xcowsay For Linux

cowsay is without a doubt a very atypical command-line utility in the sense that it's not one bit useful. Well, it can bring a few smiles and giggles, which can't honestly be quantified, right?

cowsay is a fun little utility that takes text and outputs it as the spoken text of a funny, ASCII-art-like cow. If you're a fan of fun command-line apps and you want somewhat of an upgrade to cowsay, then you'll love xcowsay.

xcowsay is the "fancy," more advanced alternative to the classic cowsay app. The biggest difference between cowsay and xcowsay is that the latter doesn't use ASCII to display the messages, but rather a "real" image.

Just like cowsay, xcowsay can display your messages both as thoughts or as things the cow says (basically the feature replaces the speech bubble with a dream/thought bubble).

In terms of features, you get a fully configurable utility that is capable of calculating the display time from the amount of text it is provided with. You're also provided with three differently-sized cows, and you can also opt to send cow messages DBus (Daemon mode). The app also has word wrapping as standard, and a few other bits and bobs which you'll have to explore by yourself, because, you know, that's fun.

Interestingly enough, the app can be installed on a surprisingly wide range of Linux distributions, with properly maintained PPAs for some of the most popular ones such as Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora, etc.

To get an idea of how xcowsay works, simply pop open a Terminal window and type "xcowsay <message>." If you want to learn more, type "xcowsay -h," to access the app's Help section.

Just like the utility it draws its inspiration from, xcowsay is a totally-for-fun tool that displays a cow that displays a message of your choosing on your desktop. It's easy to use, easy to install, and it also works on macOS.