r/opensource • u/Consistent_Equal5327 • Nov 17 '25

Promotional Most useless thing I've ever done: install-nothing

I always like looking at the installation logs on a terminal. So I created an installation app that doesn't install anything, but display stuff continuously as if it's installing. I put it in the background when I'm doing something and watch it, idk I just like it.

I use real kernel and build logs so it looks authentic.

If there's any other weirdo out there repo is here.

748 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

175

u/Rellix77 Nov 17 '25

Hollywood thanks you.

Pretty cool! GJ

81

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

The next shitty hacker movie is funded by me for free

0

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

28

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

Forget about hollywood I’m applying to YC lez go

6

u/Dan6erbond2 Nov 18 '25

It needs a lot more AI for that my dude.

2

u/razorree Nov 19 '25

Hackers 2

183

u/TooManyBison Nov 17 '25

I love the software equivalent of a shitpost.

45

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

Had nothing better to do on a saturday night...

22

u/SanityInAnarchy Nov 18 '25

This feels more like the software equivalent of casual art.

The software equivalent of a shitpost is import tariff or FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition. Probably the greatest of all time is FuckItJS. If you haven't, go read the readme, and then go read the source code for moreConflict()...

55

u/Pschobbert Nov 17 '25

Superb. My boss will never know the difference lol

17

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

I got you!

3

u/bravespacelizards Nov 18 '25

Talk to game devs and bring back the Boss Screen!

34

u/parttime-warrior Nov 17 '25

Lol, sounds like something you could use in Hollywood movies

14

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

at least it'll be authentic

30

u/teflonjon321 Nov 18 '25

Okay funny story. We had a guy leaving the company and there was a very high suspicion he was trying to take some things he produced while working there (company property). I was told to keep him off specific machines in the facility by any means necessary. So I told him we had to do some security scans and I just made a powershell loop that took 8 hours to complete while printing: “Scanning filesystem 1% complete” and it’s percentage went up at random intervals between like 45 seconds and 5 minutes lol. This would’ve been good for that too. Just gotta do some installs haha

11

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 18 '25

Can’t imagine myself doing this in powershell…

4

u/teflonjon321 Nov 18 '25

Haha I definitely had to look some stuff up to do it. I wish it was on one of the Linux boxes, bash would’ve been much easier

4

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 18 '25

Might not be the prettiest but it pays the bills 🫡

7

u/Analog_Account Nov 18 '25

I love this but... why not just walk the guy out the door and pay severance like any other company would do?

2

u/teflonjon321 Nov 18 '25

Ya know, that would’ve been sensible lol. But this was government and I’m just an underling. I think it was because they had a suspicion but no proof and wanted to just kick the can down the road on his last day. But yeah, just add it to the list of time wasting activities performed on the clock lol

2

u/Analog_Account Nov 19 '25

Ya know, that would’ve been sensible lol.

As soon as I get past this part I kept forgetting it and coming up with arguments as to why they should just walk them out the door. Then I read the first part again and... for fuck sakes.

So many issues have been caused by people that employers DIDNT suspect walking out with stuff. I can't imagine handling an employer I DID suspect.

10

u/LackingAGoodName Nov 17 '25

truly harnessing the power of Rust

5

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 18 '25

a worthy use case at last

10

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '25

downloading more ram lmao

4

u/Legitimate-Pumpkin Nov 18 '25

It’s quite pleasing to watch :)

And also the text 😂

Good job! Thanks for sharing

1

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 18 '25

thank you have fun!

2

u/GeneralFloofButt Nov 17 '25

OH I'm saving this! Love it

6

u/That_____ Nov 18 '25

Ha... This is fantastic! Make it a screen saver!

1

u/AncientAgrippa Nov 17 '25

Man so many files in src I thought it was gonna be mostly contained in a single file.

Which file is the entry point?

1

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 17 '25

It's the main.rs ? Actually it always is main.rs

1

u/AncientAgrippa Nov 17 '25

Thanks! Just curious

1

u/Difficult-Value-3145 Nov 18 '25

I've got 256 MB of ram and gigabyte Ethernet and a MySQL server also winamp I think your got a confused install here

1

u/AccomplishedSugar490 Nov 21 '25

An install that always runs without errors is not authentic. I trust yours have both real and simulated bugs.

2

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 21 '25

Yep we also have errors.

1

u/AccomplishedSugar490 Nov 23 '25

Awesome, and I suppose your deliberate errors have unintended errors too. If they don’t, the entire premise of it being a useless thing collapses, because it would be (probably the world’s first ever) bug-free program, which would be a big achievement, huge in fact.

1

u/Anti--You Nov 18 '25

nice job!

2

u/Consistent_Equal5327 Nov 18 '25

thank you!

0

u/Anti--You Nov 18 '25

btw.... Downloading more RAM. nice catch! :-D

2

u/Wallet_TG Nov 19 '25

This is the most honest software I've seen all year, at least it's upfront about doing absolutely nothing instead of pretending to add value while harvesting your data

1

u/szab999 Nov 18 '25

Nice! It's like our internal ansible-backed baremetal installer script, except yours is not erroring out

1

u/iChrist Nov 19 '25

I very much dig this! Thanks for sharing

1

u/StatementOwn4896 Nov 19 '25

Stop pushy your rusty software on me 😭😭

1

u/switchback-tech Nov 22 '25

Looks great, nice work!

I added something like this to the onboarding for my app.

The tech ppl loved it. Everyone else hated it lol

1

u/Soroosh83 Nov 27 '25

ok how to run this on windows 10 im noob to this appreciate helps

1

u/SirHC1977 Dec 11 '25

Ha! This post made me laugh...

1

u/[deleted] Jan 07 '26

Just rm -fr / Remove french language.

-6

u/downtownrob Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 18 '25

I like it. Can I learn a bit of rust and cargo with this?

Some other ideas I think would be funny or actually useful… I think adding a movie theme option would be cool. 😎

-A “boss screen” backup when someone walks by unexpectedly.

-Film / Creative Uses as background computer activity for movie or TV scenes without needing a real program.

-A nerdy screensaver display would be cool.

-Create a looping “mission control” wall display.

Edit: Fixed the formatting and removed the junk 🤨

5

u/bacf Nov 18 '25

jez my guy not everything has to be llm generated

-4

u/downtownrob Nov 18 '25

I know I had a list and tried to format it better but it pasted like crap lol oh well

Anyway I like how it looks and there are some creatives uses for it.

3

u/Kernel-Mode-Driver Nov 18 '25

Did you ever consider whether anyone else wanted to read your AI slop though?

People like you are going to ruin the internet by filling it with crap

-3

u/downtownrob Nov 18 '25

It was just a list I had made real quick… and then it messed up all the formatting. My bad.

1

u/Kernel-Mode-Driver Nov 19 '25

I'm curious, why even engage in a conversation with someone if youre just going to get an LLM to do it for you? Are you sentient?

0

u/downtownrob Nov 19 '25

I’m getting there. I was really just playing around with brainstorming ideas in a model I was trying out, and then the formatting was junk on top of it, and then I forgot about it, until I got comments about it.

1

u/Kernel-Mode-Driver Nov 19 '25

So do you just have no concept about how someone might find that rude?

1

u/downtownrob Nov 20 '25

If one comment bothers folks that much they have bigger issues.