Linux is fun! Huhhh. OK so you don’t believe me. Mind me at the end of this article you will have to believe that Linux is actually a fun box.

1. Command: sl (Steam Locomotive)

You might be aware of command ‘ls‘ the list command and use it frequently to view the contents of a folder but because of miss-typing sometimes you would result in ‘sl‘, how about getting a little fun in terminal and not “command not found“.

Install sl

[email protected]:~# apt-get install sl (In Debian like OS) [email protected]:~# yum -y install sl (In Red Hat like OS)

Output

This command works even when you type ‘LS‘ and not ‘ls‘.

2. Command: telnet

No! No!! it is not as much complex as it seems. You would be familiar with telnet. Telnet is a text-oriented bidirectional network protocol over network. Here is nothing to be installed. What you should have is a Linux box and a working Internet.

3. Command: fortune

what about getting your random fortune, sometimes funny in terminal.

Install fortune

[email protected]:~# apt-get install fortune (for aptitude based system) [email protected]:~# yum install fortune (for yum based system)

[email protected]:~# fortune You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!! Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening. You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry. Your love life will be... interesting.

4. Command: rev (Reverse)

It reverse every string given to it, is not it funny.

[email protected]:~# rev 123abc cba321 xuniL eb ot nrob born to be Linux

5. Command: factor

Time for some Mathematics, this command output all the possible factors of a given number.

[email protected]:~# factor 5 5 5: 5 12 12: 2 2 3 1001 1001: 7 11 13 5442134 5442134: 2 2721067

6. Command: script

OK fine this is not a command and a script but it is nice.

[email protected]:~# for i in {1..12}; do for j in $(seq 1 $i); do echo -ne $iÃ—$j=$((i*j))\t;done; echo;done 1Ã—1=1 2Ã—1=2 2Ã—2=4 3Ã—1=3 3Ã—2=6 3Ã—3=9 4Ã—1=4 4Ã—2=8 4Ã—3=12 4Ã—4=16 5Ã—1=5 5Ã—2=10 5Ã—3=15 5Ã—4=20 5Ã—5=25 6Ã—1=6 6Ã—2=12 6Ã—3=18 6Ã—4=24 6Ã—5=30 6Ã—6=36 7Ã—1=7 7Ã—2=14 7Ã—3=21 7Ã—4=28 7Ã—5=35 7Ã—6=42 7Ã—7=49 8Ã—1=8 8Ã—2=16 8Ã—3=24 8Ã—4=32 8Ã—5=40 8Ã—6=48 8Ã—7=56 8Ã—8=64 9Ã—1=9 9Ã—2=18 9Ã—3=27 9Ã—4=36 9Ã—5=45 9Ã—6=54 9Ã—7=63 9Ã—8=72 9Ã—9=81 10Ã—1=10 10Ã—2=20 10Ã—3=30 10Ã—4=40 10Ã—5=50 10Ã—6=60 10Ã—7=70 10Ã—8=80 10Ã—9=90 10Ã—10=100 11Ã—1=11 11Ã—2=22 11Ã—3=33 11Ã—4=44 11Ã—5=55 11Ã—6=66 11Ã—7=77 11Ã—8=88 11Ã—9=99 11Ã—10=110 11Ã—11=121 12Ã—1=12 12Ã—2=24 12Ã—3=36 12Ã—4=48 12Ã—5=60 12Ã—6=72 12Ã—7=84 12Ã—8=96 12Ã—9=108 12Ã—10=120 12Ã—11=132 12Ã—12=144

7. Command: Cowsay

An ASCII cow in terminal that will say what ever you want.

Install Cowsay

[email protected]:~# apt-get install cowsay (for Debian based OS) [email protected]:~# yum install cowsay (for Red Hat based OS)

Output

[email protected]:~# cowsay I Love nix ____________ < I Love nix > ------------ \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||

How about pipelineing ‘fortune command‘, described above with cowsay?

[email protected]:~# fortune | cowsay _________________________________________ / Q: How many Oregonians does it take to \ | screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to | | screw in the light bulb and two to fend | | off all those | | | | Californians trying to share the | \ experience. / ----------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||

Note: ‘|‘ is called pipeline instruction and it is used where the output of one command needs to be the input of another command. In the above example the output of ‘fortune‘ command acts as an input of ‘cowsay‘ command. This pipeline instruction is frequently used in scripting and programming.

xcowsay is a graphical program which response similar to cowsay but in a graphical manner, hence it is X of cowsay.

apt-get install xcowsay yum install xcowsay

Output

[email protected]:~# xcowsay I Love nix

cowthink is another command just run “cowthink Linux is sooo funny” and see the difference in output of cowsay and cowthink.

apt-get install cowthink yum install cowthink

Output

[email protected]:~# cowthink ....Linux is sooo funny _________________________ ( ....Linux is sooo funny ) ------------------------- o ^__^ o (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||

8. Command: yes

It is funny but useful as well, specially in scripts and for System Administrators where an automated predefined response can be passed to terminal or generated.

[email protected]:~# yes I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux I Love Linux

Note: (Till you interrupt i.e ctrl+c).

9. Command: toilet

what? Are u kidding, huhh no! Definitely not, but for sure this command name itself is too funny, and I don’t know from where this command gets it’s name.

Install toilet

Output

[email protected]:~# toilet tecmint mmmmmmm " m # mmm mmm mmmmm mmm m mm mm#mm mmm mmm mmmmm # #" # #" " # # # # #" # # #" " #" "# # # # # #"""" # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # "#mm" "#mm" # # # mm#mm # # "mm # "#mm" "#m#" # # #

It even offers some kind of color and fonts style.

[email protected]:~# toilet -f mono12 -F metal Tecmint.com

Note: Figlet is another command that more or less provide such kind of effect in terminal.

10. Command: cmatrix

You might have seen Hollywood movie ‘matrix‘ and would be fascinated with power, Neo was provided with, to see anything and everything in matrix or you might think of an animation that looks alike Hacker‘s desktop.

Install cmatrix

Output

11. Command: oneko

OK so you believe that mouse pointer of Linux is the same silly black/white pointer where no animation lies then I fear you could be wrong. “oneko“ is a package that will attach a “Jerry“ with you mouse pointer and moves along with you pointer.

Install oneko

Output

Note: Once you close the terminal from which oneko was run, jerry will disappear, nor will start at start-up. You can add the application to start up and continue enjoying.

12. Fork Bomb

This is a very nasty piece of code. Run this at your own risk. This actually is a fork bomb which exponentially multiplies itself till all the system resource is utilized and the system hangs. (To check the power of above code you should try it once, but all at your own risk, close and save all other programs and file before running fork bomb).

13. Command: while

The below “while” command is a script which provides you with colored date and file till you interrupt (ctrl + c). Just copy and paste the below code in terminal.

[email protected]:~# while true; do echo "$(date '+%D %T' | toilet -f term -F border --gay)"; sleep 1; done

Note: The above script when modified with following command, will gives similar output but with a little difference, check it in your terminal.

[email protected]:~# while true; do clear; echo "$(date '+%D %T' | toilet -f term -F border --gay)"; sleep 1; done

14. Command: espeak

Just Turn the Knob of your multimedia speaker to full before pasting this command in your terminal and let us know how you felt listening the god’s voice.

Install espeak

Output

[email protected]:~# espeak "Tecmint is a very good website dedicated to Foss Community"

15. Command: aafire

How about fire in your terminal. Just type “aafire” in the terminal, without quotes and see the magic. Press any key to interrupt the program.

Install aafire

Output

16. Command: bb

First install “apt-get insatll bb” and then, type “bb” in terminal and see what happens.

17. Command: url

Won’t it be an awesome feeling for you if you can update you twitter status from command line in front of your friend and they seems impressed. OK just replace username, password and your status message with your’s username, password and “your status message“.

18. ASCIIquarium

How it will be to get an aquarium in terminal.

Install ASCIIquarium

Now Download and Install ASCIIquarium.

And finally run “asciiquarium” or “/usr/local/bin/asciiquarium“ in terminal without quotes and be a part of magic that will be taking place in front of your eyes.

19. Command: funny manpages

First install “apt-get install funny-manpages” and then run man pages for the commands below. Some of them may be 18+, run at your own risk, they all are too funny.

baby celibacy condom date echo flame flog gong grope, egrope, fgrope party rescrog rm rtfm tm uubp woman (undocumented) xkill xlart sex strfry

20. Linux Tweaks

It is time for you to have some one liner tweaks.

[email protected]:~# world bash: world: not found

[email protected]:~# touch girls\ boo** touch: cannot touch `girls boo**': Permission denied

[email protected]:~# nice man woman No manual entry for woman

[email protected]:~# ^How did the sex change operation go?^ bash: :s^How did the sex change operation go?^ : substitution failed

[email protected]:~# %blow bash: fg: %blow: no such job

[email protected]:~# make love make: *** No rule to make target `love'. Stop.

$ [ whereis my brain? sh: 2: [: missing ]

% man: why did you get a divorce? man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine? Bad substitute.

[email protected]:/srv$ \(- bash: (-: command not found

Linux is sexy: who | grep -i blonde | date; cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep (If you know what i mean)

There are certain other but these don’t work on all the system and hence not included in this article. Some of them are man dog , filter, banner, etc.

Have fun, you can say me thanks later :) yup your comment is highly appreciated which encourages us write more. Tell us which command you liked the most. Stay tuned i will be back soon with another article worth reading.