There is a site out there that lists and catalogues the work of people who modify IKEA furniture. One of the latest coffee tables posted on IkeaHackers runs Ubuntu GNOME 15.04.

Even if IKEA furniture is not the best stuff that you can manipulate and modify, it seems that there is a real trend. Numerous people buy pieces of furniture from IKEA and modify or repurpose it. In this case, a small and cheap coffee table has been modified to be a Touch Coffee Table. Its creator, Jules, wanted to have a touch-enabled table, but it was too expensive, so he built one himself. And it runs Ubuntu GNOME 15.04.

"I had been thinking of my Touch Table project for a long time. My research on existing solutions was a bit disappointing: mostly insanely expensive, large, or platform locked, they did not fit my vision of a [Android or Linux-powered] ‘desktop’ that would allow me to fit it into my existing workflow, rather than hope that applications would support it (like the Microsoft Surface)," wrote Jules on ikeahackers.net.

The coffee table runs Ubuntu GNOME 15.04

The project needed the original IKEA HEMNES coffee table, a Dell P2314T multitouch monitor, Intel NUC Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort, a Leap Motion controller, a Logitech K830 wireless keyboard, and USB DVD drive, various cables, and a lot of patience and skill.

The end result really seems to be very nice, although it's hard to picture a setting where you would use a table such as this one. Besides the building process for the table, the maker of this one-off item also used Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 to power it, which he deemed to be sufficient enough.

It's not the sort of stuff you might imagine needing, but it's likely that once you had an Ubuntu-powered coffee table, you won't be able to go back to a regular one.