As avid couch-potatoes, channel-surfers and TV junkies will know: Ubuntu is no stranger to the small screen.

We like to track its appearances here on OMG! via our ‘ubuntu on tv‘ tag. But there was one relatively recent appearance that passed us by until reader Sebastián Gómez dropped a link off in out inbox…

The Hobbit

NZ news programme One News took a look at WETA’s self-engineered work in 3D printing back in July. Their DIY 3D printers have been to ‘..make helmets, sword hilts, and axes’ for The Hobbit trilogy.

Interestingly it looks like they’re using open-source to design and control their printers – as the Unity interface at 50s into the piece appears to show…

Other Recent Appearances

This isn’t Ubuntu’s only recent appearance on TV in the last few months.

UK coach-potatoes might have spotted it being used by a hacker during the first part of Derren Brown’s ‘Apocalypse‘ – a show in which the infamous mentalist tricks one man into thinking a devastating comet shower has wiped out much of the earth’s population…

Meanwhile, over on BBC2, Ubuntu was at sea in the Arctic in Operation Iceberg, a documentary following a team of scientists and explorers s they research icebergs.

The OS was being used by scientists to help track down a handful of ping-pong sized balls bobbing on the surface of the Arctic Ocean…

Back in July the OS snatched a brief appearance Brazilian TV’s biggest news show, where the OS was casually caught on camera during a segment on the ‘Pernambuco‘ technology event in São Paulo.

Thanks to

Sebastián Gómez (Weta); John C. (Operation Iceberg); André da Silva Vida (Pernamuco)