this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] 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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[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months 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 11 months ago

It's a UNIX system. I know this!

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] vvv 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit this is me(n)tal

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Because dota is better than lol. Lol.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

xjack is one of my all-time favorite programs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Unsettling. A+

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months 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] 15 points 11 months ago

No more secrets sounds like it fits the bill

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months 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 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months 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 11 months ago

+1 for asciiquarium

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

All of xscreensaver

Cool retro terminal

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I do believe it is!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months 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 11 months 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] 7 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No mention of xsnow? I'm getting old hehe

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[–] snowe 4 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months 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 11 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Check out eaglemode

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Wayfire - basically Wayland Compiz

Unimatrix - CMatrix-like program

cellular-automaton.nvim - neovim plugin, check out the video in the github page, i don't know how to explain it but it's cool

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