Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, has just announced the name of the new Ubuntu LTS that will launch in April 2016, and it's Xenial Xerus.

We've been wondering if Mark Shuttleworth was going to choose for the upcoming Ubuntu LTS, and he always wanted really different things from what the community was suggesting or even hoping. We still think that Velociraptor was a missed opportunity, but that's just us.

The names of the Ubuntu releases have always been important because they are usually interesting enough for people to remember. Fedora, for example, decided to ditch them entirely, but that would be impossible with Ubuntu systems.

The names are too much a part of the community, and it would be strange to have new versions of the operating system without a cool name to go along (even if it's not Velociraptor).

Presenting the Xenial Xerus

Ubuntu LTS versions always had powerful names that usually denoted something important like Lucid Lynx, Precise Pangolin, or Trusty Tahr. It will take a while to get used to this one, but that won't be all that difficult.

"What fortunate timing that our next LTS should be X, because 'xenial' means 'friendly relations between hosts and guests', and given all the amazing work going into LXD and KVM for Ubuntu OpenStack, and beyond that the interoperability of Ubuntu OpenStack with hypervisors of all sorts, it seems like a perfect fit. And Xerus, the African ground squirrels, are among the most social animals in my home country. They thrive in the desert; they live in small, agile, social groups that get along unusually well with their neighbours (for most mammals, neighbours are a source of bloody competition, for Xerus, hey, collaboration is cool)," wrote Mark on his blog.

Interestingly enough, someone did manage to guess the name well ahead of anyone else. Cassidy James Blaede from elementary OS mentioned the Xenial Xerus in a Google+ post all the way back in May.