Cowsay: a cow in your terminal

Have you ever wanted a talkative ascii cow on your linux terminal? I'm going to guess yes.

I recently came across "Cowsay", a command line app that does just that. You can install it through apt on ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install cowsay

Now you have all the power you've ever dreamed of at your fingertips. You can use cowsay by piping the output of a command to it.

$ echo "Freemasons run the country." | cowsay

    _____________________________
  < Freemasons run the country.  >
    -----------------------------
            \   ^__^
             \  (oo)\_______
                (__)\       )\/\
                    ||----w |
                    ||     ||

It can be used with "fortune", a linux app (installable with apt) that outputs a fortune cookie style fortune to make the cow seem really wise.

$ fortune | cowsay

     ____________________________________
    / You may be gone tomorrow, but that \
    | doesn't mean that you weren't here |
    \ today.                             /
     ------------------------------------
            \   ^__^
             \  (oo)\_______
                (__)\       )\/\
                    ||----w |
                    ||     ||

You can put that line in your .bashrc file so that the cow greets you every time you login with a new fortune for you!

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