Tux is a

penguin Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...

character and the official

brand character A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fic ...

of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

. Originally created as an entry to a Linux logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different Linux distributions depict Tux in various styles. The character is used in many other Linux programs and as a general symbol of Linux.

History

Origins

The concept of the Linux brand character being a

came from Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. According to Jeff Ayers, Linus Torvalds had a "fixation for flightless, fat waterfowl" and Torvalds claims to have contracted "penguinitis" after being nibbled by a

little penguin The little penguin (''Eudyptula minor'') is a species of penguin from New Zealand. They are commonly known as little blue penguins or blue penguins owing to their slate-blue plumage and are also known by their Māori name . The Australian lit ...

on a visit to the National Zoo & Aquarium,

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, joking that the disease "makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them". Linus spoke at the 1994 AUUG Conference (5-9 Sept, Melbourne) as part of a "World Tour" to Belgium, Australia, Singapore and elsewhere, mentioning in

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...

he was bitten by a penguin at Canberra Zoo, not at Phillip Island, Victoria, by a (shy) wild penguin. In an interview Linus commented on the penguin bite: At Canberra zoo a sign said in 2009 that staff believed the "original Tux" was still resident in the penguin enclosure. Apart from this, in the book Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, there is an excerpt dedicated to how Tux became the mascot of the Linux OS. In the book, Linus says he doesn’t remember how Tux became the mascot, but believes the zoo story, which, according to his wife, Tove Torvalds, is probably right. In 1996 after an initial design suggestion made by Alan Cox, use of an image Torvalds found on an FTP site, showing a penguin figurine depicted in a similar style to the '' Creature Comforts'' characters created by Nick Park, the concept for Tux was further refined by Torvalds on the Linux kernel mailing list. Torvalds was looking for something fun and sympathetic to associate with Linux, and he felt that a slightly fat penguin sitting down after having eaten a great meal perfectly fit the bill. The final and original design was a submission for a Linux logo contest by

Larry Ewing Larry Ewing is an American computer programmer who is known as the creator of the Linux mascot, Tux. The artwork was created in 1996, while Ewing was a student at Texas A&M University, originally as a submission to a contest to create the Linux ...

using the first publicly released version (0.54) of

GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...

, a free software graphics package. It was released by him under the following condition: Since Tux won none of the three competitions that were held Tux is formally known as the Linux ''brand character'' and not the ''logo''. The first person to call the penguin "Tux" was James Hughes, who said that it stood for "(T)orvalds (U)ni(X)". However, ''tux'' is also an abbreviation of tuxedo, the outfit which bears resemblance in appearance to a penguin.

Tuz 2009

Tuz, a

Tasmanian devil The Tasmanian devil (''Sarcophilus harrisii'') (palawa kani: purinina) is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. Until recently, it was only found on the island state of Tasmania, but it has been reintroduced to New South Wales in ...

wearing a fake penguin beak, was the brand character of the 2009

linux.conf.au linux.conf.au (often abbreviated as lca) is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different Australian or New Zealand city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by lo ...

conference. It has been chosen by Linus Torvalds as the logo for version 2.6.29 of the Linux kernel to support the effort to save the Tasmanian devil species from extinction due to the devil facial tumour disease. The image was designed by Andrew McGown and recreated as an SVG using Inkscape by Josh Bush, and released under the CC BY-SA license.

Linux for Workgroups 2013

For the Linux 3.11-rc1 release, Linus Torvalds changed the code name from "Unicycling Gorilla" to "Linux for Workgroups" and modified the logo that some systems display when booting to depict a Tux holding a flag with a symbol that is reminiscent of the logo of

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows ...

, which was released in 1993.Linux for Workgroups
The H Open, 15 July 2013.

Uses and reception

In some Linux distributions, for example Gentoo, Tux greets the user during

booting In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so som ...

with multi-processor systems displaying multiple images of Tux, one for each processor core.

Video games

Tux has taken on a role in the Linux community similar to that which Mario holds in the

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

community. The character has been featured in open-source look-alikes of other mainstream games, such as '' Tux Racer'', ''

Extreme Tux Racer ''Tux Racer'' is a 2000 open-source winter sports racing video game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. It was originally developed by Jasmin Patry as a computer graphics project at the University of Waterloo. Later on, Patry and the ...

'', '' SuperTux'', '' SuperTuxKart'', and '' Tux Paint''.

Female Tux versions in video games

Some games that star Tux also include explicitly female penguin characters, allowing the players to play as one of those characters instead of Tux. One such female penguin is Tux's friend "Gown". Gown is variously depicted as being a pink version of Tux (''XTux'') or as having a somewhat less fat appearance and wearing items of clothing such as a red and white short skirt and a hair bow (e.g. ''TuxKart'' and ''A Quest for Herring''). In ''SuperTux'' and ''SuperTuxKart'', there is a different female penguin called "Penny" who is purple and white (''SuperTuxKart'' once had Gown and still has a map called "Gown's Bow"). In the arcade game '' Tux 2'' there is a female penguin called "Trixi", and in '' FreeCiv'' the female leader name for the Antarctican civilization is "Tuxette".

Tux in popular culture

* In a Froot Loops advertisement, Tux appears as a

squeaky toy A squeaky toy, squeak toy, squeaker toy, or squeeze toy, is a soft, hollow toy made from flexible materials such as rubber or vinyl, and usually equipped with a small device known as a ''squeaker.'' How it works When the toy is squeezed, air is fo ...

, the "secret weapon" to distract a pack of dogs pulling a sled containing the villain. * In the comics '' Hellblazer'', in issue 234 "Joyride, part 1", a Tux plush toy makes an appearance, set on the side of the road where a little girl was killed in a hit-and-run accident. * Tux appeared as a character during one arc in the webcomic '' User Friendly''.

Other uses

* In 1999,

Corel Linux Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a Debian-based operating system made by Corel that began beta testing on September 21, 1999 and was released to the public on November 15, 1999. It mainly competed against Windows 98 and Windows 2000 by M ...

Deluxe included a free Linux Penguin (Tux) toy. * Since around 2001, there was a Linux-based

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...

named

TUX Black tie is a semi-formal wear, semi-formal Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and American conventions for clothing, attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often referred to synecdochically ...

, which was deprecated around 2006. * In 2006, Tux had an uncredited use in the '' Al Gore's Penguin Army'' video. * In 2007, Tux was used by the German

cutlery Cutlery (also referred to as silverware, flatware, or tableware), includes any hand implement used in preparing, serving, and especially eating food in Western culture. A person who makes or sells cutlery is called a cutler. The city of Sheffie ...

producer WMF in the ''Sealion'' set for children. * In 2008, Tux has also been made as a virtual pet under the name

Tux Droid Tux Droid is a Linux wireless Tux mascot (210mm × 180mm × 140mm - with lowered wings) with a programmable interface, allowing it to announce events by its gestures and by ALSA driven sound. The events are detected by specific gadgets, which a ...

by Kysoh for Linux and Windows, has many features including reading tweets from Twitter and checking the weather. * Since 2009,

TuxGuitar TuxGuitar is a free and open-source tablature editor, which includes features such as tablature editing, score editing, and import and export of Guitar Pro gp3, gp4, and gp5 files. In addition, TuxGuitar's tablature and staff interfaces function a ...

, a free guitar tab reading/editing program, features Tux holding a guitar as its brand character. * In 2010, a prototype of a Tux monument with wings was presented in the Russian city of Tyumen by the local Linux user community. * The avatar of

Electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to r ...

artist

Ephixa James Leusink (born April 13, 1990), better known by his alias Ephixa (sometimes stylised as ephixa), is a Canadian electronic music producer who lives in Ontario, Canada. He is best known for his viral "Charlie Sheen Bi-Winning" dubstep remix, r ...

is based on Tux (around 2011). * In April 2016, Tux was adapted to a

designer toy A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

called a Gwin and was distributed by October Toys. The toy was redesigned by different artists and sold in short collectible runs through the October Toys website and other collectable vinyl toy sites. October Toys has since ceased operations.

Gallery

File:Tux.svg, Vectorized from the pixel image source File:NewTux.svg, Gloss look Tux File:Tux Enhanced.svg, High quality 3d-look variant File:TuxFlat.svg, Modern flat look File:Tux Mono.svg, Modern flat look in monochrome File:Tux Classic flat look v1.1.svg, Classic flat look: Emblem File:Tux Classic flat look 3D.svg, Classic flat look: 3D File:Tux-simple.svg, Simple vector variant File:Crystal 128 penguin.png, Tux Crystal 1st revision File:TUX G2.svg, Tux Crystal 2nd revision File:Other-linux-logo.svg, A Tux icon File:Slackware-mascot.svg, Slackware version of Tux File:Tuxguitar.png, Tux from

File:Pax tux.png, PaX version of Tux File:SuperTux-Milestone1 9.png, Tux as the player character protagonist of '' SuperTux'' File:Tux-wmf-gabel-vorne.jpg, Tux on the fork of the cutlery set ''Sealion'' for children by WMF (2007). File:Eight copies of Tux on multi-core processor.png, Eight Tux displayed, representing eight processor cores running the

Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the ...

installation CD. File:Birds of feather-Wikimedia-GNUnify2013 17.jpg, A Tux rangoli by students at

GNUnify Symbiosis International (Deemed University), is a multi-campus private deemed university located in the city of Pune, India. The university has more than 30 academic institutions spread over various campuses in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, I ...

'13, Pune

References

External links

{{Linux Linux Bird mascots Computing mascots Fictional penguins Free software culture and documents Linus Torvalds Linux kernel