While Android is “based” on the Linux kernel, that doesn’t mean it just works “out of the box” with any Linux distro. When connecting a modern Android device to your Ubuntu, it doesn’t show up in the File Manager. In short, you are not able to transfer files into and out from the phone as easy as you are used to in Win 7 (which supports MTP native).
Since Android 2.3, the support for conventional USB mass storage has been replaced by the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) which has several advantages.
Make it so!
Even if you fairly easy can access (but with very slow transfer times..) a MTP device thru a program called gmtp, it is not as convenient as a conventional USB mass storage. So how do you make it “easy”? Well a guy named Nicolas Bernaerts wrote this great guide that let’s you automount your android device in MTP mode on Ubuntu 12.04 (Works in 12.10 to). The guide is originally is written for Nexus 7 but it has worked with any android device I have tested so far.
If you have problems connecting your device with Ubuntu, check out Nicolas’s guide. (It’s actually the only guide i tried that actually fixed the problem with MTP in Ubuntu 12.04)
http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/247-ubuntu-automount-nexus7-mtp
Thank you Nicolas for taking the time and sharing it.
/Blackmoore 
You’re welcome Mattias 🙂
For the people interested, I’ve done another guide were all the steps are scripted.
It becomes almost a one click job.
Cheers
There you go folks – a new and improved scripted guide! Get over to http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/ and check it out. Once again, thx for a truly great guide that have saved me hours and hours (now instead spent with my kids..)