Canonical begins developing Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

It’s not even been a week since Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) was released and Canonical’s developers have already begun working on the next version, Ubuntu 13.10, codenamed Saucy Salamander. Canonical’s Matthias Klose announced the news through the Ubuntu development mailing list. “Saucy is now open for development, with syncs from unstable currently running,” he wrote.

The email mentions some of the changes we can expect in Saucy Salamander. The development version incorporates new versions of GCC and boost. GCC (short for GNU Compiler Collection) is a compiler system by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. Saucy Salamander will use GCC 4.8 as the default compiler, which means it will have improved C++11 support, AddressSanitizer, and a fast memory error detector, among other things. The email also mentions that updates to Glibc and binutils will follow later during the development cycle.

We hope they choose a better codename for Ubuntu 14.04

Ubuntu 13.10 will be a non-LTS (Long Term Support) release (just like Raring Ringtail was), which means it will be supported for only nine months after it is released. Canonical cut down the time for which releases would be supported from 18 months to nine months with Ubuntu 13.04, as it adopted a "rolling release" schedule.This move will allow developers to devote more time to newer and LTS releases, but people who want to be kept up-to-date will always have to upgrade to the latest version of the distribution.

Saucy Salamander will be the last release before the next LTS version of Ubuntu—we hope it's not called Transcendental Tiger or something—comes out.

Following Canoncial’s naming convention, Saucy Salamander will be released in October this year—October 17 to be specific. We expect this version to have a theme or artwork concerning amphibians, as the Salamander is one.