Mark Shuttleworth has announced that the next release of Ubunutu, after April's Natty Narwhal (11.04), version 11.10, will be named "Oneiric Ocelot". The name refers to the leopard-like cat whilst "Oneiric" is defined as "Of or relating to dreams or dreaming", though Shuttleworth says it means "dreamy" and suggests that 11.10 is both daydreaming and disciplined.

At the inception of 11.10, Shuttleworth also outlined the plans for 11.10's October release. He noted that the version after 11.10 will be 12.04 which will be a LTS (Long Term Support) version. Part of that 11.10 plan will be a 2D desktop which will run where the OpenGL based Unity does not have the hardware required for it to run. This would be complemented by the use of Qt applications now that Ubuntu has opened up to them on the Unity desktop. Shuttleworth does envisage that 11.10 would be where 12.04's cloud support plans would be crystallised after decisions made in this May's Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest.

Calling 11.04, Natty Narwhal, a "stretch release" which had "set out to redefine the look and feel of the free desktop", Shuttleworth asked for testers and users to focus upon it and file bug reports as the April release approaches.

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(djwm)