From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BSD Daemon, aka "Beastie"

BSD Daemon is the BSD operating system's mascot, named after a daemon, a type of software program common on Unix-like operating systems. Although a Walnut Creek advertiser wrongly named it "Chuck," perhaps because of its shoes, and some call it "beastie," a phonetic pronunciation of BSD (BeeS Dee), the daemon's proper name is just "BSD Daemon". It usually carries a trident to symbolize the daemon's forking of processes.

The copyright of the BSD Daemon is held by Marshall Kirk McKusick who tries to ensure that it is properly used to identify only BSD-based software and services and licenses them for "personal use within the bounds of good taste." The current popular version of BSD Daemon was drawn by animation director John Lasseter on March 22, 1988, while the first version of the logo was drawn by comic artist Phil Foglio, as a returned favor to Mike O'Brien for lockpicking his roommate's safe in 1976, and were drawn for the first national UNIX meeting, and appeared on the first decade's worth of UNIX T-shirts.

Prior to selecting the current mascot, Puffy, OpenBSD used a BSD daemon with a halo, this image was used during the 2.3 and 2.4 releases. Before selecting its current logo, the FreeBSD project used John Lasseter's version of the daemon as their logo as well as mascot, however the project felt that the daemon was not an effective enough logo. There were several reasons for this: most importantly that the daemon was not unique to FreeBSD, as it was historically used by other BSD variants, but also that the image was considered unprofessional by the FreeBSD core team and that it did not function well for promotional material using two or three colours or when rescaled. In February 2005, a contest to create a new logo for the project began, and the winner was chosen as the official logo in November of the same year.

In FreeBSD version 5.x of this image of the BSD Daemon appeared in the startup menu, though it can still be set as startup image in later versions. It is also used in the daemon_saver screensaver.

                ,        ,         
               /(        )`        
               \ \___   / |        
               /- _  `-/  '        
              (/\/ \ \   /\        
              / /   | `    \       
              O O   ) /    |       
              `-^--'`<     '       
             (_.)  _  )   /        
              `.___/`    /         
                `-----' /          
   <----.     __ / __   \          
   <----|====O)))==) \) /====      
   <----'    `--' `.__,' \         
                |        |         
                 \       /       /\
            ______( (_  / \______/ 
          ,'  ,-----'   |          
          `--{__________)          

• List of mascots:Computing Mascots

• FreeBSD's The BSD Daemon page
• The red guy's name, from the FreeBSD FAQ
• Marshall Kirk McKusick's BSD Daemon Page
• beastie.com
• What's that daemon? — info on daemon shirts and a funny story
• How to make a beastie flag