Mark Shuttleworth has realised the dreams of millions of GNU/Linux users by bringing out-of-the-box multi-touch support to Ubuntu. Well, multi-touch was already available under GNU/Linux, but it was in a 'work on it to make it work' mode. Realising the arrival of tablet computer it's right time for Ubuntu to start getting in 'touch' with its users.

Mark posted on his blog, "Multitouch is just as useful on a desktop as it is on a phone or tablet, so I’m delighted that the first cut of Canonical’s UTouch framework has landed in Maverick and will be there for its release on 10.10.10."

He further writes that "You’ll need 4-finger touch or better to get the most out of it, and we’re currently targeting the Dell XT2 as a development environment so the lucky folks with that machine will get the best results today. By release, we expect you’ll be able to use it with a range of devices from major manufacturers, and with addons like Apple’s Magic Trackpad."

Canonical design team is working on a 'touch language' which, Mark says, goes beyond the work that we’ve seen elsewhere.

The team is working on making it possible for basic gestures to be chained, or composed, into more sophisticated 'sentences'. The basic gestures, or primitives, are like individual verbs, and stringing them together allows for richer interactions.

Mark further writes that Maverick will have quite a few Gtk applications which will support gesture-based scrolling.

He also said that 'The roadmap beyond 10.10 will flesh out the app developer API and provide system services related to gesture processing and touch. It would be awesome to have touch-aware versions of all the major apps – browser, email, file management, chat, photo management and media playback – for 11.04, but that depends on you! So if you are interested in this, let’s work up some branches :-) Here’s the official Canonical blog post, too.'

  Follow Muktware editor Swapnil Bhartiya on Google Plus.