I recently received a curious e-mail from Canonical. I believe this e-mail was not intended for me, but it provides a fascinating look at the future of Ubuntu, and I would like to share it with you.

Below is the e-mail:

With Intrepid Ibex now past feature-freeze it’s time to start to plan
features that are being lined up for inclusion after Ubuntu 8.10 is released in October. And so I’d like to introduce you to Jabbering Jackass, the release which is planned for April 2009, and which is likely to have the version number 9.04.

With Jabbering Jackass, we will be working on creating a stubborn … I mean stable … user experience. At this stage in the process, design work is preliminary, but some parts of the plan have been worked out.

For example, we already have a desktop background* for Jackass:

(Click on the picture for a closer look at the folders.)

In addition, Jackass will feature a new Ubuntu log-in sound. The leading candidate right now is this*: WAV | FLAC | Web (Not Recomended). However this is still preliminary, as some people thought it was too annoying, especially since it loops forever.

Finally, Jackass will introduce a feature never before seen in any operating system, a cuddly cartoon donkey, something like the Microsoft Office Assistant, that will help you get work done. For example, if you make a mistake, the cuddly donkey will pop onto the screen and bellow, “You jackass!”

I believe this will be a very useful (Shutup, jackass. I really did mean to type useful.) feature that will change forever how we interact with the operating system.

Please keep this e-mail confidential until April 1 when the formal announcement will be made.

–Mark

For more information on this, see here.

Note: I think Ubuntu is one of the best if not the best Linux distro out there. I use it myself and in no way am I trying to say it is bad or imply anything bad about it.

* – Credit for the desktop background image goes to Orin Optiglo. The image is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

* – Credit for the donkey sound goes to Acclivity. The sound is licensed under Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0.

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