You know, even I thought it was Canonical that was able to utilize Android's SurfaceFlinger graphics stack, for their "not so distro".

The thing I love about the Ubuntu for Phones is that:
- It uses the Android kernel (which is not the Linux kernel, but pretty close)
- Theoretically supports all ICS Android devices (as long as clean and compatible CM ROM)
- Unity GUI is really maturing (its finger friendly and not as confusing as PlasmaActive)

The thing I hate about u4p:
- Unity... seriously we need a proper KDE GUI, even if its a clone of iOS (most basic), Android (from MIUI to AOKP, they're pretty good), or something like WebOS / PlayBook OS.
- chroot. Seriously? Going from one form of emulation to another doesn't solve anything. In fact, Google's emulation is hundred times better than Canonicals.
- Doesn't solve the problem.... this is not "nix on a fone", its not even Ubuntu
- ....after reading stskeep's post, man I feel bad. And I'm furious at Canonical for taking all the credit for something they didn't do.

Future Implications:
- Hoping that libhybris will be utilized !
- " Mer " could be cleaned, smoothed out and made to work with libhybris on Android devices
- A project such as " Mer " can come to a Beta-Beta stage (everything works, Chrome/Firefox browser installed, great UI something like a cross between AOKP-and-QNX, basics are implemented such as File Browser, Phone, Messaging, Contacts, Calculator, Notepad, Camera, Media Player with new gui to be finger friendly, perhaps the only thing lacking is an "App Store" but you could browse the repos and just install the software)

- A popular Android device can be bought (NOTE 3) -> It can be r00ted -> Custom Cyanogenmod Kernel and ROM can be installed -> custom recovery (dualboot option) -> " Mer " can be installed -> enjoy!

edit: Yes, chroot isn't emulation. Its an independant runtime environment. However, due to the way its composed it runs above the Android system. So it does get hit by performance issues, despite whatever anyone says. Surely not as bad as actual emulation, but its far from the 'nix on desktop. I don't think it runs faster than Dalvik, actually it runs slower. Here's an illustration, think of chroot "running natively" on the blue section... far removed from the system. I haven't even touched on the delay you get from loading this on a microSD card which are slower than NAND/SSD on devices. Or the fact that the information relays both ways, so that delay is multiplied twice. Have I confused you yet? Yeah, so its not really far removed from emulation when I refer it as emulation (and I'll continue to say so to point out how inferior this approach is compared to a native installation).