Watching this video of Ubuntu’s touchscreen functionality in action is pleasing, but not exciting. There’s nothing really revolutionary going on here. Open-source has been dragging it’s feet on touch for a while, and this is just Ubuntu finally catching up to where it should have been a couple years ago. On the other hand, it also highlights a significant problem with a lot of current thinking about touch, and consequently casts Ubuntu in a pretty good light.

There’s no shortage of screeds and critiques aimed at the very concept of the tablet. These devices have been dismissed as toys, fads & unnecessary luxuries. But all the criticisms I’ve seen so far miss the point. Touch isn’t about tablets vs notebooks. In a few years, computers will just all have touchscreens, and users will operate them by keyboard, mouse or touch as needed. This video demonstrates that Ubuntu is being designed in this direction, as are iOS, Windows 8 & Android.

Users of all systems will benefit from touch, not as an alternative input option, but an additional one. And in this respect I think Ubuntu has a pretty good lead. Apple is carefully building iOS up to being it’s de-facto operating system for casual use. Google is pushing Android and Chrome OS in the same direction. Microsoft is offering both Metro and it’s regular desktop in Windows 8. These are all interesting strategies, but just don’t seem all that compelling next to Ubuntu. With Ubuntu you get a fully-fledged OS, with the same interface and applications on whatever device you happen to be using. And all this for free.

Hopefully, Canonical will get this to where “it just works” ASAP, and Zareason will finally start selling that open-source tablet it’s got waiting in the wings.