How about a potato as a mascot? It is a staple in many diets, it dovetails nicely with the Toy Story leitmotif running through debian versioning, and is malleable allowing it to look like a lot of things, i.e. with a face, a swirl on its belly, etc.
The logos are fantastic and should not be changed. Changing the swirl would damage the debian brand which stands for "technically advanced", "commited to freedom", "user-focused", "stable and supported" amongst other things. If the swirl changed, it would make debian seem less "stable" since the image of the brand would be seen to shift. A mascot might help with branding. While branding is generally something that FLOSS engineers care nothing about, and seems trivial, it has an impact. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]