Easter eggs in Ubuntu

Question

I just found out about the free the fish easter egg available in Ubuntu:

Press Alt + F2
Enter this: free the fish

Are there any more easter eggs available in Ubuntu? What are they?

Lets not call her "that fish", please. :) She's "Wanda the fish". Wanda is a very nice and smart friend of us. She sits on my top panel in the form of a GNOME applet and she's a part-time fortune teller. Wanda has even a fan page. She was here long before "Paul the Octopus" and is here after Paul, as well. — marenostrum, Nov 10 '10 at 01:25
Try this in Ubuntu 11.10 and be disapointed :) (Also an easter egg!) — Greg Treleaven, Oct 26 '11 at 16:56
Aren't list questions generally not constructive? The part about the removing the fish is constructive, though. — nanofarad, Jul 26 '12 at 11:48
Too bad we won't get any in Kubuntu: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72331 — Richard, Nov 01 '13 at 19:09
Not all of them are easter eggs, but this is a nice list: http://www.tecmint.com/20-funny-commands-of-linux-or-linux-is-fun-in-terminal/ — Dan, Aug 28 '14 at 09:25
Is this gnome specific? Cuz I'm on 14.04 and it brings up "There's no easter eggs in Unity " — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Oct 10 '14 at 20:24
specific question about stopping the fish, http://askubuntu.com/questions/41984/how-do-i-stop-the-free-the-fish-easter-egg?rq=1 — Mateo, Jun 30 '15 at 16:34
sadly there is no free the fish anymore. Do unity have any Easter egg? — Menuka Ishan, Jun 09 '16 at 11:03

score 35 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '10 at 19:52

35

Here is another package that is just a joke : sl, standing for Steam Locomotive.

Just download sl and then run sl in a terminal.

It has been designed for people confusing ls and sl. See manual page for more exciting features!

answered Nov 13 '10 at 19:52

Grand Oxymore

729

It's really good, I just don't understand how people can get ls wrong? It sounds like LiSt, and the keys are on opposite sides of the keyboard. – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Oct 23 '14 at 13:23
1

It's not about getting confused, but when I type quickly, sometimes it hit sl instead of ls. As they are both on the ring finger – triunenature Sep 06 '15 at 03:32

score 32 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 22 '11 at 00:49

32

Watch Star Wars in terminal telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

answered Jan 22 '11 at 00:49

deleted

2,479

10

not really an Ubuntu easter egg but still really cool :) – Jan 22 '11 at 00:55
That is the most awesome easter egg I have ever seen. – John Scott Jul 09 '14 at 17:07
how to close it in middle without closing terminal directly – Ankit Sharma Jul 24 '15 at 10:26

score 27 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:00

27

Not gonna spoil it for you with a screenshot, but in a terminal try: apt-get moo

And then, if you have aptitude installed take a look at:

aptitude moo
aptitude -v moo
aptitude -vv moo
aptitude -vvv moo
(etc)

(Bonus: if you enjoy this then install cowsay for hours of command-line entertainment!)

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:00

Community

1

answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:45

8128

28,740

2

Here is an interesting comment written by 3M-TA3: "Moo!" could have come from the dial up BBS days 'before the 'internet.' On the Citadel BBS system if you pressed the "M" key it responded with "Moo!" It was replaced with "Meet User in later versions. However "Moo" could have come from something in the CP/M operating system, which could lead back to Unix. – marenostrum Nov 10 '10 at 02:32

Jorge Castro · Answer 4 · 2011-10-08T20:50:30.857

26

For 11.04 and earlier:

Press Alt + F2
Type in gegls from outer space and hit enter.

edited Oct 08 '11 at 20:50

answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:19

Jorge Castro

71,754

2

I can view the application in Turkish. Someone has translated it. Its interesting for an easter egg to have translation files. – marenostrum Nov 10 '10 at 01:07
1

This is crazy hard! – Jan 22 '11 at 00:52
6

In Unity, when I enter this, I get "Still no easter eggs in Unity" – jnv Jun 12 '11 at 15:56
gegls from outer space crashes something; the effect is the same as killing explorer.exe in Windows. I had to do CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get out. :( – JamesTheAwesomeDude Nov 11 '12 at 20:55

score 17 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 02:12

17

I just found a quite funny mix between "cowsay" and "fortune":
First, install both cowsay and fortune

sudo apt-get install cowsay fortune-mod

Now, pass fortune as the argument for cowsay:

fortune | cowsay

A cow will now tell you something clever about life ;) Have fun!

enter image description here

edited Jul 21 '11 at 02:12

Rodrigo Oliveira

6,182

answered May 12 '11 at 07:09

Latze

101

2

a funny thing with cowsay is that there's multiple "cows" - you can try to enter for example cowsay -f tux "Hello, world". A full list of cows is available by running ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows. You can also replace cowsay with cowthink if you want a thought-bubble instead of a speech-bubble :) – sakjur Jan 24 '12 at 20:37
echo 'asdf' | cowsay | shuf is great for masochists – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Apr 28 '15 at 09:07
I wonder how painful cowsay | cowsay | cowsay is – tox123 Jul 03 '16 at 21:41

score 13 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 28 '13 at 12:03

Lord of The Rings Easter Egg

Open Terminal
type calendar -f /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr -A 365 and hit Enter

LoTR Easter Egg

You can also try these

calendar -f /usr/share/calendar/calendar.pagan -A 365

calendar -f /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music -A 365

calendar -f /usr/share/calendar/calendar.computer -A 365

calendar -f /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history -A 365

You can get a list of all calendars available by:

ls /usr/share/calendar/

score 12 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:41

12

apt-get moo

alt text

answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:41

sudobash

1,064

score 12 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 12 '11 at 15:32

12

Python

import this

enter image description here

answered Jun 12 '11 at 15:32

wojox

11,362

12

Also - import antigravity – sakjur Jan 24 '12 at 20:38

score 10 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 22 '11 at 00:34

10

In Firefox, go to about:robots

OO.org (doesn't work in LO rc4 on MAverick): http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Easter_Eggs

answered Jan 22 '11 at 00:34

papukaija

2,425

score 9 · Answer 10 · edited Aug 08 '15 at 15:15

9

Clicking on the fish with the mouse will make it go away, to get rid of it for good. you can type killall gnome-panel into the terminal. Also, as an easter egg, it is an undocumented feature.

BONUS: Did you know that, the US Federal Government will not use any software that has undocumented features (aka Easter Eggs)?

edited Aug 08 '15 at 15:15

Or B

101

answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:15

TheXed

26,536

3

The fish comes back after some time. :) – sudobash Nov 09 '10 at 19:17
3

Where did you find that documentation ? – João Pinto Nov 09 '10 at 19:22
okay maybe it isn't documented as I originally thought, let me fix that. – TheXed Nov 09 '10 at 19:28
Can you link to a source of the Federal Government point? It's interesting. – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Oct 23 '14 at 14:03
1

This answer is almost four years old and I have no idea :-p – TheXed Oct 24 '14 at 01:10

Panos Bariamis · Answer 11 · 2015-10-15T07:11:51.537

8

The meaning of life

In vim type :help 42 in the command field

edited Oct 15 '15 at 07:11

answered Jul 26 '12 at 11:29

Panos Bariamis

167

score 4 · Answer 12 · answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:38

4

You can see some ubuntu easter egss in the links below..

http://blog.fasttracksites.com/index.php?p=viewentry&id=5

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=91625

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=83137

answered Nov 09 '10 at 19:38

karthick87

81,947

score 4 · Answer 13 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

4

I also found a couple too, check them out.
Tested and working in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

1. aafire - burn up your terminal

sudo apt-get install libaa-bin
aafire

2. oneko - have an animal chase your cursor.

sudo apt-get install oneko
oneko

3. xeyes - have a pair of eyes follow your cursor around.

xeyes

4. cmatrix - the matrix code on your terminal

sudo apt-get install cmatrix
cmatrix

5. bb - well, it does interesting stuff

sudo apt-get install bb
bb

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Oct 10 '14 at 20:14

Parto

15,325
24
86
117

1

It can be argued that the entire libaa is an easter egg. – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Oct 23 '14 at 13:39

score 4 · Answer 14 · edited Jan 30 '13 at 12:40

4

Try to install emacs and then press ESC+x (when you've started emacs) (M-x) and then write butterfly for some advanced butterfly magic ;)

edited Jan 30 '13 at 12:40

Panos Bariamis

167

answered Jan 24 '12 at 20:39

sakjur

850

Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com · Answer 15 · 2015-05-30T10:33:49.373

3

I really liked lolcat:

sudo apt-get install lolcat
echo {a..z}{a..z}{a..z} | lolcat

Hint: rainbows.

Back on the ASCII art vein there is toilet:

sudo apt-get install toilet
echo abcdef | toilet

man toilet reveals a wealth of options.

Some of bsdgames could be classified as Easter eggs:

sudo apt-get install bsdgames
pom
number 123
primes 1 100

but the most part are just too awesome to be just Easter eggs.

sudo Default insults:

sudo visudo
Add a line Defaults insults

Now whenever you make a password mistake, sudo makes witty remarks about your intelligence or typing skills.

Learnt from Network World. All others on their top 11 were already here :-)

edited May 30 '15 at 10:33

answered Oct 23 '14 at 13:37

Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com

28,474

How does the lolcat command really work? I'm only getting colored text with the command you posted. – Exeleration-G Oct 28 '14 at 13:36
Hmm, are you familiar with cat? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29 lolcat's a parody. – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Oct 28 '14 at 13:54
Oh, I get it now, I knew what cat was, I just thought that there was more to it. – Exeleration-G Oct 28 '14 at 14:09

gertvdijk · Answer 16 · 2016-07-04T08:28:15.350

2

ddate is short for Discordian calendar, which was the calendar of an old cult that worshipped the Greek god of chaos, Eris (thanks @tox123).

I noticed this when mistyping the date. In a terminal, run

ddate

Today is Sweetmorn, the 13th day of Discord in the YOLD 3181

edited Jul 04 '16 at 08:28

answered Mar 27 '15 at 18:20

gertvdijk

67,947

It's not mistyped it is short for Discordian calendar, which was the calendar of an old cult that worshipped the greek god of chaos, eris. – tox123 Jul 03 '16 at 21:57

kos · Answer 17 · 2015-09-20T12:14:41.507

2

Open System Settings (unity-control-center if using Unity or gnome-control-center if using GNOME)
Click on "Mouse & Touchpad"
Click on "Test Your Settings"
Scroll to the top of the image: you'll see a nice kite
Scroll to the bottom of the image; click on the inner circle five times (quickly); you'll see that the text below the circles changes
Quickly scroll to the top of the image again!

edited Sep 20 '15 at 12:14

answered Sep 20 '15 at 10:37

kos

35,891

score 1 · Answer 18 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

nmap has one too, to format output in s|<rIpt kIddi3 style:

$ nmap -oS - scanme.nmap.org

$taRt1ng Nmap 6.40 ( hTtp://nMap.org ) at 2015-03-27 19:22 C3T
NMap sCaN report F0r $cAnm3.nmap.Org (74.207.244.221)
H0$t !z up (0.17z laT3ncy).
N0T Shown: 995 f|ltEr3D p0Rt$
P0RT     $TaTE  s3RvIC3
80/tcP   op3n   htTp
443/Tcp  cl0$ed HtTps
6667/tcp cl0$3d 1Rc
6969/tcp Cl0S3d acmS0da
8333/TCp cl0seD unknOwn

Nmap Done: 1 iP addreSz (1 ho$t Up) scannEd !n 10.14 S3cONdz

13rac1 · Answer 19 · 2016-03-28T06:00:35.833

Unicode U+E0FF is displayed as the "Circle Of Friends" logo and U+F200 is "ubuntu" in the Ubuntu (typeface) on Ubuntu. Type: Ctrl-Shift-U, then F200 or E0FF in Gedit or Pluma. The characters are in the Unicode Private Use Area so they may display differently depending on which font you have selected. Here are both, they don't display on askubuntu.com, copy/paste to your regular text editor:

U+E0FF: 
U+F200: 

A screenshot:

Easter eggs in Ubuntu

19 Answers19

1. aafire - burn up your terminal

2. oneko - have an animal chase your cursor.

3. xeyes - have a pair of eyes follow your cursor around.

4. cmatrix - the matrix code on your terminal

5. bb - well, it does interesting stuff

Linked

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