Announcing Ubuntu Dual Boot with enhanced upgrades and more!

We’re thrilled to announce a new release of Ubuntu Dual boot, now supporting enhanced Ubuntu upgrades either from the Android or Ubuntu side.

 

The new Ubuntu Dualboot release, codenamed M9, enables developers to run both Ubuntu and Android on a single device and is packed with new features that make it the power tool to use for those doing development in both platforms.

 

For developers only.

Dual boot is not a feature suitable for regular users. It is recommended to be installed only by developers who are comfortable with flashing devices and with their partition layout. Dual boot rewrites the Android recovery partition and those installing it should be intimately familiar with re-flashing it in case something goes wrong.

 

Multiple Android flavours are supported (AOSP or stock, CyanogenMod) and installation of Ubuntu can be done for all versions available in the regular distribution channels.

 

What’s new.

The new release fixes a number of bugs, brings under-the-hood enhancements and includes a bunch of exciting features. Here are the highlights:

 

Enhanced Ubuntu upgrades.

The most prominent feature is the addition of support for the upgrades on the Ubuntu side. Now image upgrades can be downloaded using the standard procedure in System Settings › Updates from Ubuntu. To complete the installation, a reboot to Android will have the Dualboot app pick up the downloaded image upgrade, install it in the right location and reboot to the new Ubuntu image.

As an alternative, installations can still be done fully on the Android side. In a nutshell:

• Download of a new Ubuntu version can happen on either the Ubuntu or Android side
• Installation of a new Ubuntu version needs to be done from the Android side via the Dualboot app

Android notifications and background execution improvements.

The Dualboot Android app now provides notifications for when new Ubuntu images are available, so no more excuses not to be running the latest Ubuntu! In addition, improvements have been added to download and install Ubuntu in the background, while showing progress also using standard Android notifications.

 

Sideload support.

For those cases in which bandwidth is at a premium, the dual boot installer now supports sideload mode. This enables downloading images on a fast network and saving them for later installation: these can be downloaded on a laptop and then transferred via USB to the device. It also opens the door for easily flashing custom images other than the ones downloaded from the official channels.

 

Custom servers.

A nifty feature our heroic community of porters of Ubuntu images to devices not officially supported, and for users of those ports: dual boot now supports setting a custom server to directly install new Ubuntu images from there

 

Installing dual boot.

Installing and running dual boot can be done in a few easy steps. In a nutshell, it requires performing a one-off installation of the dual boot app in Android, which will enable you to both install the version of Ubuntu of your choice, and to reboot into Ubuntu.

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About Hugo

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that offers an operating system predominantly focused on desktop computers but also provides support for servers. Based on Debian GNU / Linux, Ubuntu focuses on ease of use, freedom in usage restriction, regular releases (every 6 months) and ease of installation.