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.

Let’s have a check.

1. sl

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

$ sudo apt-get install sl  # Linux
$ brew install sl          # MacOs

sl is a funny command, if you run it you will get a train come from right to left, the result looks like this:

2. fortune

$ sudo apt-get install fortune  # Linux
$ brew install fortune          # MacOs

fortune will display quotes, funny predictions, jokes or even poetry in the terminal.

You could find more details on fortune – Display random quotes

3. cowsay

$ sudo apt-get install cowsay  # Linux
$ brew install cowsay          # MacOs
$ cowsay hello

cowsay will display a cow with the words you input as arguments.

It’s funnier to combine with fortune using pipeline:

4. toilet

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

5. oneko

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

I didn’t find out the MacOs version.

$ sudo apt-get install oneko  # Linux

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

7. cmatrix

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

The source code is here: abishekvashok/cmatrix

Have fun and happy coding!