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up vote 51 down vote favorite
22

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

  1. Press Alt + F2

  2. Enter this: free the fish

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

Bonus Question: How do I get rid of that fish? :-)

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15  
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 1:25
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. – ObsessiveSSOℲ Jul 26 '12 at 11:48

13 Answers

up vote 22 down vote

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!

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+1 I love that one! – Nathan Osman Nov 13 '10 at 20:24
up vote 21 down vote

For 11.04 and earlier:

  1. Press Alt + F2
  2. Type in gegls from outer space and hit enter.
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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 1:07
1  
This is crazy hard! – user6658 Jan 22 '11 at 0:52
3  
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
up vote 17 down vote

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

And then, if you have aptitude Install 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 cowsayInstall cowsay for hours of command-line entertainment!)

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1  
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 2:32
up vote 16 down vote

Watch Star Wars in terminal telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

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7  
not really an Ubuntu easter egg but still really cool :) – user6658 Jan 22 '11 at 0:55
That's awesome. – MurifoX Jul 26 '12 at 13:14
1  
Holy crap. Amazing. – vcsjones Jul 26 '12 at 14:03
up vote 9 down vote

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

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1  
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
up vote 8 down vote

Python 

import this

enter image description here

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5  
Also - import antigravity – sakjur Jan 24 '12 at 20:38
up vote 7 down vote

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 a undocumented feature.

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

Bonus 2: If you want to contain the fish in your browser go here

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3  
The fish comes back after some time. :) – sudobash Nov 9 '10 at 19:17
2  
Where did you find that documentation ? – João Pinto Nov 9 '10 at 19:22
okay maybe it isn't documented as I originally thought, let me fix that. – Gui Nov 9 '10 at 19:28
up vote 7 down vote

In Firefox, go to about:robots

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

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up vote 3 down vote

Lord of The Rings Easter Egg

  1. Open Terminal

  2. 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

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up vote 2 down vote

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 ;)

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up vote 0 down vote

In VIM

Type :help 42 in the command field

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