Fortune and Cowsay

Updated 14-Sep-2023

Fortune is a pseudo-random quote display, based on formated text file(s) and strfile(s).

The runtime is available via apt install fortune, and then it is a matter of:

  • Deleting current fortune files
  • Creating one or more new fortune files
  • Running strfile FORTUNEFILE to generate the .dat file
  • Invoking fortune perhaps with cowsay in the /.bashrc or other context, such as:
fortune | cowsay

The runtime is /usr/games/fortune and the data files are in /usr/share/games/fortunes

For more detail about fortune, see this discussion.