Not quite. Linaro ensures basic compatibility by establishing a common kernel, compiler, boot loaders, and various infrastructure improvements to make sure Linux works well on ARM. The part that has you so excited: could be countered by Inigo Montoya. What this means is that they'll use the same tool chain and base kernel to bring their environments up, and quickly, on ARM dev boards. Android apps still only work on Android due to the Dalvik VM and where Android diverges from the more common Linux stack.
Linaro uses the same cadence as Ubuntu and we’re able to collaborate on the selection, integration and debugging of key components like the kernel, toolchain, X.org (still ), and hundreds of small-but-important libraries and tools in between.
If the Linaro team pulls this off, it will mean that Linaro provides an intersection point for the majority of the consumer electronics x86 and ARM ecosystem, regardless of the end OS. I’m sure over time we’ll find more groups that are interested in joining the process, and I see no reason why they couldn’t be accommodated in this cadence-driven model.
Congratulations to Team Linaro on their first full release yesterday. For those not yet in the know, Linaro is a collaborative forum with dedicated engineers making sure that Linux rocks on ARM (and potentially other architectures). Staffed by a combination of Canonical and new Linaro engineers, together with secondees from the major ARM silicon vendors, it’s solving the problems of fragmentation in Linux across that ecosystem and reducing the time to market for ARM devices.