Larry the cow

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November 29, 2004

Larry the cow is one domesticated animal you probably haven’t heard of (though you may have heard of our beloved South Park cows). He is the mascot of Gentoo Linux and there’s a headshot of him over at Gentoo’s About page (see “Gentoo Linux… in a poster”).

Now, I came across this amusing bug today, bug 27727 - bug Lary (sic) can NOT be a Cow, that insists that Larry cannot be a cow but should rather have been a bull, being male. Dictionary.com says a cow is “a domesticated bovine of either sex or any age” so that was why the bug was left as WONTFIX. Still it is weird to see Larry with udders in this thread in the Gentoo forums. Larry is probably one of the first transgender/sexually ambiguous animal mascots in Linux history.

Posted by Chu Yeow at November 29, 2004 SGT |

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| Category: Fun, Operating Systems

8 Comments & TrackBacks ()

better sexually ambiguous than overtly sexual.

*cough*Ubuntu*cough* ;-)

Posted by: antrix on November 29, 2004 10pm

This mirrors one of my pet complaints. Every few weeks I seem to see another TV ad or produced-on-autopilot show featuring a “male” cow with udders (or some generally milk-related ability). Just two days ago I was watching an episode of the cartoon “Dave the Barbarian” with my kids which fell into this same trap.

Sigh.

Posted by: Frank Carver on November 29, 2004 10pm

Lary can NOT be a Cow
“Larry is probably one of the first transgender/sexually ambiguous animal mascots in Linux history.”…

Posted by: Groovy Links on November 30, 2004 12am

Cow doesn’t mean male.

A cow is a female bovine, a Bull is a male. Its not just bovine that have this method of naming the sexes, look at whales for example.

Remember, BOVINE is the word.

Posted by: Then Wolf on November 30, 2004 6am

Larry the bovine doesn’t quite go down as well though ;)

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on November 30, 2004 9am

Maggie the cow?
Larry the calf?
Larry the bull?

Posted by: Then Wolf on November 30, 2004 10am

I always thought it was a load of bull having a cow being associated with Gentoo in the first place, given that Gentoo is the name of a specfic species of penguins and that’s how they apparently got the name.

Oh well, whatever works I suppose.

Posted by: Fedora Reverter on November 30, 2004 8pm