Just about any Linux geek ought to know that Ubuntu has a naming...fetish. While it's parent Debian sticks to Toy Story, and Fedora opts for the oddest link between old and new, Ubuntu takes a more animal-centric approach, but not without its own share of odd adjectives.

Even before a new release of Ubuntu is on the shelves, development begins on the release to follow. One might say development of a particular Ubuntu release never really has a firm starting point, with features being bumped from release to release and new directions taking shape perpetually. The formal beginning for an Ubuntu release — the groundbreaking, as it were — is when Benevolent Dictator For Life Mark Shuttleworth emerges from Ubuntu HQ, sees his shadow, and foretells six more months of development.

His latest emergence — albeit via video — to UbuntuCon Atlanta unveiled both the direction Ubuntu 10.04 will take, and the designation under which it will do so. According to reports, Shuttleworth's message announced that 10.04 will be the next Long Term Support release, taking over from 8.04 Hardy Heron — though per the LTS guarantee, 8.04 will continue to be supported until April 2011 on the desktop and April 2013 on the server. Ubuntu's 2006 Dapper Drake LTS release is no longer supported on the desktop, but continues to be supported through June 2011 on the server.

Shuttleworth also announced that the release will be based on GNOME's 2.0 release, while subsequent versions will utilize GNOME 3.0. An extension of the distributions server capabilities, as inherited from Debian, to better serve the seemingly omnipresent cloud is also on the agenda.

Shuttleworth reportedly announced the appellation applied to the release with — of all things — a deodorant joke¹: "This year's Ubuntu Developer Summit is going to be the sweetest smelling Ubuntu Developer Summit ever, despite the fact that it's happening in Dallas." Linux Journal's Texas-based staff were not immediately available for comment.

And the apparently fragrant banner under which all this will be undertaken? Lucid Lynx.

¹ For those who, like ourselves, weren't already aware, Lynx is a brand of deodorant manufactured by Unilever, better known as Axe outside the UK, Ireland, Australia, & New Zealand.