Raiden's Realm: And thank you for the penguins

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And thank you for the penguins (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Mar 10, 2010 at 02:06pm
Section: Editorials
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Of the many thousands of things we have Linus Torvalds to thank for, one of them is the venerable penguin, symbol of all things Linux. But what if Linus had chosen to instead use the Gnu (I know, that one was already taken, but humor me here), or a beaver, or a bear, or maybe a demon like Freebsd uses? (already, it's technical a "daemon", but let's ignore the technicalities for the sake of this argument.)

What would that relay to the world at large? Well, if he had chosen to go with a character like the FreeBSD "Daemon" mascot, ~80% of the world would have avoided us like the plague, saying we're a bunch of Satan worshiping geeks or something. (this actually happened to Freebsd!) If we'd taken the camel, they would have said we were slow and dumb. (no offense to camels, or any project using one as a mascot. I'm just stating how this would be seen from an end user's viewpoint)

And I could go on for hours telling about all the other possible mascots Linux could have had, and the many possible responses by the public to them. But instead, we have a penguin. And you know what? I like it that way. So what's so special about a penguin that makes them so great? What does this convey to people when they see it?

Well, for starts, penguins live in the cold, cold antarctic. That to me says that Hell could freeze over and we'd still be here. We're survivors. We're tough. We love community. We help each other. We're fast and agile (On land, no. But in the water, yes.). We adapt. And even when everyone in the world is trying to eat us (you'd be surprised how many things consider a penguin as lunch) we still fight on and survive. We're each unique. (each penguin has his or her own unique and distinct voice and call that separates them from the others) And yet we're all the same. (ref: almost all penguins look identical)

To me, the penguin is a powerful symbol that is the perfect mascot to a great OS. And we have Mr. Torvolds to thank for that.

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