Apple may have stopped naming operating systems after cats, but Canonical is not about to drop their trademark animal alliteration. Not even when things get tricky and the alphabetical sequence limits their options.

Today, they’ve announced that the next Ubuntu release — 15.04 — has been codenamed Vivid Ververt. This vivacious little monkey is native to southern Africa, primarily vegetarian, and noted for its distinct coloring. Though primarily gray-beige, the male has a blazing blue scrotum. You can almost hear Dr. Evil remarking that “it really is quite breathtaking.”

There’s probably no significance, but maybe this is Canonical’s clever way of telling us that Ubuntu 15.04 will be their ballsiest release yet. They’ve got big plans, like unleashing the first Ubuntu smartphones into the wild and developing an OS that’s ready to tackle “a new era of convergence in computing.”

Ververts are intelligent, show strong family bonds, and they’re generally quite friendly — though they can become extremely aggressive when the situation calls for it. They also have distinct alarm calls for different predators and even know to distrust those in the group who “cry wolf.” Pretty clever.

There aren’t a ton of other options for V, anyways. The vole is too small and timid of a creature to sound like it’s up for the Herculean task of tackling multiple form factors and the Internet of Things. Vulture? Maybe, but it conjures images of picking rotten flesh off some unfortunate creature’s bones.

Vampire bat? Possibly, but Canonical tends to stick with two word codenames. Plus it’s probably best to avoid setting the trolls up for jokes about Ubuntu 15.04 sucking, right?

Image courtesy Andrew Ross on Flickr