5 Pranks for Your Linux-Using Friend
Warning! Please use your judgment about the person, the computer, and the prank before attempting this. Always try whatever you plan to do on your own computer or some other safe computer before doing anything.
- Set XKill to start when the user logs in Go to System > Preferences > Sessions and add an entry with the command ‘xkill’. If you have not used xkill before, it turns your cursor into an ‘x’ (may vary by distribution) and kills the process behind the next thing you click on. Watch out with this one! Using this on unsaved work would be very bad.
- Change/remove main menu shortcuts Go to System > Preferences > Main Menu. Then either just uncheck any boxes you want or switch the command associated with the application shortcuts around. Either way, the recipient of this prank will have no idea how to get their programs to launch. (You can also set one of them to the command ‘xkill’ described above. This is probably not a good idea, though, since it is very possible that the user would accidentally click on something they shouldn’t. In short, be careful and don’t do it.)
- Replace desktop background with a picture of the desktop This trick will work on any OS, but it is still one of my favorites. Just take a screenshot of the computer’s desktop without any windows open. Then set that screenshot as their desktop background. Just move some or all of the desktop icons to another folder (be sure you don’t delete them) and watch as the computer’s user tries to click on his/her icons without any luck.
- Change the terminal’s colors Know a geek who loves to use the terminal? Open terminal and go to Edit > Profiles. Then choose to edit the default profile and mess with the colors. For maximum confusion, leave the background color, but change the text color to match it. Be careful you write down the previous settings, though, if the user has changed them.
- Free the fish When you walk by the person’s computer, simply press Alt+F2 and type in “free the fish”. This will cause a fish you swim across the desktop over and over again. You will have to do it again after every reboot, though.
- Bonus! Sometimes the simple tricks are the best. Unplug the keyboard or mouse.
As stated above, be careful and use your judgment. I do not recommend using any of these ideas unless you are absolutely sure no harm will be done.
Know of any great tricks? Share them and tell us how these tricks and others have worked for you.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I like to give this one as a solution to my unsuspecting Linux friends: amixer sset Master 100% && cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
November 30th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
take the fuse out of the plug, they’ll be guessing for ages whats wrong with their computer.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
now this is just plain old mean.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
This one got pulled on a friend of mine. Nobody ever fessed up. Rotate the keycaps in the top row one position to the right.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I’m assuming some of these pranks only work on GNOME/Ubuntu, you might want to specify that.
Word of caution: don’t use pranks on new linux users. I managed to discourage a few people from running linux by doing that to show off my “l33tn355″. Don’t fall into temptation.
Still, if you really want to play a prank, do what I did, and create a script that does the following:
- opens about 50 xterms all repeatedly saying “poop”
- restarts X11
- rewrites the user’s .xsession script so that it just displays “pwned” in large red letters (via xosd) instead of loading a DE.
Then you just ssh into the system and launch it as root. How did I get root access to the other guy’s machine? That’s a story for another day, kids.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
sounds hilariouuuuuuuuuussss
November 30th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
unplug the keyboard… how lame!!!! how is this a linux specific prank? and by the way… these are not linux pranks, they are Ubuntu pranks by the looks of it.
xkill is the only ok one.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Make a startup script that will reset the computer upon instantly logging on.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
#!/bin/bash
reboot
Make this an executable text file. Hide anywhere you want, and just add to the autostarted programs list.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
What about the ol’ classic ” rm -rf / ” ???? A better prank does not exist!
December 1st, 2008 at 2:40 am
One of my all time favorites is to edit their /etc/inittab and set the default runlevel to 6. Also, when I worked for a university help desk we had a policy of locking your workstation when you walked away. People who did not usually got their bash or csh prompt changed to something unsavory.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:19 am
Both cruel and hilarious. I tried number 3 on a friend at a LAN party. He did not like it one bit. Especially when I told him it was “an unfixable glitch in Vista”
December 1st, 2008 at 5:44 am
Ho ho. My sides are splitting. Please stop. You’re so funny.
I used to work as a system administrator at a college. How we laughed when (yet again) we had to sort out the mess left behind by students whose idea of humour was to destroy computer mice or swap keyboard and mice connections or any one of a dozen or more hilarious japes.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
My favorite is to add this line to their .login file:
echo “sleep 1″ >> .login
Every time they login the delay gets longer. This has the added benefit of giving you a counter to see how long it takes them to figure it out.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
It’s always nice to see people freak out when their DVD tray randomly opens and closes while they’re working.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:30 pm
What a bunch of halfwits. Have you really got nothing better to do? Maybe when you reach puberty you will find a slightly less puerile and more constructive use of your time.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 am
Well, these are certainly stupid. As was said above, these seem to be perfect for scaring people away from linux.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 am
Ah, funny pranks you’ve got here. I administer my brother’s and sister’s Kubuntu computers and I often do:
$ ssh (user@target)
$ xmessage -center “You got owned”
Though not as good as any of these, it sure is the most harmless.
Although I wouldn’t give “ifconfig eth1 down” a go. (To disable their wireless internet, haha)
And the classic “Woooo! Your mouse is moving!” trick is always funny.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:15 am
Hey, ID – don’t you know how to have fun? A little puerility (thanks for the new word!) once in a while keeps you young. And YOU can’t be that serious – you took time to read the article!
December 5th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Heh, another nice joke I played on my son when he was browsing a particularly irritating website one day. I picked up my laptop, remoted in to his machine via ssh and started typing things like:
echo “Why don’t you play g compris instead?”|festival –tts
A few minutes later he came out of the computer room with a weird look on his face and said “Dad, I think I’m going to stop playing computer for a while.”
Of course, I explained to him that it was me, and know he knows all about ssh and speech simulation.