We’re going to talk about another silly Linux® command because this one is one of my favorites.  It’s not a banner command like figlet or banner, instead, it’s called cowsay.

You read that right.  This post is about a command that’s called cowsay.  How silly is that?  Let’s look at the top of the man page for this command:

cowsay(1)                                                                  cowsay(1)

NAME
       cowsay/cowthink - configurable speaking/thinking cow (and a bit more)

A configurable speaking/thinking cow.  I did promise a silly command!  Let’s try it out:

Alpha:~ computerlamp$ cowsay Hi There!
 ___________
< Hi There! >
 -----------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Yes, that’s a cow saying Hi There!   I did promise a silly command.

I want to do it again, this command is fun!

Alpha:~ computerlamp$ cowsay Commandline is fun!
 _____________________
< Commandline is fun! >
 ---------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

What if I don’t want my cow to speak and I would rather that my cow thinks?  Well, there’s a command for that!  It’s called cowthink.

Alpha:~ computerlamp$ cowthink This is silly!
 ________________
( This is silly! )
 ----------------
        o   ^__^
         o  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Unfortunately, there isn’t a catthink or a catsay.  I think that would be a lot of fun.  Maybe one day someone will write one!

Linux® has a lot of silly commands, as we’ve seen.  Even Linux® users want to have fun with the command line!