83
votes

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?

8
  • 20
    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. Nov 10, 2010 at 1:25
  • Try this in Ubuntu 11.10 and be disapointed :) (Also an easter egg!) Oct 26, 2011 at 16:56
  • Aren't list questions generally not constructive? The part about the removing the fish is constructive, though.
    – nanofarad
    Jul 26, 2012 at 11:48
  • Too bad we won't get any in Kubuntu: bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72331
    – Richard
    Nov 1, 2013 at 19:09
  • 3
    Is this gnome specific? Cuz I'm on 14.04 and it brings up "There's no easter eggs in Unity " Oct 10, 2014 at 20:24

19 Answers 19

35
votes

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!

2
  • 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. Oct 23, 2014 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 Sep 6, 2015 at 3:32
32
votes

Watch Star Wars in terminal telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

3
  • 10
    not really an Ubuntu easter egg but still really cool :)
    – user6658
    Jan 22, 2011 at 0:55
  • That is the most awesome easter egg I have ever seen.
    – John Scott
    Jul 9, 2014 at 17:07
  • how to close it in middle without closing terminal directly Jul 24, 2015 at 10:26
27
votes

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!)

1
  • 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. Nov 10, 2010 at 2:32
26
votes

For 11.04 and earlier:

  1. Press Alt + F2
  2. Type in gegls from outer space and hit enter.
4
  • 2
    I can view the application in Turkish. Someone has translated it. Its interesting for an easter egg to have translation files. Nov 10, 2010 at 1:07
  • 1
    This is crazy hard!
    – user6658
    Jan 22, 2011 at 0:52
  • 6
    In Unity, when I enter this, I get "Still no easter eggs in Unity"
    – jnv
    Jun 12, 2011 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. :( Nov 11, 2012 at 20:55
17
votes

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

3
  • 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, 2012 at 20:37
  • echo 'asdf' | cowsay | shuf is great for masochists Apr 28, 2015 at 9:07
  • I wonder how painful cowsay | cowsay | cowsay is
    – tox123
    Jul 3, 2016 at 21:41
13
votes

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

You can get a list of all calendars available by:

ls /usr/share/calendar/

12
votes
apt-get moo

alt text

12
votes

Python

import this

enter image description here

1
  • 12
    Also - import antigravity
    – sakjur
    Jan 24, 2012 at 20:38
10
votes

In Firefox, go to about:robots

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

9
votes

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)?

5
  • 3
    The fish comes back after some time. :)
    – sudobash
    Nov 9, 2010 at 19:17
  • 3
    Where did you find that documentation ? Nov 9, 2010 at 19:22
  • okay maybe it isn't documented as I originally thought, let me fix that.
    – TheXed
    Nov 9, 2010 at 19:28
  • Can you link to a source of the Federal Government point? It's interesting. Oct 23, 2014 at 14:03
  • 1
    This answer is almost four years old and I have no idea :-p
    – TheXed
    Oct 24, 2014 at 1:10
8
votes

The meaning of life

In vim type :help 42 in the command field

4
votes

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 ;)

4
votes

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
1
3
votes
+50

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 :-)

3
2
votes
  • 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!
2
votes

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

1
  • 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 3, 2016 at 21:57
1
vote

nmap Install 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
1
vote

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:

Ubuntu Unicode Private Use Area

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