Little Penguin Tux, or as it is also called Tux, is the official symbol of the Linux operating system. It can be assumed that this is one of the most famous fictional penguins on Earth.
Why is the penguin the symbol of Lunux?
The history of the penguin begins in 1996. Then a small group of Linux employees, during one of their e-mails, invited their clients to draw a logo for the operating system. As a result, thousands of different drawings came to the office of the company. Among them were the most diverse: from those that depicted noble eagles and sharks to cartoons of other operating systems. During the heated debate, no emblems were adopted, but Linux chief developer Linus Torvalds casually mentioned that he likes penguins. This completely predetermined the course of further actions.
Almost instantly, the artists proposed several versions of the emblem, which depicted a penguin. On one of them, a bird was holding a globe in its hands. To this, Linus, in one of his letters, critically objected that the penguin was too weak and clumsy to hold the Earth and suggested that for this the bird should be more weighty.
After that, a competition was announced to create the best penguin. The winner of the competition was the work of Larry Iving, a designer who worked at the Institute for Scientific Computing in Texas. He created the logo using the GIMP program.
During a vote among Linux users, the official logo was an image where Linux 2.0 was written. However, Torvalds managed to defend his vision of the future logo.
Torvalds wanted the penguin to be fat and happy, as if he had just eaten several tens of kilograms of fresh fish. Plus, the penguin had to be recognizable the first time. Therefore, all other birds participating in the competition have red paws and beak, and the Dachshund penguin - orange, as if his father was a drake.
Why is the penguin called Dachshund?
There are two versions of the decryption of the penguin's name. According to the first, the name Tux is an abbreviation of the English word tuxedo, which translates as "vest" or "vest". This is because the penguins seem to be wearing vests.
According to another version, one of the Linux developers James Hughes named the Penguin's Dachshund. He did this using the capital letters of Linus Torvalds' first developed system, Torvalds UniX.
Does the Tux penguin exist in life?
For one of Linus Towards' birthdays, English Linux fans gave the main developer a live penguin, who currently lives in the Bristol Zoo in England.
