10 Easter Eggs in Linux

Happy easter to all, what’s better than celebrate this holiday taking a look at what have hidden the programmers in our software ?
A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, movie, book or crossword. The term was coined—according to Warren Robinett—by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure.

10) Aptitude

Just open your terminal and write (available on all distribution that use .deb packages):

$ aptitude moo
There are no Easter Eggs in this program.
$ aptitude -v moo
There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
$ aptitude -vv moo
Didn't I already tell you that there are no Easter Eggs in this program?

Keep on adding -v’s until after it gives you an Easter Egg.

9) Apt-get

In a terminal type

 apt-get help

.
If the egg is present, there will be a line (usually the last one) “This APT has Super Cow Powers.”

If the text is present type:

 apt-get moo

.

And you’ll get your easter egg.

On Gentoo you can try with:

emerge moo

8) VIM (vi improved)

Open vi improved:

$ vim

Then type “:help 42”

This is a reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

7) EMACS

In the terminal run emacs then press the Esc, and than x, write tetris and press return.
This will open a window where you can play Tetris with the directional arrows, pause with p and quit with the q .
Or you can type snake and play it, to see all the games that are in the emacs, you can type:

 ls /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/play/

6) openoffice

Open OpenOffice Writer, then type “‘StarWriterTeam” (without the quotes) and then hit F3.
Does this work also on Libreoffice ? …to be tested 😉

Also, you could open up Calc and type in any cell “=STARCALCTEAM()”. You’ll get the team behind Calc kicking back and having some relax.

5) Gnome

In GNOME press alt+f2 and type “gegls from outer space” This will launch a Space Invader-esque game where GEGLs (stands for Genetically Engineered Goat Large) are trying to kill our beloved fish Wanda! Oh Noes!!!

And about Wanda you can also use this easter egg: alt+f2 and type “free the fish”.

4) KDE

i don’t use KDE so i cannot test this: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1896
It’s an easter egg in Kexi, just create a new table design and name it “sudoku” and you’ll get a nice game for free.

3) Arch Linux

There is a “secret” option for pacman, in the options section uncomment (or write) ILoveCandy , now just run pacman.

2) nmap

This is a documented option, but certainly not much used, try to run nmap with the -oS (enable script kiddie !)
If you run your namp you’ll get an output like this:

 nmap -oS - scanme.nmap.org
 
sTaRting NmAp 5.21 ( httP://nmap.0rg ) at 2011-04-23 17:58 C3$T
nmap Scan rEporT F0r $Canm3.Nmap.orG (64.13.134.52)
HOst Iz up (0.23s LaTency).
N0t showN: 993 filt3red ports
P0RT      ST4T3  SERV|C3
22/tcp    opeN   $$h
25/Tcp    cl0s3d $mtp
53/tCp    0P3n   doMaIN
70/tcP    cLos3d g0pher
80/tcp    0p3n   http
113/tcp   Cl0sEd auth
31337/tcp cLo$ed 3L|t3

1) Firefox/Mozilla

At number 1 i put the mozilla biblical like quote that you get when you write about:mozilla in the location bar.
There is no real book entitled The Book of Mozilla. However, apparent quotations hidden in Netscape and Mozilla give this impression by revealing passages in the style of apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Revelation in the Bible. When about:mozilla is typed into the location bar, various versions of these browsers display a cryptic message in white text on a maroon background in the browser window.

Check on wikipedia for all the verses that have show in the various release.

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