If you 'play' an operating system as if it was a game, what is the final boss, and how do you beat it?

over_clox@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 141 points –
99

I say you've won an operating system once you've contributed code that got into its kernel

The fear your code will break something one day and Linus will hunt you down will forever your thoughts.

Game over.

Alright, have an upvote 👍

But.. If you wrote the boss (or even just portions of it), then defeat the kernel boss you partly wrote, isn't that like cheating?

Windows when you can activate it without giving MS your info. Of course, like so many final bosses, it tends to come back harder the next phase.

So the final boss il Linus Torvalds, got it!

There is literally written that :q to exit!

Wont work if you have unsaved edits or are in insert mode. Escape then :q! will.

and when typing :q with unsaved edits it literally also says “add ! to override”

True.

I tend to use ZZ it ZQ instead. Its been a while.

Ooh, living life dangerously.

I would not like to have that as a finger habit!

People who have never had the pleasure of experiencing vim might not realize that the colon is a part of the command and will start recording a macro instead.

I typed :q and it just says :q on the bottom, all this advice and I'm still stuck in vim. My electricity bill has been high since 2022 because of this heavy editor with no x button

TempleOS, and you need to fight Terry Davis

The secret final boss is Windows ME though...

That game is too easy though, it crashes itself.

You need to escort it through a very large minefield to designated spot or it will explode obliterating everything.

We all know that CIA prison escape segment was harder than any of the bosses, though.

Blue screen of death and you defeat it by installing linux.

Then how do you defeat the new bsod in the Linux kernel? It's got a fancy QR code!!

https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/08d5fc94a843f41a90209010df41b75f92616ce2/2024/09/16/54eb298b-1bb0-44de-a1fa-1f8e136796fc/linux-6-11-panic-screen.png?auto=webp&fit=bounds&height=2000&width=2000

(It's "install bsd" isn't it...)

That looks purple to me, clearly not a BSOD.

For real though, a QR code for a kernel panic? 🤦‍♂️

Seems dope, I mean, your computer don't work and retyping text is lame

Tsch, that's the opening sequence.

"You have broken free! Now what do you want to do?"

Windows 11, the settings panel, a terrifying combination of old and new technology.

Win10, the updates that keep loading bloatware and undoing debloater

That shit was the final straw for me...

I was spending so much time trying to fight it to stop doing weird shit that learning Linux was easier path forward.

I literally only have it on a work laptop to keep os familiarity in my toolkit (tech)

Grub Rescue

Same way you overcome any of life's challenges: decide it's impossible bullshit and move onto another game

I won't lie, I've considered almost totally giving up modern technology, and going back to refurbishing wristwatches like I did in my teens.

Analog/Digital? Hardly matters, as long as I can get parts..

A friend of mine works in IT during the week.
On the weekend he works as barkeeper.
He keeps track of the tabs with a pencil on paper, adds them up with a mechanical calculator, and only accepts cash.

  1. First you pay money to Canonical, and then you load the disc into the PC.
  2. Animal noises and bongo drums play for some reason and you're presented with an orange game menu.
  3. You click on one of the squares stacked clumsily on the left and nothing happens.
  4. You click it again and it drags with your mouse up the hierarchy.
  5. Finally, it lets go and a big white square fills the screen, knocking you off your chair.
  6. A popup window spawns from an empty corner and informs you that there are 25 packages that can be updated.
  7. Daunted by the unending onslaught, you curl up into a ball and weep

Microsoft Windows ME is the Battletoads of operating systems.

The final boss is acknowledging the hubris of believing you could ever win.

That final boss is easy. Just do Ctrl+Alt+Del, and then start killing all processes one-by-one until you get the blue screen of victory

Blue screen of victory?

Fuck, I haven't laughed that hard in a long time! 😂🤣

BTRFS deciding it's corrupt and refusing even read only access.

Edit: You beat it by trashing the disk, using any other file system, restoring from backup and accepting any losses.

Figuring out how to print...nobody knows how to beat it yet, some just get lucky

3D printers are easier to use than getting ink on paper and it's appalling

Brother laser printers.

Was shocked when it randomly showed ip everywhere automatically, it showed up and worked on my fresh freebsd install, I thought shit was haunted.

I am not nearly computer literate enough to understand what all these comments are talking about. But I expected personal bias to be one of the answers.

Have an upvote just for commenting.

Yes, there's always gonna be some sort of tech bias regarding such questions. Every OS has flaws, somewhere..

The final boss of Windows is to crowbar out a metric shitton of bullshit and you do it with a bunch of registry tweaks and GPedit

I figured systemd is a 90s-JRPG boss with multiple phases taking over more and more of the screen.

You hold up a Slackware CD like some sort of vampires-and-faith-objects bit.

It would be General Failure reading the disc. I would fsck him up, and replace disc if necessary.

Yes, I know those may be different oses, but I was thinking multiplatform

The shutdown button, a very anti climactic finale

Who needs a button?

shutdown -s -f -t 0

Edited to include the missing -s argument

/s /t 1 Get it right tho

I did get it right. I literally used that command in a Windows activation hack.

Start by using / instead of - like all other old build in windows comands then read the docs and find you need /p or /s or /r to tell it what to do

then /t 0 does nothing, /t 1 (or higher) actually sets and timer and implicitly sets /f as well

you'd know this if you had actually entered that command. Cuz that's the info it prints when you get it wrong

Yeah, you're both right and wrong at the same time. I missed an argument.

shutdown -s -f -t 0

Not /, it's -

I never suggested I was running Windows 11, this is for Windows XP. I just double and triple checked, it's not /, it's -

Go to bed grandpa

Thank you. That just means I have more experience than you.

If I need to figure out floppy drives I'll ask

Thanks. I happen to have arranged Windows 3.11 to be live bootable from a single floppy disk. I call it WinFlop. Various versions of it actually, including a build with a taskbar and start menu.

I also made a companion disk, Diagnostic Utilities, that includes not only basic diagnostic utilities, but also CD, USB, and NTFS drivers.

I'll be around all week. I'd share a link, but not much point right now, the Internet Archive is still apparently down ☹️

Cool! Let's hope the archive is remains up, and if not we've got a community backup project coming up

If/when the Archive does come back up, the short link is..

https://tinyurl.com/winflop395

It has a variety of versions as I've already mentioned, the 95 part of the link refers to the one with a taskbar and start menu.

I do hope the archive comes back up soon.

Edit: And yes, it does have the Y2K patches and a few other critical updates.

3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...

If it's unix, sudo rm -rf /* the system without mercy! If it's windows, nah, it will win.

Make your own, and don't be so professional about it.

I have always found the manual of the manual page two a bit scary.

If the game is Elder Scrolls, then I beat the OS by waving my Wabbajack and the Windows OS turns into Linux.

The final boss was Arch in the early days.
The boss fight was troubleshooting your display settings in Xorg.conf blindly, because you didn't have any screen output after an update.

Bill Gates, communism.

William Gates retired, MicroShaft is now headed by Satya Nadella, who is apparently some fuckwit that's out of touch with humanity.

i do know that, Bill wasn't innocent either. I do like quite a bit of what he's doing, but back in the day that was a ruthless motherfucker.

You are aware that communism ≠ capitalism ≠ dictatorship right?

People (often brainwashed US citizens) throw that communism word around as if it's somehow bad.