Adjective plus animal equals . . .

The naming conventions for distros can be entertaining. Whether it’s Debian’s “Toy Story” connection or Fedora’s less than simple formula — $CURRENT_NAME is a ___________ and so is $NEXT_RELEASE_NAME — code names for the current or future versions of distros can be entertaining at the selection stage.

Ubuntu’s naming convention is fairly simple: Take an animal and throw before it an adjective beginning with the same letter.

So after Maverick Meerkat, which is the name set in stone for Ubuntu 10.10, we have the name already foisted on the FOSS public for Ubuntu 11.04.

OK, it’s an N, right? So how does Natty Narwhal float your boat?

There’s a trend here according to the thesaurus, pointed out by Akkana Peck: Synonyms for “natty” include dapper and jaunty. Where have we heard those before?

The letter O, methinks, would be more challenging. Good thing they have awhile to think about it.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)