History of tux

Tux is the official mascot of the Linux kernel.

The concept of the Linux mascot being a penguin came from Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. Tux was created by Larry Ewing in 1996 after an initial suggestion made by Alan Cox and further refined by Linus Torvalds on the Linux kernel mailing list. The first person to call the penguin "Tux" was James Hughes who said that it stood for "(T)orvolds (U)ni(X)"(sic) - although a more likely explanation is that penguins look vaguely as if they are wearing a tuxedo.

Tux was designed for a Linux logo contest. Confusingly, there were actually three separate contests and Tux didn't win any of them. This is why Tux is formally known as the Linux mascot and not the logo. Tux was created by Larry Ewing using GIMP (a free software graphics package) and was released by him under the following condition:

Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.

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 of course a joke, but he really was bitten by a Little Penguin on a visit to Canberra, Australia. 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.

Tux has become iconic for the Linux and FLOSS community, with one British Linux user group adopting a live Black-Footed (Jackass) penguin at Bristol Zoo on the occasion of Linus Torvalds' birthday. Tux does not accurately portray any of the 19 species of penguin although the Gentoo Penguin is close.

He is often dressed or portrayed differently, depending on context; for example, when representing the PaX security algorithm, he wears a helmet and brandishes an axe and shield, and his eyes are red.

Tux is the star of many games, including Tux Racer, in which the user guides Tux down a variety of different icy hills on his belly, trying to catch herring and beat the time limit. Tux is also a character in the webcomic User Friendly.

In some Linux distributions, Tux greets the user during booting, with multi-processor systems displaying multiple tuxes.

Mostly riped from wikipedia.org