Tux

Tux is the official penguin mascot of Linux. The idea of a penguin as a mascot was suggested by Linus Torvalds in this Usenet post (a little help here?). The logo that won the subsiquent Linux Logo Competition was tux, created by Larry Ewing in 1996.

Tux has become an icon for the open source community, and vastly outstrips the GNU gnu in fame. Tux is also a proof of concept, in that a freely available and modifiable image can exist with ease and with no abuse in a corporate world were logos are guarded fiercely by teams of lawyers.

Tux is the mascot of Linux, both graphically and ideologically.