Knoppix Easter Egg in Ubuntu…

I’ve always liked Jamie Zawinski’s XMatrix screensaver, so when I updated to Ubuntu Dapper Drake on my laptop, and found that it had reset to “random”, I went looking for it. It wasn’t there; instead, I had a choice of “GLMatrix”, a 3D version, or “MatrixView”. I opted for the latter,

Sadly, it doesn’t have the configuration options of the previous version, but it does have one new feature. It fades silhouettes in and out as the strange characters fall from the top of the screen. Mostly it’s stills from the movie or other head shots, but one of the images just says “KNOPPIX.RU” in big letters! :-)

4 thoughts on “Knoppix Easter Egg in Ubuntu…

  1. Actually, you can get Xmatrix running in Ubuntu fairly easily (I use the BoxFit screensaver and you need to do the same thing to get it working).

    Install “xscreensaver-data-extra” and “xscreensaver-gl-extra” (they’re in the universe repository; one of those has Xmatrix in it). Go back to Ubuntu’s screensaver settings and you should see all of the Xscreensavers listed; Xmatrix should be third from the bottom :)

  2. The Preview button is to return. gnome-screensaver is still a work-in-progress, but it beats suddently being back in 1991 when the screensaver kicks in.

    GLMatrix 4 eva, yo.

    – Chris

  3. �What about of the config of this screensaver “xmatrix”…? Actually I can’t configure it as before (other distributions) :S