Short Bytes: The next short term Ubuntu release, i.e., Ubuntu 17.10, is codenamed Artful Aardvark. While Canonical boss Mark Shuttleworth is yet to make an official announcement, the Artful repos are now in existence. In an earlier announcement, Canonical has made it clear that Ubuntu 17.10 will comes with Wayland display server by default.

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arlier this month, Canonical released Ubuntu 17.04 , which was codenamed Zesty Zapus. After the release, speculations were made that Ubuntu would go back to the beginning of the alphabet and choose something with ‘A’ for the next release.

As expected, Ubuntu 17.10 is codenamed Artful Aardvark. This was first hinted by Launchpad, which has registered Artful as the Ubuntu release that’ll be delivered in October 2017.

What does this codename mean?

Unlike the past codenames, Artful Aardvark has a pretty straightforward meaning.

While Artful is an adjective which means to be skillful and clever, probably in a unique way, Aardvark is an African mammal with long ears. Aardvark is famous for tubular snout and long extensible tongue, which help him feed on ants and termites.

If we take a look at the past trend, Canonical boss Mark Shuttleworth announces the new Ubuntu codename in a blog post. We are still to see that post for Ubuntu 17.10, but the Artful Aardvark repos have also opened. With that, the development process of Ubuntu 17.10 has also begun.

For those who don’t know, Ubuntu 17.10 will ship with Wayland display server as default. We’ll be sharing more details on the expected features and release date–keep reading.