After today's announcement that Canonical has created a tablet interface for Ubuntu Linux, company founder Mark Shuttleworth described his ambitions and answered questions from reporters in a conference call.

He addressed many topics, including how Ubuntu for tablets and phones will differ from Windows 8, Canonical's discussions with hardware makers and carriers, potential release timelines for phones and tablets, whether Ubuntu devices will be "hackable," and the chances of Canonical finally becoming profitable.

Let's take a look at the highlights.

How Ubuntu adapts to all devices—and one-ups Windows 8

Canonical is aiming to release one operating system that works across desktops, phones, and tablets. Literally, the same software would be installed on any of those types of hardware, with the user interface changing depending on the device.

A phone or tablet, when docked with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, would become a full PC. Or, hardware makers could release PCs that double as tablets, very much like what they do today with Windows 8. The difference, Shuttleworth said, is that Ubuntu won't force a "jarring" shift onto users when switching between form factors.

What we have that's unique is a set of transitions between these form factors, which in each case is very minimal. When you transition from the tablet to the desktop, things don't move around. Your indicators, things like network status and time, they don't jump around on screen, they stay in the same place. That's what's really different certainly between our approach to convergence and for example Windows 8, where when you're in the desktop mode, which looks like Windows 7, and suddenly you get the new tile-based interface, it's a stark transition that can be jarring for users. In our case, you can almost think of those as gentle phase changes. When you go from phone to tablet you're stretching the device in very obvious ways. People who've used iOS on both phones and tablets would expect that. What's nice about Ubuntu is the phase change to the PC experience up from the tablet really just introduces window management, and it also introduces things like menus and dialog boxes. You aren't moving things around in dramatic ways.

The big problem, of course, is that Windows 8 is widely available on many kinds of hardware, whereas Ubuntu for tablets is still just in the planning phases. An early version of the Ubuntu phone and tablet code will be made available Thursday for installation on Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10 devices. This will help developers build apps for the platform, but Canonical told us it's not far enough along for in-depth reviews and tests. That won't stop us from trying it out, but we're many months away from finding out whether the software will meet Shuttleworth's lofty descriptions in daily use.

Lining up partners and getting devices to market

Shuttleworth was recently quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that Ubuntu phones will hit consumers' hands in October. That's not quite true, it turns out. He explained today that what he actually said is that the phone interface will be ready for Ubuntu 13.10 in October, combining the phone and desktop code into one release.

Of course, people who own supported phones like the Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 will be able to run the ready-for-the-real-world version in October. But Shuttleworth doesn't expect carriers to ship entirely new phones running Ubuntu until Q1 2014.

"Carriers are going to take a little longer to put those devices through their network testing and put them into market," he said.

The tablet interface will be baked into the main Ubuntu code base by version 14.04, the April 2014 release. "We will be able to complete the phone user experience before we complete the tablet user experience, because essentially the phone user experience is nested inside the tablet user experience," he said. The 14.04 release will also be the first time Ubuntu phones will be able to dock with monitors and keyboards to become full PCs—that capability won't be in 13.10.

If everything goes exceedingly well, release dates could be sooner than expected, he said. There's also enough uncertainty that Shuttleworth thinks it's possible that Ubuntu tablets will ship before Ubuntu phones.

"It's not yet clear to us whether you'll see phones in the market before you see tablets, or tablets in the market before you see phones," he said. "We expect all of these user experiences to be converged in Ubuntu 14.04."

Hardware partnerships will be crucial, and Shuttleworth said Ubuntu has developed a deep relationship with a chip vendor to optimize Ubuntu for smartphones and tablets:

This will accelerate specific areas of the platform in location and telephony, areas where we don't bring a very great deal of historical expertise, but they do. It has catalyzed the manufacturing sector, the ODMs [original design manufacturers] and OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], and given them the confidence to say they stand ready to make Ubuntu devices. We'll announce the details of that after MWC [Mobile World Congress, an event next week in Barcelona]. It has been a very significant step forward and somewhat unexpected. I had expected us to engage with carriers first and then hardware partners and silicon partners.

Canonical says it has spoken with device makers and had talks with carriers in North America, Europe, and China to plan launch devices. No company names were revealed.

Ubuntu for phones and tablets will run on both ARM chips and Intel Atom ones, but primarily ARM. "We have more active engagement around ARM simply because of their existing penetration in the mobile sector," Shuttleworth said.

Canonical won't be making its own hardware, so don't expect any Surface-like devices.

"Our strength is really in the user experience and in the integration of the software platform," Shuttleworth said. "We see ourselves as supporting or accelerating hardware partners as they innovate and figure out this convergence story."