Aug 17, 2010 20:26 GMT  ·  By

Mark Shuttleworth, father of the popular Ubuntu operating system, proudly announced a few minutes ago the name and the goals for the next version of Ubuntu. Yes, we are talking about Ubuntu 11.04, dubbed Natty Narwhal and scheduled for release on April 28th, 2011.

"Oh yes, it’s that time of year again, when numerate pollsters make nasal proclamations about the naming of the next next version of Ubuntu. When gazers of balls crystal provide nifty suggestions for new new features and, of course, suitable nomenclature to match."

"And so, we come swiftly to a conclusion: allow me to introduce the Natty Narwhal, our mascot for development work that we expect to deliver as Ubuntu 11.04."  - said Mark Shuttleworth on his personal blog.

For the Natty Narwhal, the development team will focus their efforts on first and lasting impressions. Hopefully, the GNOME 3.0 desktop environment will also be part of Ubuntu 11.04, with the highly anticipated GNOME Shell.

So, what is this Narwhal? Well, according to Wikipedia, it is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic.

"While it may not in fact get you a pony, the world of free software is the platform upon which the future is being built. So the Narwhal, as the closest thing to a real live unicorn, is an auspicious figurehead as we lay down the fabric from which dreams will be woven."

"Dreams of someone’s first PC, dreams of someone’s first million instances in the cloud: whatever your vision of the future, we hope the Natty Narwhal will have something to offer." - said Mark Shuttleworth.

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) will be the 14th release of the Ubuntu operating system. But, until then, we have another version that should catch our attention and invade our computers, Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), which will be released on October 10th, 2010. Yes, the perfect 10!

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, and professional technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the world.