Prank - Change the desktop background

This is the oldest and still the funniest prank. You just have to take screen shot of the Desktop (exclude mouse pointer). Then place it as the Desktop background and delete some of the Desktop icons. Even though the icons are deleted their imprint on the background is still there which will look exactly same as before. So, when our victim tries to click on them he is going to freak out as nothing will happen .

When I played this trick on a friend, I even removed the panels so the guy thought that his system has hanged and kept on rebooting(  Devilish, isn't  ).

Following are the 4 screenshots showing a small demo of this prank.

The Blue screen of Death Screensavers on Linux

Another addition to our prank list. This time we will try to fool our target using the blue screen of death screensavers. Ofcourse, you can't just use a simple Blue Screen of Death screensaver on some Linux running system. You will be caught right away. The smarter thing would be to use such a screensaver which will prompt the user to do what a windower does when BSOD appears, i.e. poweroff the system. BSOD set of screensavers do this job pretty well.

In order to install it, you need to download and install the xscreensaver-data-extra package. I am not sure if this is a universal package and available in all the distros, but in Ubuntu it can be installed using synaptic or apt.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get install  xscreensaver xscreensaver-data-extra

Once the installation part is done, go to System->Preferences->screensaver. Open it and you will see the BSOD screensaver option. One more thing, you might see two screensaver launchers in the menu, that's because of the two screensaver daemons - gnome and xscreen, but don't worry, it won't do any harm.

Now, you will notice that everytime you select the BSOD option you see a new screensaver, playing a similar prank . These screensavers are mostly kernel-panic/display warning messages taken from various operating systems. You can see the whole list here.

So, the next time our victim leaves his system for a while and returns, he will see some warning message asking/provoking him to restart/poweroff his system. Here are a few of them.

How fanboys see operating systems

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Prank - A message to annoying neighbours

This one is for those who are fed up of their Internet stealing neighbours or who just want to have some over wifi.

Prank - Wanda the fish

If the victim is using Gnome, then free “Wanda the fish” . Press Alt-F2 and enter "free the fish".

You will then see a fish swimming on the screen. If you click it, the fish will get scared and run away (oops..sorry swim away ).

But the most annoying feature of this fish is that it will keep on coming back again and again and you won't be able to kill it until you reboot. The process of this swimming fish is hidden somewhere among the gnome processes. So, the only way out is reboot(that's the only way i know ).

Prank - Change the Menu Settings

Go to Application-> Preferences -> Main menu and remove some of the options. But before you conclude that this is not a good prank just think what would you do if you don't find the usual options in your menu bar. I know many of us will fix the problem in no time but for those who are not aware of the solution won't have the slightest clue . It will never cross their mind that someone might have messed up their system.

Prank - Change the terminal/konsole colour

This trick works wonders on those linuxers who love using terminal for most of their tasks. I am not proud to say this but actually someone played this trick on me . He just changed the terminal font colour to match my background colour. So, ultimately whenever I tried to open the terminal all I saw was this complete black window. At first I thought it was taking some time to load and even rebooted once. But eventually after trying a few commands at random I figured out the problem.

But honestly.. I am a great command line fan and I was completely clueless then (ya this was the exact expression)

Prank - Change the Launcher's settings

Many times people add application launchers on Desktop or on panel for quick access. And we can have a lot of fun with after changing the properties of such launchers. Jst try this:

Go to Accessories->Internet->firefox right click on the firefox option and you will see the options to add its launcher on Desktop or panel. Select any one of them. Lets say you selected the Desktop launcher. Now, right click on the launcher and select properties. In the properties window you will see options like : type, name, command, comment.

Now, the fun starts when we change the command from “firefox %u” to something like

xmessage “click ok if u r a jerk :P”

he will never be able to open firefox by clicking that icon ( ofcourse until he figures out the prank). You can even try runnng some script in place of the firefox command .

Prank - Xkill

Go to Applications-> Preferences -> startup applications and add xkill to start at the time of login.

If you are not aware what xkill does, then open a terminal and enter xkill. This will turn your regular mouse pointer to a cross(x) symbol and if you click on window the process associated with it will be killed. Try clicking on the terminal where you typed xkill, this will end the terminal and all the processes associated with it (even xkill will get killed).

So, I guess now you can understand how this command can cause disaster sometimes. So, be careful while using it. And remember that we linuxers are here to help others ( and have fun sometimes  ) but definitely not to cause harm ( sounds like a "superhero" quote ).

Prank - Play a video at startup

This one is pretty annoying. Even though it won't take much time for the victim to figure out what the hell is wrong but he won't be able to fix it easily. All you have to do is add a simple command to play a media file (a f**ing boring/annoying video) in his start up applications.

So, when he logs in before he gets to the desktop the video will start playing and because of the other loading application it will take him quite some time to get rid of it. You can use the following command with VLC.

[shredder12]$ vlc - -fullscreen - -volume 1024 <video_file>