this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by EuroNutellaMan to c/[email protected]
 

Hello,

I'm looking for as many cool, even if pointless, programs as I can, be them terminal programs or gui ones. What do I mean by this? I'll use some examples:

  • The Cube (I believe it was called Compiz): the one we all know and love.
  • cmatrix
  • the hollywood one
  • That one whose name I forget but basically spawns a cat that chases your cursor, I saw it showcased on Pop!_OS' mastodon.
  • wobbly windows
  • Burn my window
  • tplay

if any of you know any other fancy program like this let me know please. I want to showcase them to non-linux people to show them what can be done here but not necessarily in other OSes (particularly Windows).

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[–] piranhaphish 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

fsv or tdfsb

These are 3D filesystem browser apps that let you navigate your filesystem as though files and folders were trees in a forest that you're walking/flying through.

They were practically useless aside from the wow factor. I believe one may have made it into a movie scene. Jurassic Park?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

It's a UNIX system. I know this!

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[–] mvirts 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linuxwave - https://github.com/orhun/linuxwave - You can generate music from your OS.

[–] EuroNutellaMan 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit this is me(n)tal

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago
[–] misophist 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

xjack is one of my all-time favorite programs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Unsettling. A+

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When talking about cool programs, you can't forget the classic cowsay

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

and fortune or fortune-mod. Combine it with cowsay for best effect.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's also dotacat written in Rust for people who find lolcat too slow.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Because dota is better than lol. Lol.

[–] De_Narm 16 points 1 year ago

eDEX-UI - its basically a terminal, but as shown in movies. Mostly inspired by TRON I believe.

[–] mjpc13 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have telnet. You can watch the complete episode 4 of Star Wars in Ascii on your terminal (and other ASCII movies)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fly-Pie is a good one! Also the same person makes modern versions of Burn My Windows, Desktop Cube and other such things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that guy Schneegans makes the most beautiful useless rice! i'm tempted to switch to gnome now..

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

No more secrets sounds like it fits the bill

[–] TootSweet 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  • asciiquarium
  • xcowsay (someone else mentioned cowsay, but this one's a graphical reimagining of the same idea.)
  • xeyes
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

+1 for asciiquarium

[–] Quazatron 11 points 1 year ago
  • That one whose name I forget but basically spawns a cat that chases your cursor

You mean Neko. Used to have it installed a long time ago. I don't know if it still works in this day of compositors and Wayland.

I also remember having a bunch of penguins running around my screen like little lemmings. Xpenguins I think it was called.

You can also get Xcowsay to pop up occasionally on your desktop to offer silly advice, just pipe it from fortune and add it to crontab.

[–] Deckweiss 11 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The Linux program that had a cat chase your mouse was Neko.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is oneko the modern-ish version? As this sounds adorable.

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[–] turbowafflz 6 points 1 year ago

Also AMOR (Amazing Misuse Of Resources) which has more characters and features

[–] mvirts 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All of xscreensaver

Cool retro terminal

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It's a website rather than an app, but if you open it fullscreen, it's just as much fun: https://hackertyper.com

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Cowsay, figlet, telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl, misfortune, cava, xscreensaver are a few that come to mind.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Lolcat, yt-dlp, hyprland. Honesty though most of what I find cool these days wouldn't make any sense to a Windows user. Like DWM, ST, XBPS, lf, ly, neovim, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[–] christos 6 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

xscreensaver with IFS. Can't stop looking at it. I'm writing this on another computer because I don't want to disable screen saver on my primary one.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Check out eaglemode

[–] Psythik 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not a Linux app but I'm willing to bet that you'd love https://windows93.net.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Maybe not pointless, but it doesn't really bring much to the table.

https://github.com/gentoo-btw/ramfetch

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The cat one is probably oneko. Most of the special effects crap you'd find in your compositor settings.

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