The chances are good that if you're buying a smartphone or tablet in 2013, you're buying something with iOS or Android on it. The two operating systems loom so large over their competitors that even the entrenched, deep-pocketed Microsoft has had trouble making headway into this market with its Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Windows RT systems.

Google and Apple's combined dominance hasn't stopped others from trying, though. New mobile operating systems have been springing up like weeds in the last six months. RIM (now BlackBerry) finally launched the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Z10 in an attempt to overhaul its image. Mozilla is making Firefox OS in an effort to tackle developing markets and prove that a browser is all you really need. And Canonical wants to take Ubuntu beyond the desktop with Ubuntu Touch.

We got a not-quite-hands-on test drive of a 12.10-based version of Ubuntu's mobile operating system back at CES, but the OS images were recently updated to Ubuntu 13.04 when Raring Ringtail was introduced at the end of last month. Though Ubuntu Touch won't be available at retail before the end of this year at the earliest, we figured now is an opportune time to check in and see how things are going.

It can't be stressed enough that even in this updated form, Ubuntu Touch is nowhere near usable as a mainstream mobile operating system. Canonical makes no claim that it is. For now, the software is about half development environment and half proof-of-concept tech demo. As such, we aren't going to be evaluating Ubuntu Touch using quite the same criteria we'd use for a shipping product—we're going to be focusing more on how the OS looks and works and less on how it performs. As we get closer to Ubuntu 14.04 and presumably Ubuntu Touch's retail availability, we'll certainly be revisiting it with a more critical eye.

Smell you later, Android: Installing Ubuntu Touch

Dedicated Ubuntu Touch hardware isn't here yet. If you want to run the operating system, you need an Android device with an unlocked bootloader. We ran through the complete installation instructions several times on our devices, and we'll present a condensed version here for your convenience.

Today there are four devices onto which you can easily load Ubuntu Touch: the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 4, the Nexus 7, and the Nexus 10. As Android reference devices, these phones and tablets are all pretty easy to unlock and manipulate, and their software and drivers are all readily available from Google and the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Because Ubuntu Touch relies on a few low-level parts of Android to work—the Linux kernel, graphics and audio drivers, and software for using the phone's cellular radio—porting the OS to any other device requires that software to be available.

A considerable amount of work has been done to port Ubuntu Touch to a smattering of other phones and tablets, the full list of which can be found on this Devices page. Images for these devices aren't hosted by Canonical, but the flashing instructions and status pages are all linked there. At the time of writing, the instructions that we cover here won't apply to any non-Nexus devices.

You only need a few things to get started: a working Ubuntu computer (or Ubuntu VM with USB passthrough support), a micro-USB cable to connect to your phone or tablet, and a Nexus phone or tablet that you don't have any important data on. This particular flashing process is potentially destructive. Canonical warns that you can "potentially brick your device," so it would be best not to install the software on hardware that you rely on from day-to-day.

First, you'll need to grab the appropriate Android development tools for your Ubuntu computer, which can be executed through a couple of simple terminal commands. Start by adding the Ubuntu Touch PPA to your list of repositories:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools

Then you'll actually download the tools from that repository:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install phablet-tools android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

This will add both the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) that you'll need to communicate with the device and the phablet-flash tool used to flash it.

Next, you'll need to unlock the bootloader on your phone or tablet and enable USB debugging. The standard warnings about unlocking your bootloader apply here: a device with an unlocked bootloader can be made to run malicious code at boot, and unlocking your bootloader also makes it easier for anyone with physical access to your phone to bypass any PIN or password you may have set.

Unlocking the developer-centric Nexus devices is pretty simple. First, power the device off, then power it on while holding down the power, volume down, and volume up buttons. Once you see the bootloader screen, plug the phone or tablet into your Ubuntu PC, open up a terminal window, and type sudo fastboot oem unlock . Accept the terms of service, and then unplug the device from the Ubuntu PC and reboot.

When the device reboots, tap through the first-time setup stuff until you're on the Android home screen. Go into the Settings app, scroll all the way to the bottom, tap "About [device]," and then tap repeatedly on the build number until the device informs you that you're now a developer. Tap the back button, tap the now-visible "Developer Options" menu, and check the "USB debugging" box.

Almost done! Next, go back to your Ubuntu PC, and in your terminal window type adb kill-server followed by adb start-server to make sure the ADB service is running properly. Plug your Android device back in via USB and tap OK when asked to allow USB debugging. Finally, type phablet-flash -b to deploy the appropriate Ubuntu Touch image to your Nexus device; this will take some time, but when it reboots your phone or tablet should be thoroughly Ubuntu-fied.

The installation wiki page has a few extra instructions that could be helpful if you encounter problems (like if your device can't make it past the boot screen after unlocking, which happened to our Nexus 10), but these steps should make your Nexus devices into Ubuntu devices without too much trouble. That wiki page will also come in handy if you'd like to get Android back on your devices when you're finished playing with Ubuntu. For the more adventurous, it's also possible to have both Ubuntu and Android installed on your device at once, but that's more than we'll get into here.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham