Tux/Citable Version

Tux the penguin, the Linux mascot

Tux the penguin is the mascot for the Linux operating system, originally drawn by Larry Ewing.

An early sketch of Tux

On the 1st of May 1996, Matt Hartley began a thread on the Linux kernel mailing list titled "Linux logo", showcasing an image by David Christiansen of the Earth from outer space. Beside it were the words "LINUX" and "Take your computer to another dimension." The next day, a kernel hacker, Alan Cox, suggested that the logo should be "a picture of the BSD daemon flat out on the floor with stars around its head and a penguin in boxing gloves standing on top."

Mark Lehrer, however, insisted that Windows 95 was the real competition - not FreeBSD, and that they should instead use a penguin smashing a window. To this, Alan Clucas replied that this should be combined with Alan Cox's suggestion, killing, so to speak, two birds with one stone. Disliking the notion of officially endorsing a mockery of another system, Linus Torvalds, the software engineer who initiated the development of the Linux kernel, posted his favorite penguin image and emphatically stated that the concept was final, requesting that someone with artistic skills draw a similar image under an appropriate license. As of April 10th, 2007, this image is still available from its original location on the University of Helsinki's FTP server [1].

Torvalds has often expressed his affinity for penguins, once jokingly claiming that after being bitten by a ferocious penguin he developed a disease called "penguinitis", which "makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them". He claimed to have had a similar experience while visiting the Canberra zoo with Andrew Tridgell, where a small pigmy penguin nibbled on his finger.

In response to a post by Dale Scheetz, in which he demonstrated a prototype of the penguin holding the Earth, Torvalds remarked that the penguin did not seem strong enough to hold it, saying that it looked as if he were to be squashed by it at any moment. He then went on to describe the penguin we know today. He challenged his colleagues to picture instead a cute, cuddly animal, sitting down after eating a grand feast of herring, totally content and smiling after a small burp. The penguin was not to be fat, but appearantly gorged full of fish. He later mentioned that he was not looking for a "Linux Corporate Image", but something fun that can be modified extensively but still recognizable.

Larry Ewing drew the original penguin in Linux with The GIMP, version 0.54, on his 486 DX2/50, and rendered the final smoothness with an SGI Crimson because his monitor at home was an 8-bit display. He documented his work online, and a complete description of the methods he used is on his website.[2]

Early on, some referred to the penguin as 'Linnie'. This did not last for long, however, as the name 'Tux' caught on. The name 'Tux', coined by James Hughes, has a two-fold meaning, as both an acronym for Torvalds Unix and, as a pun, an abbreviation of tuxedo. Humorously, one of the earliest suggestions, from Henning Schmiedehausen, was to call the penguin "Homer", because of its resemblance to the television character Homer Simpson. As a joke, Tux was later re-drawn by Anton Johansson as an image of Homer morphed into a penguin.

A Tux the penguin doll

Tux has appeared in several magazines and television broadcasts. He has also been replicated in dolls (see photo at right), articles of clothing, stickers, and other similar paraphernalia. Because it is one of the more popular search results for "penguin" on Google Images, it has also been used in many home and small business projects, such as fliers and newsletters. Tux has also been portrayed as a symbol of a person's geekiness. It can often be found in computer gaming magazines, laying on a user's desk even while the person pictured is running Microsoft Windows. Tux has also appeared in open source video games such as Tux Racer (also known as 'Planet Penguin Racer') and TuxKart, as well as in several educational tools, such as Tux Paint.

Tux is not a mere static logo. From the beginning, the image was meant to be played with and re-drawn in a "goofy" manner. Popular versions of Tux include that in the Crystal icon set, the Slackware logo, which features Tux smoking a pipe, and that of the PaX security algorithm, which displays Tux as a viking. The Crystal Tux has been shown depicting him as many things, such as a skateboarder and a ninja. Two female penguins, known as Gown and Penny, have also appeared in several open source games, but they have no official bindings to the Linux kernel. Tux was also made into a 25" Lego model by a talented sculptor named Eric Harshbarger.

Related Topics

• The BSD Daemon, the mascot of the various Berkeley Software Distribution releases
• Wilber, the mascot of The GIMP

Subtopics

Larry Ewing

External links

• ccpenguin.jpg Torvalds' original penguin image. At his recommendation, Tux is based on this image
• Larry Ewing's description of how he drew Tux