Tux - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Tux is a penguin character and the official mascot

Mascot

The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...

of the Linux kernel

Linux kernel

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

. Originally created as an entry to a Linux logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different Linux distributions

Comparison of Linux distributions

Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons...

depict Tux in various styles. In video games featuring the character, female counterparts, named Penny and Gown, accompany him. The character is used in many other Linux programs and as a general symbol of Linux.

Origins

The concept of the Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

mascot being a penguin

Penguin

Penguins are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers...

came from Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...

, the creator of Linux

Linux kernel

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

. Tux was created by Larry Ewing

Larry Ewing

Larry Ewing is a U.S. computer programmer who is known as the creator of the Linux mascot, Tux. He also created the Ximian monkey logo and is involved in:*F-Spot: a project aiming to "manage all your digital photography needs."...

in 1996 after an initial suggestion made by Alan Cox

Alan Cox

Alan Cox is a British computer programmer who formerly maintained the 2.2 branch of the Linux kernel and continues to be heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel, an association that dates back to 1991...

and further refined by Linus Torvalds on the Linux kernel mailing list

Linux kernel mailing list

The Linux kernel mailing list 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 discuss the different subsystems and ports of the Linux...

. Torvalds took his inspiration from a photograph he found on an FTP

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

site, showing a penguin figurine

Figurine

A figurine is a statuette that represents a human, deity or animal. Figurines may be realistic or iconic, depending on the skill and intention of the creator. The earliest were made of stone or clay...

looking strangely like the Creature Comforts
Creature Comforts
Creature Comforts was originally a 1989 British humorous animated short film about how animals feel about living in a zoo, featuring the voices of the British public "spoken" by the animals. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations...

characters made by Nick Park

Nick Park

Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep....

. 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

Tuxedo

A tuxedo is a type of semi-formal dress for men.Tuxedo may also refer to:-Places:Canada* Tuxedo, Winnipeg, Manitoba, a city neighborhood** Tuxedo , a provincial electoral district in Manitoba...

, the outfit which springs to mind when one sees a penguin.

Tux was originally designed as a submission for a Linux logo

Logo

A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...

contest. Three such competitions took place; Tux won none of them. This is why Tux is formally known as the Linux mascot and not the logo. Tux was created by Larry Ewing using the first publicly released version (0.54) of GIMP

GIMP

GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...

, a free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

graphics package. It was released by him under the following condition:

According to Jeff Ayers, Linus Torvalds had a "fixation for flightless, fat waterfowl" and Torvalds claims to have contracted "penguinitis" after being gently nibbled by a penguin: "Penguinitis makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them." Torvalds' supposed illness is a joke, but he really was bitten by a Little Penguin

Little Penguin

The Little Penguin is the smallest species of penguin. The penguin, which usually grows to an average of in height and in length , is found on the coastlines of southern Australia and New Zealand, with possible records from Chile.Apart from Little Penguins, they have several common names...

on a visit to the National Zoo & Aquarium

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 also next to Scrivener Dam.-Zoo Motto:...

, Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Torvalds was looking for something fun and sympathetic to associate with Linux, and a slightly fat penguin sitting down after having had a great meal perfectly fit the bill.

In an interview Linus commented on the penguin bite:

Uses

In some Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

s, Tux greets the user during booting

Booting

In computing, booting is a process that begins when a user turns on a computer system and prepares the computer to perform its normal operations. On modern computers, this typically involves loading and starting an operating system. The boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the...

, with multi-processor systems displaying multiple images of Tux, one for each processor-core. Tux appeared as a character during one arc in the webcomic

Webcomic

Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

User Friendly
User Friendly
User Friendly is a discontinued daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional Internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humour....

. TUX

TUX web server

The TUX web server is an in-kernel web server for Linux licensed under the GNU General Public License . It was maintained by Ingo Molnár.It is currently limited to serving static web pages and coordinating between kernelspace modules, userspace modules, and regular userspace web server daemons that...

is the name of a Linux-based web server

Web server

Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....

.
In 1999, Corel Linux

Corel Linux

Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a Debian-based operating system made by Corel that was released in late 1999. Corel later discontinued the distribution, but did not remove the former Corel Open Source Development website until March 2002....

Deluxe included a free Linux Penguin (Tux).

Video games

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

Mario

is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...

holds in the Nintendo

Nintendo

is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....

community. He has been featured in open-source look-alikes of other mainstream games, such as Tux Racer, Extreme Tux Racer, Tux Math Scrabble, TuxWordSmith Tux Math, SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, and Tux Paint. As such, several computer games, mostly free and open source

Free software

and/or for Linux, have included Tux, including:

Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III is a real-time strategy game developed by Microsoft Corporation's Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The Mac version was ported over and developed by Destineer's MacSoft Games and published by Destineer and MacSoft Games...

: A real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

game produced by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

. One of the random names which is assigned to explorer's dogs is 'Tux the Conqueror'.
OpenArena
OpenArena
OpenArena is a free and open source first-person shooter computer game based heavily on the Quake III Arena style deathmatch. The OpenArena project was established on August 19, 2005, the day after the id Tech 3 GPL source code release...

: contains a character named "Penguin," who is a man dressed in a costume resembling Tux.
Pingus
Pingus (video game)
Pingus is a free, open source computer game inspired by Lemmings and created by Ingo Ruhnke. It features penguins instead of lemmings. It has been reviewed favorably by CNN.com, about.com, Unix Review, and other publications.-History:...

: A Lemmings
Lemmings (video game)
Lemmings is a puzzle computer game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in . Originally developed for PC and Commodore Amiga, Lemmings was one of the most popular computer games of its time, and several gaming magazines gave it some of their highest review scores at the time...

clone in which the lemmings are replaced by penguins in reference to Tux.

SuperTux
SuperTux
SuperTux is a free, open-source two-dimensional platform game. The game was originally created by Bill Kendrick and is maintained by the SuperTux Development Team....

: a platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...

inspired by Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
Tux Kart and SuperTuxKart
SuperTuxKart
SuperTuxKart is a Mario Kart-inspired arcade racing game featuring the Linux mascot Tux. The game was originally conceived as an enhanced fork of TuxKart, but with other internet mascots by the Game of the Month team consisting of Ingo Ruhnke, Charles Goodwin, and several others, eventually...

: Kart racing games similar to the Mario Kart
Mario Kart
is a series of go-kart-style racing video games developed by Nintendo as a series of spin-offs from its trademark Mario series of platformer adventure-style video games...

series.
Tux Math Scrabble: Math version of the popular family game starring Tux.
TuxWordSmith: Scrabble in over 80 languages starring Tux.
Tux Paint
Tux Paint
Tux Paint is a free and open source bitmap graphics editor geared towards young children. The project was started in 2002 by Bill Kendrick who continues to maintain and improve it, with help from numerous volunteers...

: A drawing program for young children, most likely inspired by Kid Pix
Kid Pix
Kid Pix is a bitmap drawing program aimed at children. Originally created by Craig Hickman, it was first released for the Macintosh in 1989 and subsequently published in 1991 by Brøderbund...

.
Tux, of Math Command
Tux, of Math Command
Tux, of Math Command is an open source arcade-style video game for learning mathematics, initially created for Linux. The game-play mechanic is based loosely on that of the arcade game Missile Command, but with comets falling on cities, rather than missiles...

: a free software math tutoring arcade game.
Tux Typing
Tux Typing
Tux Typing is a free and open source typing tutor created especially for children. It features several different types of game play, at a variety of difficulty levels...

: a free software educational game designed to teach typing.
Tux Racer
Tux Racer
Tux Racer is a Free Software 3D computer game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. In the game, the player controls Tux as he slides down a course of snow and ice collecting herring. Sliding on ice makes Tux go faster, while sliding on snow allows for more maneuverability and sliding on...

: A game similar to snowboarding video games
Snowboarding video games
Snowboarding games are a genre of computer and video games that emulate the sports of snowboarding and sandboarding. Most snowboarding games are seasonal and come out sometime between October and March. The genre, for console game, peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many online casual games...

, in which the player controls Tux sliding downhill on his belly rather than humans snowboarding down a track.
FreeCiv
Freeciv
Freeciv is a multiplayer , turn-based strategy game for workstations and personal computers inspired by the commercial proprietary Sid Meier's Civilization series...

: A Civilization-like game; the leader name of the Antarctican civilization is "Tux". In addition, the Colossus is an enormous Tux statue, depending on the tile set selected.
WarMUX: A turn-based strategy
Turn-based strategy
A turn-based strategy game is a strategy game where players take turns when playing...

game inspired by Worms, featuring many free and open source software mascots, including Tux.
Frozen Bubble
Frozen Bubble
Frozen Bubble is a free software Puzzle Bobble style computer game which is available on several operating systems including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, the Symbian Series 60, Windows Phone 7 and Android line of smartphones...

: A free software puzzle game, featuring Tux-esque penguins.
LinCity-NG
Lincity
Lincity is a free construction and management simulation game, which puts the player in control of managing a city's socio-economy. Its name is a play on the title of the original city-building game, SimCity, and it was released under the GNU General Public License.- Gameplay :Lincity is a city and...

: A free software strategy game that allows you to build a Tux statue.

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 upcoming Tux 2 there is supposed to be a female penguin called "Trixi", and in FreeCiv the female leader name for the Antarctican civilization is "Tuxette".

Tux in popular culture

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins are the American Hockey League affiliate of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. They play in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza...

, the American Hockey League
American Hockey League
The American Hockey League is a 30-team professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary developmental circuit for the National Hockey League...

affiliate of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins are a professional ice hockey team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the first expansion teams during the league's original...

, anamorphic penguin mascot's name is Tux.
In the show Out of Jimmy's Head
Out of Jimmy's Head
Out of Jimmy's Head was Cartoon Network's second live-action/animated television series. It is based on the live-action/animated telefilm Re-Animated that aired on December 8, 2006...

, a wisecracking, comedian penguin who often tells bad puns and jokes is called Tux.
In the show The Penguins of Madagascar
The Penguins of Madagascar
The Penguins of Madagascar is an American CGI animated television series airing on Nickelodeon. It stars nine characters from the DreamWorks Animation animated film Madagascar: The penguins Skipper , Kowalski , Private , and Rico ; the lemurs King Julien , Maurice , and Mort...

, an episode revealed the penguin Private's name used to be Mr. Tux.
In a Froot Loops
Froot Loops
Froot Loops is a brand of breakfast cereal produced by Kellogg's and sold in Hungary, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Germany, The Middle East, The Caribbean, South Africa, Latin America, Sweden and Finland...

commercial, Tux appears as a squeaky dog toy as the "secret weapon" to distract a pack of dogs pulling a sled containing a villain.

Other uses

Tux had an uncredited use in the Al Gore's Penguin Army video.
During the Q&A session following his COMDEX
COMDEX
COMDEX was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector...

Fall 1999 keynote address, Linus Torvalds was asked if he had any idea how many stuffed penguins had been sent to Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...

. Torvalds's response was another question: "To the nearest thousand?".
There is a Pet (creature who will fight alongside your character) in the online game DragonFable
DragonFable
DragonFable is a free-to-play, online, browser-based, single-player fantasy role-playing game developed by Artix Entertainment and updated on a weekly basis...

that is a penguin named "Linus". Along with the tagline on the pet, he is shown to be a version of Tux.
Tux has been adapted to a designer toy
Designer toys
Designer toys is a term used to describe toys and other collectibles that are produced in limited editions and created by artists and designers. Designer toys are made of variety of materials; ABS plastic and vinyl are most common, although wood, metal, and resin are occasionally used. The term...

called a Gwin and is distributed by October Toys. It is redesigned by different artists and sold in short collectible runs through the October Toys website and other collectable vinyl toy sites. There are also artists who buy a blank Gwin to hand paint and customize as a one-off art piece.
Several blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

gers have noted that Tux bears a striking resemblance with a cake template on the front cover of the Australian Women's Weekly "Party Animals", a cake recipe book published by ACP Magazines. The design is titled "The Penguin Prince" and no credit is given. ACP later acknowledged the similarity and added they lost track of the original template designer.
It's possible to make Tux talk using the cowsayCowsay cowsay is a program which generates ASCII pictures of a cow with a message. It can also generate pictures using pre-made images of other animals... command in Unix by adding the option -f tux to it. In the following example the text in the cowsay is piped
Pipeline (Unix)
In Unix-like computer operating systems , a pipeline is the original software pipeline: a set of processes chained by their standard streams, so that the output of each process feeds directly as input to the next one. Each connection is implemented by an anonymous pipe...

from the fortune command:



user@myhost:~$ fortune | cowsay -f tux

tux is famous, why not me?

   \

    \

        .--.

       |o_o |

       |:_/ |

      //   \ \

     (|     | )

    /'\_   _/`\

    \___)=(___/

A monument to Tux was erected in Tyumen
Tyumen
Tyumen is the largest city and the administrative center of Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located on the Tura River east of Moscow. Population: Tyumen is the oldest Russian settlement in Siberia. Founded in 16th century to support Russia's eastward expansion, the city has remained one of the most...

(Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

) by the local Linux Users Community.
Tux has also been made as a virtual pet under the name Tux Droid
Tux Droid
Tux Droid is a Linux wireless Tux mascot 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 are handled by the Tux Gadget Manager. The Tux Droid supports Linux kernel 2.4 or later and needs a...

by Kysoh for Linux and Windows, has many features including reading tweets from Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

and checking the weather.
There is a free guitar tab reading/editing program called TuxGuitar
TuxGuitar
TuxGuitar is a free, open source tablature editor, which includes basic features such as tablature editing, score editing, triplet support and the ability to import and export Guitar Pro gp3, gp4, and gp5 files. In addition, TuxGuitar can function as a basic MIDI editor using the tablature or staff...

, which features Tux holding a guitar as its mascot.

Tuz

Tuz was the mascot

Mascot

of the 2009 linux.conf.au

Linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local volunteers....

conference. It has been chosen by Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds

as the logo for version 2.6.29 of the Linux kernel

Linux kernel

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

to support the effort to save the Tasmanian devil

Tasmanian Devil

The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae, now found in the wild only on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936...

species from extinction

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally 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 recover may have been lost before this point...

due to the devil facial tumour disease

Devil facial tumour disease

Devil facial tumour disease is an aggressive non-viral transmissible parasitic cancer—which likely originated in Schwann cells—that affects Tasmanian devils. The first "official case" was described in 1996, in Australia...

.

The image was designed by Andrew McGown and recreated as an Inkscape SVG by Josh Bush, and released under Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

license CC-BY-SA.

External links

Linux 2.0 Penguins (Larry Ewing)
A complete history of Tux
Wired News story on Tux
The Gospel of Tux
The LWN Penguin Gallery
GPL'd sewing patterns for Tux
Roblimo's video posting explaining the use of Tux in the DCI Group video
How to make a paper tux penguin
Tux Droid : A real open source Tux
Tux Case : Tux plastic case for an embedded Linux board
TuxMathScrabble and TuxWordSmith Education Games
The Free Penguin Project - GPL'd machine embroidery
Machine embroidery
Machine embroidery is an embroidery process whereby a sewing machine or embroidery machine is used to create patterns on textiles. It is used commercially in product branding, corporate advertising, and uniform adornment. Hobbyists also machine embroider for personal sewing and craft projects.There...

design files for Tux.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Origins

Uses

Video games

Female Tux versions in video games

Tux in popular culture

Other uses

Tuz

See also

External links