Early in the development of the Amiga computer operating system, the company's developers became so frustrated with the system's frequent crashes that, as a relaxation technique, a game was developed where a person would sit cross-legged on the Joyboard, resembling an Indian guru. The company had a product called the Joyboard for the Atari 2600 home video game console, a game controller much like a joystick but operated by the feet, similar to the Wii Balance Board. The term 'Guru Meditation Error' originated as an in-house joke in Amiga's early days. It has also been used as a message for unrecoverable errors in software packages such as VirtualBox and other operating systems (see Legacy section below). It is analogous to the ' Blue Screen of Death' in Microsoft Windows operating systems, or a kernel panic in Unix. This has led to many internet users seeing a 'Guru Meditation' message (or the variant 'Guru Mediation') when these websites suffer crashes or other issues. It is now also used by Varnish, a software component used by many content-heavy websites. Guru Meditation started as an error notice displayed by the Amiga computer when it crashes. JSTOR ( January 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
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