Picture by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Today is Easter Monday and the Open Sourcerers Team wants to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter. We do hope that even in our current situation you can find the opportunity to enjoy this holiday and recharge your batteries in the midst of family and friends.
Holidays are full of fun and that is also what this short article is supposed to be about. We all know of the tradition to look for eggs on Easter, mostly in a garden and outside. But what about easter eggs in Software? There are lots of easter eggs in different products and also in Open Source Software. Let me just give you a few examples and let you go ahead and look for more :)!
For fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I suggest asking vim for “:help 42” and finally getting the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and anything else – 42
It is a nice tribute to Douglas Adams.
Output:
What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? *42*
Douglas Adams, the only person who knew what this question really was about is
now dead, unfortunately. So now you might wonder what the meaning of death
is...
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)Adding to this there is also the possibility to let your Linux machine tell you some favourite quotes from computer science, Stars Wars, and lots of other topics randomly. I really love that, because on the console you finally can have something to bump up the mood if something is not working as expected or desired.
This is done by “fortune” for example:
~# fortune
Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a faster rat!!
Code language: PHP (php)For everybody loving visualisation there is the option to let a cow tell you the quotes 🙂 :
~# fortune | cowsay
_____________________________________
/ A jury consists of twelve persons \
| chosen to decide who has the better |
| lawyer. |
| |
\ -- Robert Frost /
-------------------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
Code language: PHP (php)If you are not only having fun looking for Easter eggs but also fun playing arcade games, I want to draw your attention to arcade.redhat.com which has a couple of nice small fun games.
Like command_line bashing, where you are asked to type as many commands as you can in 60 seconds to get as many points as possible. So go ahead and have some fun.
With that being said the Open Sourcerers team wishes you all:
______________________________________
/ Happy Easter from the Open Sourcerers \
\ Team! /
--------------------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||