Holy hell, I just looked at the usage for `lolcat` and ... it does *animation*. This is almost as good as watching my Matrix green rain screen saver. Maybe better - more colours. `lolcat --animate --speed 50 --duration 2 progress-bar.fish` There's some truly hypnotic output. Like an RGB rave party in my terminal. I actually like this more now - it's not quite as useless as I though. Howard Gibson via Talk wrote on 2025-09-04 20:34:
I don't recall the last time I used `cat` from the command line.
Yeah, I only do it for files I know are less than a screen full *and* I want to refer to the file's contents when crafting another command.
How do I Google information on `lolcat` and find out about text readers?
Google "lolcat linux": https://www.google.com/search?q=lolcat+linux&uact=5&oq=lolcat+linux Offers this link: https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat
/ You can stream the output of cat into \ \ cowsay. Does that help? / --------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
Funny you should mention that: the Github link above combines `cowsay` and `lolcat` thusly: `fortune | cowsay | lolcat` which shows very pretty and entirely useless results. Interestingly enough, that link also recommends installing with `snap install lolcat`. Didn't expect that.