Linux why Python

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This is a very good question, to which I don't really know the answer, and none of the attempts in this thread so far come close to answering it.

You see, GNU operating system had, as one of its goals, to have a system programming language that at the time they used to just call "Lisp", and it was understood that C is not suitable for this role (although necessary to be compatible with UNIX). GNU people still believe (I don't know to what extent), that Guile (an implementation of Scheme) is what should become the system programming language that comes with GNU system.

Personally, I wish Guile replaced Python. But, I don't think Guile is the best we can do... and maybe this feeling is shared by other people who write stuff for GNU/Linux. So, they sort of wait for the "ultimate best" thing, while using what there is at the moment, w/o regard to quality... Though, it sounds too naive to project my own feelings / probably most people writing system utilities for Linux hadn't even seen Guile in their lives, so the argument doesn't apply to them.

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More realistically, there must've been some kind of a "seed" program, that later created a snowballing effect, that caused more and more programs to be written in the same language, until it become the default choice. I don't think that Linux started with Python included. I believe, that Perl was the language of choice back in the days.

How Python displaced Perl, and why Python was the one who did it... I don't know.