:: Part 2: The Linux Part > A Trip to the Toy Box
The terminal is such a stuffy place for a lot of folks. It seems like without some colorful or visually dazzling feature, there is just no point of using a Linux shell over an already dreadful Powershell, right? WRONG!
In addition to adding some inspirational and encouraging "toys", some of this software is a great way to install some software. lolcat is the perfect example of this. This program will turn all your text into rainbow colors. As silly as that seems, it is a great way to install the Ruby programming language.
Ruby might not be as popular as Python, but it's a pretty good programming language if you want to try out scripting, functional programming, and object oriented programming. Let's not forget how it brought about the Ruby on Rails framework or how Redis works with Ruby and has a Github repo to using Redis with Ruby. This is going to be important later if you need to use Gitlab or need a NoSQL database.
A couple of other pieces of software are bat and lsd. bat is like cat but has line numbering and syntax highlighting. lsd (no relation to the psychadellic drug) is "ls deluxe", offering icons that use Nerdfonts, colors to visual identify things better. We will replace the standard ls command with lsd in our ~/.bash_aliases file. bat and cat are written in Rust.
sudo pacman -S lolcat ripgrep bat bat-extras lsd cowsay ponysay cmatrix nyancat doge fortune-mod figlet
yay -S figlet-fonts figlet-fonts-extra pipes.sh boxes asciiquarium-transparent-git
curl wttr.in # A great way to check your internet connect, your geo-location, and the weather. (This will also let us know if curl is installed.)There's other stuff that is likely more exciting, but I just wanted to show off what works in the console.
| Package | What applications does it provide/What does it do? |
|---|---|
lolcat |
Provides the lolcat (colorful cat) application. Installing this package will also allow us to install the Ruby programming language that it depends on. |
bat |
bat is like cat but way better. You can scroll through files, see line numbers, and do stuff that would generally require you to tack on a less command if you were using cat. Written in Rust. |
ripgrep |
A version of grep written in Rust that programs like bat can use. |
bat-extras |
Extra features for bat |
lsd |
Not related to lysergic acid diethylamide. This lsd makes the ls command look way better. (I added commands to the ~/.bash_aliases file so we can use it.) There's another program called colorls that is similar to lsd, but it's not as good. |
cmatrix |
Just a text screen saver, great for making people think you are "Hacking the Matrix". Always impressive. (Note: There's another application that includes more glyphs to make it look more Matrix-like.) |
fortune-mod |
Unix Fortunes (Note: There are other packages that add other kinds of fortunes. You can add those later if you want.) |
nyancat |
Display the Nyan Cat! (Meow!) |
doge |
Much Shiba! Very Inu! |
figlet |
figlet is used to create ASCII banners with one of its ASCII fonts. (Note: these are not the same as the fonts (typefaces) we typically use. We'll install those later.) |
figlet-fonts |
Adds font files that figlet can use. You can see a list of them at figlet.org/fontdb.cgi |
figlet-fonts-extra |
More figlet fonts. |
cowsay |
Have an ASCII cow say something with a word bubble. There's also cowthink for thought bubbles. (Note: does not generate text output. Though it is possible to add a program that does that for accessibility.) |
ponysay |
It's like cowsay, only 20% cooler. See this list for a list of Ponies. (Note: Not all of them will be in this program but it is amusing somebody wrote this program.) |
pipes.sh |
An application that provides pipes.sh because "The Internet is a Series of Tubes". |
boxes |
ASCII Boxes, see https://boxes.thomasjensen.com/ for details. Create's fancy ASCII borders. If you use figlet for big text, boxes is complementary to that, along with lolcat for rainbow colors. |
asciiquarium-transparent-git |
An ascii screensaver written in PERL that turns your terminal into a fish aquarium. This version allows the background to be transparent if you have a transparent terminal. |
Wish List: Find some games that can be played in the terminal.