The NVIDIA Shield Tablet is a gaming device built by Nvidia that has very specific user niche, but a user of this tablet managed to run Ubuntu on it; not the mobile version, but the desktop one.

When people port Ubuntu to mobile devices, they usually focus on using the mobile version of Ubuntu. We've seen it land on various Samsung devices and a couple of tablets, but never on an NVIDIA Shield Tablet. Even if it sounds strange to install a regular Ubuntu distro on a tablet, it can actually make sense since the OS from Canonical is already optimized for touch interactions.

Seeing Ubuntu run on a tablet somehow seems natural, especially when you think about connecting a wireless keyboard to it. This particular tablet from Nvidia is a rather powerful one, so it's more than able to run pretty much any operating systems from the Ubuntu family.

Ubuntu for desktop running on tablets

Even if Ubuntu wasn't built specifically for this task, it doesn't seem to have any problems running, although we can't see it in action. In any case, just the fact that the desktop loads and you can see it is a major achievement. If developers were to put more effort into it, this might even be a thing.

"The NVIDIA SHIELD tablet is a high-performance tablet that transforms into a serious gaming machine with the SHIELD controller and GRID game streaming service. Get incredible graphics wherever you go with the NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, NVIDIA gaming supercomputers in the cloud and optional 4G LTE," reads the official website.

The NVIDIA Shield Tablet is capable to connecting up to four different controllers and can output 4K resolution over HDMI. It's easy to see why this would be a great platform for an operating system such as Ubuntu.