There but for the experience of Linus, might my avatar otherwise have been a cassowary brandishing a lawn dart.

the main reason for choosing a penguin was that penguins never crash from falling down like the other OS did so often. Tux stands for reliability with long uptime without getting up too high in the sky. Its speed in water, sustainability on minimum of living ressources and social behaviour made it perfect for the new OS. Resilience with the cold world around and lot of more parallels