In a community mailing list announcement made over the weekend, Matt Zimmerman, CTO of Ubuntu Linux developer Canonical, indicated that the company is planning to produce an edition of the increasingly popular desktop and server operating system specifically geared for laptops and other portable devices. Zimmerman named Intel as a partner in the development effort, and it is expected that the companies will work to build an Ubuntu edition suitable to run on devices powered by Intel's upcoming "Silverthorn" lightweight mobile computing platform. The 7.10 release of Ubuntu, projected in October 2007, will be the first to feature the new mobile capabilities.
Concurrent with that announcement, Ubuntu has posted a position for a mobile Linux developer. The company is seeking a work-at-home technician with experience with the GNOME and Debian technologies central to the Ubuntu distribution of Linux.
Linux enthusiasts have been installing the open source operating system on laptops and portables for years, often without much in the way of manufacturer driver support. Most major driver incompatibilities have since been dealt with, but heat and power management can lag optimized installations of Windows.
