Red Hat has revved Quay, the container registry it inherited with its acquisition of Core OS. But somehow, we think the revamping of its long-standing logo will be what really grabs attention ahead of its user conference next week.

Red Hat Quay 3 is the first major release of the registry since Core OS was taken over by Red Hat last January. Red Hat says the new edition adds “support for multiple architecture manifests, spanning IBM Power LE and Z, ARM-based IoT devices and Windows-based workloads”.

This latter comes with the addition of support for Windows container images. Quay 3 also adds RHEL base images for the Quay container. Red Hat said “Building Quay on a RHEL base image can bring more reliability, security, performance, and consistent operational model.

The Linux vendor restated its support for Quay, saying that it planned to focus on improving “the overall user and day two experience. Planned updates include automating mirroring of namespaces, repositories “or a subset of those between multiple registries. Enhanced support for storage backends and content governance enhancements are also on the to do list.

But even as Red Hat pledged its commitment to Quay, it gave another old hand the boot. Yes, Shadowman, the cat in the Red Hat, which has been the company’s logo for 19 years, has been given his marching orders.

In a long explainer on the move, the company said Shadowman represented “the fight to level the technology playing field with open source”. Albeit in a slightly hard-boiled, Chandler-esque way.

“But outside of Red Hat and those unfamiliar with us, took Shadowman at face value,” it continued. “He looked sinister, not as a symbol of openness and transparency. We needed to come out of the shadows.”

So, the brand experts consulted the audience, who apparently said, “The hat was what mattered, not who was wearing it.” Hence Shadowman has been marched back into the shadows from whence he came, leaving space “to add text and build a full logo system”.

And that “logo system”? Perhaps it will include the letters I,B and M. Big Blue’s takeover of Red Hat is due to close this year, and has naturally caused some trepidation amongst staffers and customers. We’ll stick our necks out and say that if Shadowman is the only veteran Red Hat says goodbye to this year, the deal could be considered a success.