Cool looking MOTD everyone seems to have

When looking at screenshots of other peoples nixos setups people often seem to have the same message of the day when opening a terminal. Examples include:

Screenshots shamelessly stolen from /r/unixporn

image

image

How do I get that exact message of the day?
Is it a module that I can enable?

That’s just neofetch. A shell script to display some information about your distro and system.

There are others like fastfetch or pfetch.

Just add the package and run the command.

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In case anyone is curious on the stuff aside from neofetch, the cow and the quote from the vim screenshot is from the cowsay and fortune packages and is commonly used to get a “cool motd”.

i.e.

 fortune | cowsay -f dragon-and-cow  

gives:

 _________________________________________
/  "Then what is magic for?" Prince Lir   \
| demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry  |
| if it cannot save a unicorn?" He        |
| gripped the magician's shoulder hard,   |
| to keep from falling.                   |
|                                         |
| Schmendrick did not turn his head. With |
| a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he |
| said, "That's what heroes are for." ... |
|                                         |
| "Yes, of course," he [Prince Lir] said. |
| "That is exactly what heroes are for.   |
| Wizards make no difference, so they say |
| that nothing does, but heroes are meant |
| to die for unicorns."                   |
|                                         |
\ -- Peter Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"     /
 -----------------------------------------
                       \                    ^    /^
                        \                  / \  // \
                         \   |\___/|      /   \//  .\
                          \  /O  O  \__  /    //  | \ \           *----*
                            /     /  \/_/    //   |  \  \          \   |
                            @___@`    \/_   //    |   \   \         \/\ \
                           0/0/|       \/_ //     |    \    \         \  \
                       0/0/0/0/|        \///      |     \     \       |  |
                    0/0/0/0/0/_|_ /   (  //       |      \     _\     |  /
                 0/0/0/0/0/0/`/,_ _ _/  ) ; -.    |    _ _\.-~       /   /
                             ,-}        _      *-.|.-~-.           .~    ~
            \     \__/        `/\      /                 ~-. _ .-~      /
             \____(oo)           *.   }            {                   /
             (    (--)          .----~-.\        \-`                 .~
             //__\\  \__ Ack!   ///.----..<        \             _ -~
            //    \\               ///-._ _ _ _ _ _ _{^ - - - - ~

You can use cowsay -l to see all the possible options.

If you want either neofetch, fortune or cowsay to run on a new terminal session, you can add those commands to the configuration file for your shell to have them run every time.

i.e. add neofetch or cowsay to a line in your bash config