) and a tablet app side-by-side. This sounds kind of cool until you realize that Ubuntu smartphones and tablets will run the same operating system (Ubuntu Touch), and that “side stage” is ultimately just a mirror of Windows 8′s split-screen mode.
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