Yes, Canonical the people behind the Linux based OS Ubuntu have announced their plans to enter into the smartphone and tablet arena. I for one am excited about this. Ubuntu, I think is by far the best and easiest to use Linux OS. If you haven’t tried it, I would encourage you to do so. You can get a free copy by doing a Google search.

Mark Shuttleworth the founder of Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu is set to officially announce this today at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando. Shuttleworth is hoping to raise the enthusiasm level to garner enough volunteer developers into developing the expanded platform and applications. Shuttleworth says that “Everyday computer users are starting to do their computing on a broader array of devices and form factors, Canonical wants to bring Ubuntu to all of these different platforms”.

Can Ubuntu compete in an already competitive smartphone and tablet market? They are up against some very resistant competition for smartphones and tablets that has been dominated by Apple with Google closing in on the market share. Although Android, another Linux based OS is currently on 40% of the smartphones here in the U.S. Android hasn’t been accepted as well on tablets as of yet, with the iOS dominating this market. The competition will get even tougher once Microsoft releases the tablet friendly Windows 8 OS.

Canonical has not established a release date for Ubuntu on smartphones or tablets, but they are anticipating a 2014 release date of their new OS. The Unity desktop is going to rock smartphones and tablets. Ubuntu and the Unity desktop is very app friendly. With a version of Ubuntu already designed for Arm processors and a unified code base which will enable Ubuntu to be ran on smartphones and tablets, it already has an advantage over Android, ( I’m thinking of the Honeycomb tablet only OS). Anything open sourced would be great for this market. Now if we can only get the carriers to agree with this and leave their devices unlocked.

What do you think?

Wayne Tempel is a freelance writer who has contributed to many articles on the web. You can follow him on Twitter.