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I always thought this was just a joke: http://www.sjbaker.org/humor/cardboard_dog.html

In the early '70s Zappa wrote a song called 'Penguin in Bondage,' an obvious foretelling of the anti-Linux lawsuits and threats from SCO, Microsoft, and other evildoers.

Since Tux came into being in April-May of 1996, it is impossible for Mr. Zappa to have used a penguin reference to suggest anything about Linus in the "early '70s." See: http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin

-Todd

Cardboard Cutout Dog

Possibly the finest essay on the subject.

Jokes aside, it basically posits that the value of the code review is not in the listening, but in not letting your ideas stay in your head as a ball of fuzz, and force you to make them concrete by talking to someone/something. Tends to be true about code, and many other things.

There was actually a small push once upon a time to switch to a fox as a mascot. Details are a ways down on this page:

http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin

Honestly, I don't have any problem with the mascot being a penguin, or even calling it Tux. It's just that the traditional Tux logo is very, very stale (and wasn't that great to begin with). I think just a new rendition of Tux would do a lot for Linux's image.

I's not the OpenGL teapot, it's the Utah Teapot or teapotahedron.

A synopsis of why Linux is a cult religion.

There are four basic steps to establishing a cult religion. They are;

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.
Step 2: Choose a name for your cult.
Step 3: Define yourself.
Step 4: Write down your tenets.

A comprehensive history of how the linux penguin came to be can be found at
http://www.sjbaker.org/tux/. This is the main reference site for this
article. All quotes have been obtained there, unless otherwise stated.

It is important to note that the opening words of the Holy Bible are "In the
beginning..." Genesis 1:1. The reference site opens with the words, "In the
beginning..." This is no mere coincidence, as will be shown.

Detail
======

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.

Checking out the opposition was an absolute must for Linus. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was out there with a cult. It wasn't going to be easy to find an icon for the linux cult, so the linuxfux had to do some research. They were competing with ancestors, cosmic schemes, cows, rats, the sun, the moon, the earth, stars, snakes, turtles, planets, aliens, crystals, ufo's, light, dark, evil spirits, crying and/or bleeding statues, and goodness knows what else.

The hard part was to pick something that hadn't been used before. Heck, even the atheists have an invisible pink unciorn. They tried trombones, grand pianos, accoustic guitars, commodes, Marilyn Monroe's underwear, and even Linus Torvald's underwear. The last one was not very good good because Linus Torvalds was, at that stage, a pipsqueak of an excuse for a human being, and
most linuxfux are very fat, and very pimply. That last point will not be lost on those familiar with the more recent appearance of Torvlads.

Now, you may think that using Linus' underwear as an icon a bit strange. You may also wonder how people could bring themselves to believe that Linus' underwear is the font of all spiritual knowledge, but just think! Linus wore them, they gave him spiritual enlightenment and, of course, everyone who knows Linus Torvalds has heard the harmonious tunes coming from that
direction.

In the end, the linuxfux chose a paunchy, naked penguin. Yes, the penguin is naked! Just like Didney's fantasy character, Porky Pig. The Linux Penguin has no pants.

So, how was the ridiculous, gormloos looking, naked, pauchy penguin chosen?

Linus Torvalds: "Yes, I was bitten by a penguin, but it wasn't actually very ferocious. It was really just a pigmy penguin about 6 inches tall or something, and it was more of a timid nibble ("is this finger a see before me a small fish, or what?"). Even so, I like penguins a lot."

So, there you have it. A mind-association between "pigmy," "timid nibble" and Linux. All well-balanced people, that is, Windows users, will see the irony in that Freudian association.

Some quotes from Linus on the penguin;

Thu, 9 May 1996 17:48:56 +0300 (EET DST)

"Anyway, this one looks like the poor penguin is not really strong enough to
hold up the world, and it's going to get squashed. Not a good, positive
logo, in that respect.."

As you can plainly see, Linus is attempting to place the penguin on a pedestal. The very same pedestal as the three great religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, that "hold up the world."

In the same usenet post, and in the very next paragraph, Linus exhorts is eager new cult recruits thus;

"Now, when you think about penguins, first take a deep calming breath, and then think "cuddly". Take another breath, and think "cute". Go back to "cuddly" for a while (and go on breathing), then think "contented"."

Compare that exhortation with the following quote from
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/yoga/yoga_06.htm l

"A Yoga student is always happy, and is never worried or vexed. Yoga prescribes Santosha or contentment in whatever condition o

It's tempest in a teapot, not a teacup.

Now, with penguins, (cuddly such), "contented" means it has either just gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring. Take it from me, I'm an expert on penguins, those are really the only two options.

- Linus Torvalds on the design of Tux

No, Linus, apparently there was a third option.

And now I'll never say "Ooh, what a cuddly penguin, I bet he is just stuffed with herring" the same way again.

Not on TV, but MS has indeed mentioned Linux in magazine ads

As opposed to a penguin that had just stuffed itself with herring, you would prefer a penguin that had just gotten laid?

(Well, maybe you do, but it's not politic, so maybe you shouldn't.)

it's because Linus was once bitten by one.

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A synopsis of why Linux is a cult religion.

There are four basic steps to establishing a cult religion. They are;

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.
Step 2: Choose a name for your cult.
Step 3: Define yourself.
Step 4: Write down your tenets.

A comprehensive history of how the linux penguin came to be can be found at
http://www.sjbaker.org/tux/. This is the main reference site for this
article. All quotes have been obtained there, unless otherwise stated.

It is important to note that the opening words of the Holy Bible are "In the
beginning..." Genesis 1:1. The reference site opens with the words, "In the
beginning..." This is no mere coincidence, as will be shown.

Detail
======

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.

Checking out the opposition was an absolute must for Linus. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was out there with a cult. It wasn't going to be easy to find an icon for the linux cult, so the linuxfux had to do some research. They were competing with ancestors, cosmic schemes, cows, rats, the sun, the moon, the earth, stars, snakes, turtles, planets, aliens, crystals, ufo's, light, dark, evil spirits, crying and/or bleeding statues, and goodness knows what else.

The hard part was to pick something that hadn't been used before. Heck, even the atheists have an invisible pink unciorn. They tried trombones, grand pianos, accoustic guitars, commodes, Marilyn Monroe's underwear, and even Linus Torvald's underwear. The last one was not very good good because Linus Torvalds was, at that stage, a pipsqueak of an excuse for a human being, and
most linuxfux are very fat, and very pimply. That last point will not be lost on those familiar with the more recent appearance of Torvlads.

Now, you may think that using Linus' underwear as an icon a bit strange. You may also wonder how people could bring themselves to believe that Linus' underwear is the font of all spiritual knowledge, but just think! Linus wore them, they gave him spiritual enlightenment and, of course, everyone who knows Linus Torvalds has heard the harmonious tunes coming from that
direction.

In the end, the linuxfux chose a paunchy, naked penguin. Yes, the penguin is naked! Just like Didney's fantasy character, Porky Pig. The Linux Penguin has no pants.

So, how was the ridiculous, gormloos looking, naked, pauchy penguin chosen?

Linus Torvalds: "Yes, I was bitten by a penguin, but it wasn't actually very ferocious. It was really just a pigmy penguin about 6 inches tall or something, and it was more of a timid nibble ("is this finger a see before me a small fish, or what?"). Even so, I like penguins a lot."

So, there you have it. A mind-association between "pigmy," "timid nibble" and Linux. All well-balanced people, that is, Windows users, will see the irony in that Freudian association.

Some quotes from Linus on the penguin;

Thu, 9 May 1996 17:48:56 +0300 (EET DST)

"Anyway, this one looks like the poor penguin is not really strong enough to
hold up the world, and it's going to get squashed. Not a good, positive
logo, in that respect.."

As you can plainly see, Linus is attempting to place the penguin on a pedestal. The very same pedestal as the three great religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, that "hold up the world."

In the same usenet post, and in the very next paragraph, Linus exhorts is eager new cult recruits thus;

"Now, when you think about penguins, first take a deep calming breath, and then think "cuddly". Take another breath, and think "cute". Go back to "cuddly" for a while (and go on breathing), then think "contented"."

Compare that exhortation with the following quote from

A synopsis of why Linux is a cult religion.

There are four basic steps to establishing a cult religion. They are;

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.
Step 2: Choose a name for your cult.
Step 3: Define yourself.
Step 4: Write down your tenets.

A comprehensive history of how the linux penguin came to be can be found at
http://www.sjbaker.org/tux/. This is the main reference site for this
article. All quotes have been obtained there, unless otherwise stated.

It is important to note that the opening words of the Holy Bible are "In the
beginning..." Genesis 1:1. The reference site opens with the words, "In the
beginning..." This is no mere coincidence, as will be shown.

Detail
======

Step 1: Pick a ridiculous icon.

Checking out the opposition was an absolute must for Linus. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was out there with a cult. It wasn't going to be easy to find an icon for the linux cult, so the linuxfux had to do some research. They were competing with ancestors, cosmic schemes, cows, rats, the sun, the moon, the earth, stars, snakes, turtles, planets, aliens, crystals, ufo's, light, dark, evil spirits, crying and/or bleeding statues, and goodness knows what else.

The hard part was to pick something that hadn't been used before. Heck, even the atheists have an invisible pink unciorn. They tried trombones, grand pianos, accoustic guitars, commodes, Marilyn Monroe's underwear, and even Linus Torvald's underwear. The last one was not very good good because Linus Torvalds was, at that stage, a pipsqueak of an excuse for a human being, and
most linuxfux are very fat, and very pimply. That last point will not be lost on those familiar with the more recent appearance of Torvlads.

Now, you may think that using Linus' underwear as an icon a bit strange. You may also wonder how people could bring themselves to believe that Linus' underwear is the font of all spiritual knowledge, but just think! Linus wore them, they gave him spiritual enlightenment and, of course, everyone who knows Linus Torvalds has heard the harmonious tunes coming from that
direction.

In the end, the linuxfux chose a paunchy, naked penguin. Yes, the penguin is naked! Just like Didney's fantasy character, Porky Pig. The Linux Penguin has no pants.

So, how was the ridiculous, gormloos looking, naked, pauchy penguin chosen?

Linus Torvalds: "Yes, I was bitten by a penguin, but it wasn't actually very ferocious. It was really just a pigmy penguin about 6 inches tall or something, and it was more of a timid nibble ("is this finger a see before me a small fish, or what?"). Even so, I like penguins a lot."

So, there you have it. A mind-association between "pigmy," "timid nibble" and Linux. All well-balanced people, that is, Windows users, will see the irony in that Freudian association.

Some quotes from Linus on the penguin;

Thu, 9 May 1996 17:48:56 +0300 (EET DST)

"Anyway, this one looks like the poor penguin is not really strong enough to
hold up the world, and it's going to get squashed. Not a good, positive
logo, in that respect.."

As you can plainly see, Linus is attempting to place the penguin on a pedestal. The very same pedestal as the three great religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, that "hold up the world."

In the same usenet post, and in the very next paragraph, Linus exhorts is eager new cult recruits thus;

"Now, when you think about penguins, first take a deep calming breath, and then think "cuddly". Take another breath, and think "cute". Go back to "cuddly" for a while (and go on breathing), then think "contented"."

Compare that exhortation with the following quote from
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/yoga/yoga_06.htm l

"A Yoga student is always happy, and is never worried or vexed. Yoga prescribes Santosha or contentmen

Someone mod this guy up!

I just read the rules for Kniggits The two handed rock-paper-scissors attack system is pure genius!

I'm looking forward to giving this one a shot, thanks :)

So, does that mean that we can expect Teapot-Shaped Macs in the future?

All these corporate suits and devils and penguins, running around w/ rocket launchers and sniper rifles. Deathmatch, maybe some capture the flag -- it could work...

How about ice hockey? (I though I'd remembered hearing that Torvalds had suggested that Tux and Beastie play ice hockey with Bill Gates' head, but either that happened in another message or didn't happen at all.)

James Blinn's teapot, yes the same Blinn after which the shading algorithm is named. It's been a longtime sortof inside joke among the 3d graphics community.

A Brief History of The Utah Teapot.

With dataset.

CC.

He's referring to this

Traditionally the 3D demo object of choice is a teapot.

Tux isn't stoned, he's just sated, according to THE MAN himself.

I would have guessed he meant one of the platonic solids: teapotahedron

The input of the other party is so irrelevant in this process that we used to joke about keeping a cardboard cut-out programmer to save wear and tear on the real ones...
How about a cardboard cutout dog?

"Debugging is always harder than coding. If you write the code as cleverly as you possibly can, then you are - by definition - not clever enough to debug it."
--- Attr to Kernighan and Pike

This might be what he was talking about :-)

Is this trying to replace the cardboard cutout dog as everyone's favorite debugging tool?

You're mistaking the big difference; The penguin may have evolved into a sort of brand, but not because it was forced down people's throats.

The Linux penguin was not a branded effort to make all Linux distros look the same, because Linus did not say, "Okay, everyone, I want you to use the penguin in your logos and ad copy so everyone knows 'Linux = penguins'." Rather, he adopted the penguin as a mascot purely because it amused him, and everyone picked up and ran with it. The Linux penguin is, in a sense, only a brand in that people voluntarily use the penguin; it is the un-brand. In some cases, distro makers have actually eschewed using the penguin (Red Hat, who has a true branding effort, leaps immediately to mind; when was the last time you saw Tux on a default Red Hat screen?)

And we are all wearing the same jerseys when we use a Mozilla product, because when you click the throbber in Firebird or Mozilla, on Windows, Linux or Mac, it always takes you to mozilla.org.

Finally, I'd like to point out something that marketeers often ignore; an entity's identity may be is its brand, but the function of the entity must come before the identity. To put the brand first is to fall into all those same traps that dotcoms did in the 1990s, where it didn't matter what anyone did, so much as that they appeared to do something (even when many did nothing at all).

The only super hero I care for is Tux. I cannot comment on the classic super heroes, as the site could not bear the load. Since there are several tux sites, they will probably survive the load better. Check here, here, here, here, here, here or here.

Look, kids, a Troll for the Oil Companies! A Troil!

One could make the argument that Microsoft has lots of people trying to hurt one particular fuzzy animal, thus the outcries. :)

I'm also pretty sure (but can't find evidence) that SGI's "Haeberli" image format dates back to the late 1980's - that format has a full alpha channel.

I certainly designed hardware that would render textured polygons composited by alpha blends back in the late 1980's. I have screen shots taken from that system.

(Notice the alpha textured trees in the righthand image - those are 'composited via a mask').

Earlier than that, the Quantel Paintbox (used in TV studio's to produce 2D artwork) had some kind of alpha-based compositing feature.

This patent would have had to be filed in about 1978 to have avoided all prior art - and even then, it would have been considered 'trivial' IMHO.