Ubuntu’s sabdfl, Mark Shuttleworth, has announced the next Ubuntu release after 6.06 Dapper Drake will be the “Edgy Eft”.

What is an eft?

An Eft is a youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the

rocky territory just outside the stream. And that’s exactly what we hope

the development team will do with Ubuntu during the Edgy cycle – explore

slightly unfamiliar and uncharted territory that is perhaps a little out

of the mainstream.

The exciting news in Edgy Eft, as posted in the announcement:

And here’s why. Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge,

brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in

some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which

lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.

…

So dream a little about Xen for virtualisation, Xgl/AIGLX and other

wonderful wobbly window bits, the goodness of Network Manager, a first

flirt with multiarch support for true mixed 32-bit and 64-bit computing

on AMD64, the interesting possibilities of the SMART package manager…

and other pieces of infrastructure which have appeared tantalisingly

on the horizon.

We can afford to take some risks with Dapper+1, because Dapper has turned

out so well. We have a great answer for people who need super-solid

and super-predictable results: Dapper is still fresh, will continue to work

on modern hardware for some time, and has plenty of legs in its support

cycle left to run.

One of the reasons that led to my break from my blogging habit over the last month or two was playing with Dapper Drake from Flight 2 on. I’ll post later on my thoughts on Dapper, but even the cutting edge stuff I was playing with, in what will be a Long Term Support release from Ubuntu was amazing – I could play with XGL/Compiz for hours.

I hope to see things like Leaftag, Gimmie, and many other goodies in Edgy Eft.