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 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 Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different

Linux distributions A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

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

brand character being a

came from

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also c ...

, 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 The National Zoo and Aquarium is a privately owned zoo and aquarium in the Australian capital city of Canberra. It is located in Yarralumla at the western end of Lake Burley Griffin, next to Scrivener Dam. It recently had a major expansion, wi ...

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 The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

site, showing a penguin

figurine A figurine (a diminutive form of the word ''figure'') or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with cl ...

depicted in a similar style to the ''

Creature Comforts ''Creature Comforts'' is a British adult stop-motion comedy mockumentary franchise originating in a 1989 British humorous animated short film of the same name. The film matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about th ...

'' characters created by

Nick Park Nicholas Wulstan Park (born 6 December 1958) is a British animator who created ''Wallace and Gromit'', ''Creature Comforts'', ''Chicken Run'', ''Shaun the Sheep'', and '' Early Man''. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of ...

, the concept for Tux was further refined by Torvalds on the

Linux kernel mailing list The Linux kernel mailing list (LKML) is the main electronic mailing list for Linux kernel development, where the majority of the announcements, discussions, debates, and flame wars over the kernel take place. Many other mailing lists exist to di ...

. 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 A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...

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 Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

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

, 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 Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

due to the

devil facial tumour disease Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) is an aggressive non-viral clonally transmissible cancer which affects Tasmanian devils, a marsupial native to Australia. DFTD was first described in 1996. In the subsequent decade the disease ravaged Tasmania's ...

. The image was designed by Andrew McGown and recreated as an SVG using

Inkscape Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rectang ...

by Josh Bush, and released under the

CC BY-SA A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

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, 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 (computing), shell ...

, 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 Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

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 is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creat ...

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 ''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 n ...

'', '' Extreme Tux Racer'', ''

SuperTux ''SuperTux'' is a free and open-source two-dimensional platform video game published under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The game was inspired by Nintendo's ''Super Mario Bros.'' series; instead of Mario, the hero in the game is Tux, th ...

'', ''

SuperTuxKart ''SuperTuxKart'' (''STK'') is a free and open-source kart racing game, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3. It features mascots of various open-source projects. ''SuperTuxKart'' is cross-platform, runn ...

'', and ''

Tux Paint ''Tux Paint'' is a Free and open-source software, free and open source raster graphics editor (a program for creating and processing raster graphics) geared towards young children. The project was started in 2002 by Bill Kendrick who continues t ...

''.

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 ''Freeciv'' is a single- and multiplayer turn-based strategy game for workstations and personal computers inspired by the proprietary ''Sid Meier's Civilization'' series. It is available for most desktop computer operating systems and available ...

'' the female leader name for the Antarctican civilization is "Tuxette".

Tux in popular culture

* In a

Froot Loops Froot Loops is a brand of sweetened, fruit-flavored breakfast cereal produced by Kellogg's. The cereal is sold in many different countries. The cereal pieces are ring-shaped (hence "loops") and come in a variety of bright colors and fruit ...

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 ''John Constantine, Hellblazer'' is an American contemporary Horror fiction, horror comic-book series published by DC Comics since January 1988, and subsequently by its Vertigo Comics, Vertigo imprint since March 1993, when the imprint was introd ...

'', 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 Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be co ...

User Friendly Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...

''.

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 by Kysoh for Linux and Windows, has many features including reading tweets from

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

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 free guitar tab reading/editing program, features Tux holding a guitar as its brand character. * In 2010, a prototype of a Tux

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, his ...

with wings was presented in the Russian city of

Tyumen Tyumen ( ; rus, Тюмень, p=tʲʉˈmʲenʲ, a=Ru-Tyumen.ogg) is the administrative center and largest city of Tyumen Oblast, Russia. It is situated just east of the Ural Mountains, along the Tura River. Fueled by the Russian oil and gas indu ...

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, ...

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 A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

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 A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

1st revision File:TUX G2.svg, Tux

2nd revision File:Other-linux-logo.svg, A Tux icon File:Slackware-mascot.svg,

Slackware Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions ...

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 ''

'' 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 Rangoli is an art form that originates from in the Indian subcontinent, in which patterns are created on the floor or a tabletop using materials such as powdered lime stone, red ochre, dry rice flour, coloured sand, quartz powder, flower petal ...

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 Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

References

External links

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