Why a penguin? Torvalds has humorously claimed he chose Linux’s iconic penguin, Tux, because he was once viciously bitten by a ferocious Australian penguin, and thus became fixated on the waddling beasts. Actually, the story is somewhat true—Torvalds had a bizarre run-in with a penguin at a zoo. After recounting the tale to the Linux mailing list, users quickly adopted the penguin mascot. Today, Tux serves as a charming reminder that the world’s dominant open-source OS mascot owes its existence to an irritated bird and one programmer’s unusual zoo misadventure down under.
