Very interesting development here. We've know for a while that Canonical has been beefing up their ARM support for a while, but rather than directly compete with iOS and Android they seem to be looking to co-exist on an Android device.

And technically there's no really good reason why they can't. You've already got a Linux kernel, all you need to do is have some external display (mini-HDMI) and the ability to connect USB devices (host-mode USB).

Still kind of curious about the integration (will it use Android facilities like Surface/Audio flinger or share with more traditional X11(or Wayland?)/PulseAudio. I personally can't see this currently being implemented directly onto of existing Android functionality - this looks like something that will have to be be specifically built in at the OEM layer.

I'm excited by this type of tech. Currently we are seeing our computing spread among many devices, due to the rise in popularity of mobile devices beyond the laptop. As long as we can reduce our need for performance gains for a period of time, we can then move our computing back to one device.

+Tom Cramer Indeed. LiveCDs and LiveUSBs made some headway into this a few years back, but it never really took off. Mobile devices seem much more personable and the increases in performance is almost mind-boggling. Microsoft seems to have had a similar idea with their Slate PCs - just have a dock at home and one at work and you're done. I think they just lack the mobile interface that iOS and Android excel at.