In the past couple of days, Canonical released its latest version of Ubuntu 17.10, now it’s time for the company to look ahead to its next release 18.04 LTS (Long Term Support). As with all versions before it, 18.04 will carry a goofy codename with it. The company’s CEO, today, announced that the upcoming release will be dubbed "Bionic Beaver".
In a post to his blog, Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, wrote:
“It’s builders that we celebrate - the people that build our upstream applications and packages, the people who build Ubuntu, and the people who build on Ubuntu. In honour of that tireless toil, our mascot this cycle is a mammal known for its energetic attitude, industrious nature and engineering prowess. We give it a neatly nerdy 21st century twist in honour of the relentless robots running Ubuntu Core. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 18.04 LTS, the Bionic Beaver.”
Ubuntu 18.04 is due for release in April and will build off the work which was done in 17.10. The company is also planning to go public at some point in the future, however, the timeframe for that is not entirely clear. Ubuntu 17.10 saw a massive shift from the Unity desktop to GNOME. The move was taken so that the company can focus more on enterprise in the lead up to its IPO.
By switching to GNOME, Ubuntu users will benefit from the work by a team whose sole focus is on desktop and the GNOME developers will benefit from all the bug reports they’ll receive from the many Ubuntu users.
Source: Mark Shuttleworth