That type is actually a Business Facade providing an entry point to all link transforming which is much more than a Util. Hence it should be named ~Manager and be a singleton component without static methods.
To be backwards compatible we should

• create the new type info.magnolia.link.LinkManager
• move all jcr-API methods (only introduced in M5) to the new type
• deprecated LinkUtil
• have the content-API methods on LinkUtil call the jcr-API ones on the new type