How Tux the Penguin Ruined it for Linux
I really like Linux here in the year 2016. I use it all the time for all types of shit. I don’t even really use Windows anymore (aside from games) because I feel limited without a good Unix-like command line. Jon from 15 years ago would call modern Jon a dork, though, and for good reason: Linux of 15 years ago was a mess as far as new users would be concerned — a maddening experience presided over by a poorly drawn, grinning gargoyle.
The benefits to switching to Linux back in, say, 2001 or so were said to be many. It was immune to Windows exploits, generally stable, and even more than simply being free — it also felt “underground.” (Arguably all things Apple was able to eventually capitalize on with OSX [I know it’s not Linux shut up], but that’s for another article.)
In an era where Windows blue screens represented any type of computer problem in pop culture, where Bill Gates served as the caricature for tech’s first evil rich nerd, and reinstalling Windows entirely was the easy fix for many problems, Linux had much of what was needed to do well on the desktop by the merit of simply not being Windows.
But it failed to grab a lot of users for a lot of reasons — impenetrable documentation, an inconsistent and ugly graphical presentation, a lack of comparable professional-grade programs, and something I call Driver Madness to name a few — but I would argue that those problems, while more serious, are less off-putting than this insult-to-injury-adding motherfucker right here:
FUCK this shit. Fuck you, Tux.
This goofy fuck showed up on practically every boot screen, website and install disc you’d come across. Every “serious power user” quality Linux had to offer switchers was totally undermined at every turn by this cutesy bullshit showing up to smirk while the user foolishly prayed that the thing would boot properly. And for many people, an enormous version of it would eventually be displayed in full 800x600 as their default wallpaper — a sort of “reward” for managing to install Linux — and continue to grin right into their eyes, as if it knew they were moments from finding out the sound drivers don’t work and would never work. Fuck Tux.
(It also didn’t help that Tux was shoehorned into every knock-off game and program open source developers would create. There was that Tux Mario-like ripoff, the Tux Lemmings thing, and so on. “Let’s make the same games, but worse and stupider-looking” is an innately fucking flawed plan.)
Tux represented everything wrong with Linux. How was such a poor drawing chosen — by multiple people, supposedly — to represent something actually pretty impressive and cool? Wasn’t there one person anywhere who could do something better than this? People who think this is good were the ones building an OS that’s supposedly better? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, the world said in unison.
The 2001 WIRED piece, “The Story Behind Tux the Penguin,” contains this baffling passage:
Slashdot’s [Robin] Miller believes that Tux is a “great” logo because it has sex appeal.
“Women are strongly drawn to Tux, they love Tux,” Miller said. “That’s why Linux developers are always smiling.”
Miller said he was recently in Nashville, Tenn., to talk to the local Linux users group which was meeting at the Auto Diesel College. He’d been given directions that got him to the campus, but had no idea which room the group was meeting in.
“Then two beautiful girls got out of a pickup truck, and unloaded a four-foot-high stuffed Tux. They headed off and I followed them and Tux to the meeting,” Miller said. “You’re not going to see Microsoft users carrying around a Window, or Mac people with a big stuffed apple. But you always know when you’re in Linux country because you will see Tux.”
What the fuck you fucking freak?
And for some reason, some people chose to draw variations on Tux and include them in their software packages and visual themes, each one worse than the last.
This type of shit is impossible to take seriously. No fucking wonder nobody wanted to use Linux.
I haven’t actually seen Tux in a while. I’m sure there are plenty of those Linux distributions made by one guy in the Netherlands or somewhere that still have him all over the place, but by and large Tux as a mascot seems to have been replaced by impossible-to-have-an-opinion-about shapes and logos. Something much harder to feel personally insulted by. This is a positive change. I hope I never see it again.
Now that Tux is rotting in cyber hell alongside Clippy, Microsoft Bob and the others, the lesson, I think, is a simple one—if your software is prone to fucking up, don’t give it a face or a name or any sort of personhood. Not only is it creepy, people naturally hate it and want to avoid it. And they’re correct in doing so. Because it’s fucking weird and childish.
Thank you for reading this thing I wrote out of spite for a cartoon character.
