A meat-eating marsupial, the devil is bordering on extinction as the animal has been ravaged over the past decade by a transmittable cancer, one of only two known in the world. The devil is found only in the Australian island state of Tasmania.

The Linux kernel team is trying to bring awareness to the animal's plight, and Linux creator Linus Torvalds has added a patch to the mainline Linux kernel, version 2.6.29, that provides a caricature of a Tasmanian devil wearing a penguin mask.

The image shows up at boot time for a number of configurations, wrote Jonathan Corbet, a Linux kernel contributor, on his Linux Foundation blog.

was the mascot for January's , which was held in Tasmania and where the show's annual charity auction was dedicated to raising funds to research devil facial tumor disease (DFTD).

DFTD over the past decade has wiped out up to 50% of devils, known for their offensive odor when under stress and their loud and disturbing screech. (See Tasmania's project.)