Hello Linux Geeksters. About two weeks ago, the Canonical developers have announced that they will not be creating Ubuntu Touch images for Nexus 5, until the release of Ubuntu 14.04, which is scheduled for the 17th of April, 2014. For now, they are focusing on the development of Ubuntu Touch for the Nexus 4 smartphone and the Nexus 7 (2013) tablet. For more information, read this article.
Despite the fact that Ubuntu Touch is not support on Nexus 5, an Italian enthusiast has experimentally ported it. The operating system runs well, but many basic phone functions (like the dialer) don’t work.
You can see for your self Ubuntu Touch running on Nexus 5 in the below video, which unfortunately is in Italian.
However, I have manage to make a list of the things that work well and the features that don’t work at all.
Working:
- WiFi
- Data Traffic
- SMS
- Internet Browsing
- Camera
- Vibrations
- Gestures
- Auto Rotate Screen
Not working:
- Audio call
- Video recording
- Video playing
- Over The Air (OTA) Updates
- Information on Lockscreen
- Graphic Glitches
For those who don’t know, Canonical has been working a lot at Ubuntu Touch, the mobile version of Ubuntu. While the initial plan was to make it available for all the Google Nexus smartphones and tablets, the developers have dropped the support for Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 7 2012 and Google Nexus 10, Ubuntu Touch being officially available only for the Google Nexus 4 smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 2013 tablet.
Despite the fact that the first stable version of Ubuntu Touch was based on Ubuntu 13.10, the development has switched to Ubuntu 14.04 and the latest Ubuntu Touch images are quite stable.
Mark’s Shuttleworth big dream is to reach full desktop-mobile convergence somewhere between the releases of Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04 (between October 2014 and April 2015). Also worth mentioning: most likely the first smartphone with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed will be released in 2015 and will not be manufactured by Meizu, despite what was rumored.