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Nic
Nic

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at coderscat.com

7 Shell Commands Which Make You Have A Smile

Friday now! Let's have some fun.

Shell command is a powerful tool for improving developer’s productivity, there are also some really funny command tools for making you have a smile and in a good mood after day-long work.

You can play word games in terminals, create a beautiful ASCII picture and more.

1. sl

I didn’t have a typo here, yes, it is sl.

$ sudo apt-get install sl  # Linux
$ brew install sl          # MacOs
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sl is a funny command, if you run it you will get a train come from right to left, the output looks like this:

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_114808.png

2. fortune

$ sudo apt-get install fortune  # Linux
$ brew install fortune          # MacOs
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fortune will display quotes, funny predictions, jokes or even poetry in the terminal.

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_115317.png

You could find more details on fortune – Display random quotes

3. cowsay

$ sudo apt-get install cowsay  # Linux
$ brew install cowsay          # MacOs
$ cowsay hello
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cowsay will display a cow with the words you inputted as arguments.

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_120220.png

It’s funnier to combine with fortune using pipeline:

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_120418.png

4. toilet

toilet could be used to make a beautiful ASCII picture with your inputs, you could even add color for the result.

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_121943.png

5. oneko

oneko is my favorite one, this program will show a cat which chases your mouse cursor, have a look at this vedio.

I didn’t find out the MacOs version.

$ sudo apt-get install oneko  # Linux
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6. xeyes

This is an application which comes with package of x11-apps. It’s not just for fun, but also a useful utility if you have a big screen and a small cursor.

$ sudo apt-get install x11-apps  # Linux
$ xeyes
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2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_133754.png

7. cmatrix

cmatrix shows flying text in terminal, just like you saw in “The Maxtrix” movie!

The source code is here: abishekvashok/cmatrix

2020_01_10_funny-shell-commands.org_20200110_141015.png

Have fun and happy coding!

Related Posts:
Awesome Command-line tips to 10x your productivity

Top comments (7)

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dwilmer profile image
Daan Wilmer • Edited

Wait, is -F gay what makes toilet produce a rainbow? That seems kinda... insensitive (not to say "crappy").

Also: there are different animals to choose from in cowsay. I don't remember the exact option, but a quick man cowsay should do the trick.

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jinglescode profile image
Jingles (Hong Jing) • Edited

7 on a fullscreens terminal, looks like a good prank

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kriska profile image
Kristina Gocheva

Once I had to take a shot for a local newspaper and they said "It would be perfect if you could be sitting in front of a computer so as we see what you code". Since I had only my work laptop with me and it is insecure to show code on it, I just opened as you say a fullscreen cmatrix :) :D I don't think the newspaper guys really understood the joke.

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5422m4n profile image
Sven Kanoldt

fortune | cowsay are my personal winners :)

fun fact: cowsay is also available as a wasm package (wapm) wapm.io/package/cowsay

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀 • Edited

... wrong post comment (puts glasses on)

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frugodwill profile image
Frupreneur

indeed it is!

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elenadotnet profile image
Elena.NET

xeyes brings me good memories!