There you have it. Canonical promised this for a long time now, and it would appear that the London-based company behind the world's most popular free operating system, Ubuntu Linux, will finally unveil the first ever, real Ubuntu tablet device this year, during the upcoming MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2016 event.

MWC 2016 will take place at the end of next month, between February 22 and 25, and Canonical will be there, as usual, to present its latest work. The first Ubuntu tablet to run the Ubuntu Touch operating system, which is currently used in several Ubuntu Phone devices, will be unveiled in collaboration with BQ. The tablet will come preinstalled with the latest Ubuntu mobile OS.

As many of you might know already, BQ has a partnership with Canonical to deliver two Ubuntu Phone devices to the Ubuntu community, the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition, but now the Spanish consumer electronics and software development company is also preparing a tablet device.

The Ubuntu tablet will run X11 apps

We reported this last year, but we'll take this opportunity to remind you again that Canonical is working on implementing support for X11 apps on its Ubuntu mobile operating system, allowing users to run any graphical software that is currently available in the Ubuntu repositories, such as GIMP or Firefox (as you can see from the video attached below, courtesy of Xataka.com).

It would appear that Canonical's employees are already using the upcoming Ubuntu tablet that BQ will announce next month at MWC 2016 to test the Ubuntu convergence and develop the next-generation of the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, which will be based on the forthcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) OS, due for release on April 21, 2016.

If rumors are to be true, the BQ Ubuntu tablet will be the recently announced Aquaris X10, which boasts a 64-bit MediaTek MTK 8163 Quad-Core processor, up to 1080p 10-inch display, 2GB RAM, and a 7,280 mAh battery, which is more than enough to run Ubuntu Touch and any other X11 application. As MWC 2016 approaches, we shall have a more exclusive story on this matter.