Released on October 19, 2017, Ubuntu 17.10 was dubbed Artful Aardvark by Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth and was the first Ubuntu release to ship with the GNOME desktop environment by default after using Canonical’s Unity user interface for more than six years, since the release of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). However, being a non-LTS release, Ubuntu 17.10 only received nine months of support that will end on Thursday, July 19, 2018. After this date, Canonical will no longer release security and software updates for Ubuntu 17.10 users, leaving their systems vulnerable to a wide range of attacks.