I have compiled a list of five easter eggs that I came accross over time. Ofcourse none of them are original and most of them has been around for as long as you can remember but I though it would be fun to compile a list of all the Linux Easter eggs with screen shots.

1) The meaning of life with VIM editor.

Open up VIM and in command mode type “:help 42″ It will generate an interesting qoute from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

See for it yourself:

I could replicate this on GVIM 7.0.235, your mileage may vary.

2) Snake eating elephant with aptitude (debian based systems).

Typing “aptitude moo” and than typing “aptitude -v moo” (upto 6 -v) generates differant responses.

3) Moo with apt-get.

Typing “apt-get moo” gets the reponse “have you mooed today?” with an ASCII drawing of a cow.

4) F*ucked up source comments.

Not really an easter egg. But you can use Grep to extract interesting words used by programmers in their source code as comments. I used one example, use your imagination and come up with other interesting words. obviously results will vary from systems to systems. type “grep -R <word> /usr/src/linux/* ” .

5) Free the fish.

Works for me under gnome/ubuntu. Press alt+f2 , on the box type “free the fish” . Watch a fish swiming on your screen.

Free the fish!!!

cheer
pavsHacking Linux Commands/Tools