ASCII art

Software
arttime
— Brings curated ASCII/ANSI/UTF-8 art, flip-flopping animation, animated storyboards to terminal. It also is a full-featured clock, timer, and time manager. So you can now do boring time-management while looking at pretty text-art.
https://github.com/poetaman/arttime
||
arttime-git
AUR
ASCII Draw
— An app to draw diagrams or anything using only ASCII.
https://github.com/Nokse22/ascii-draw
||
ascii-draw
AUR
Asciiquarium
— An aquarium/sea animation in ASCII art.
https://robobunny.com/projects/asciiquarium/
||
asciiquarium
ascii-rain
— Comfy rain for your console written in C with Ncurses.
https://github.com/nkleemann/ascii-rain
||
ascii-rain-git
AUR
Banner
— Print large banners to ASCII terminals.
https://shh.thathost.com/pub-unix/
||
banner
AUR
bash-pipes
— An animated pipes terminal screensaver.
https://github.com/pipeseroni/pipes.sh
||
bash-pipes
AUR
boxes
— Text mode box and comment drawing filter.
https://boxes.thomasjensen.com/
||
boxes
AUR
catimg
— Print images in a terminal with 256 colors support.
https://github.com/posva/catimg
||
catimg
cbonsai
— A bonsai tree generator, written in C using ncurses.
https://gitlab.com/jallbrit/cbonsai
||
cbonsai
AUR
cmatrix
— Animation that plays in terminal based on the text from "The Matrix".
https://github.com/abishekvashok/cmatrix
||
cmatrix
DurDraw
— ANSI, ASCII and Unicode art editor for the terminal, with animation, 256 colors, and mouse support.
https://github.com/cmang/durdraw
||
durdraw
AUR
emacs
— Artist-mode is a built-in package in GNU Emacs that allows you to create simple drawings and diagrams using the Emacs text editor.
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ArtistMode
||
emacs
FIGlet
— A program for making large letters out of ordinary text.
http://www.figlet.org/
||
figlet
jp2a
— A small utility for converting JPG, PNG and WebP images to ASCII.
https://github.com/Talinx/jp2a
||
jp2a
Letterpress
— GUI application to convert images into a picture made up of ASCII characters. It uses
jp2a
as backend.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Letterpress
||
letterpress
mkinitcpio-archlogo
— Add colored Arch Linux ASCII art logo to early boot process.
https://github.com/eworm-de/mkinitcpio-archlogo
||
mkinitcpio-archlogo
AUR
neo-matrix
— Simulates the digital rain from "The Matrix"
https://github.com/st3w/neo
||
neo-matrix
AUR
nyancat
— Renders nyancat in your terminal.
https://nyancat.dakko.us/
||
nyancat
sl
— A
s
team
l
ocomotive runs across your terminal when you type
sl
as you meant to type
ls
.
https://github.com/eyJhb/sl
||
sl
TOIlet
— Free replacement for the FIGlet utility.
http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/toilet
||
toilet
tty-clock
— A digital clock in ncurses.
https://github.com/xorg62/tty-clock
||
tty-clock
AUR
tulizu
— A tool with a database to switch and customize ASCII art included in
/etc/issue
files.
https://loh-tar.github.io/tulizu/
||
tulizu
AUR
For diagrams there is
https://asciiflow.com/
.
Arch ASCII logos
See the
original forum thread
.
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From
screenfetch
3.6.5-1:
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From
alsi
AUR
0.4.7-1:
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From
archey3
AUR
:
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User art:
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by Cyllos
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by LnLcFlx
Code page 437 save (e.g.
/etc/issue
):
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by Hendrikto (modified from the version by LnLcFlx)
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by cmang
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by abdrsk
Cowsay
Here are some examples of
cowsay
and
fortune
used together:
Default cow with fortune
Combined with the program
cowsay
:
$ cowthink $(fortune)
________________________________________ 
( The best cure for insomnia is to get a )
( lot of sleep. -W.C. Fields             )
 ---------------------------------------- 
        o   ^__^
         o  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
The ASCII images are generated by
.cow
text files located in
/usr/share/cows
, and all themes can be listed with the
cowsay -l
.  These files can be edited to the user's liking; custom images can also be created from scratch or found on the net. The easiest way create a custom cow file is to use an existing one as a template.  To test the custom file:
$ cowsay -f
/path/to/file
$(fortune)
Random cow with fortune
$ fortune -c | cowthink -f $(find /usr/share/cowsay -type f | shuf -n 1)
___________________________________________
( (computers) % A language that doesn't )
( affect the way you think about                  )
( programming is not worth knowing.       )
  ------------------------------------------------------
         o      (__)
          o     /oo|
           o   (_"_)*+++++++++*
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                        Scowleton
Random custom cow with fortune
Complex commands can be chained to produce detailed ASCII art such as this
Futurama example
.
Display a random cow with a random facial expression and wrap long lines of fortune text:
Note
The randomly selected cow is actually a toad chosen from a database with custom ASCII art
$ fortune -a | fmt -80 -s | $(shuf -n 1 -e cowsay cowthink) -$(shuf -n 1 -e b d g p s t w y) -f $(shuf -n 1 -e $(cowsay -l | tail -n +2)) -n
________________________________________ 
( Fry: I must be a robot. Why else would )
( human women refuse to date me?         )
    -------------------------------------------------- 
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Ponysay
For full 256-colored cowsay-like art use
ponysay
(version 3.0 has 422 ponies). The syntax is the same, meaning
ponysay
message
to say something and
ponysay -l
for a complete list of ponies. To select a pony to display, run
ponysay --pony
x
"message"
, where
x
is a pony. To create more ponies use
util-say-git
AUR
and store them in
~/.local/share/ponysay/ponies
and
~/.local/share/ponysay/ttyponies/
for desktop and TTY, respectively.
See also
Arch Linux artwork
/etc/issue "2.0" - My ASCII art version with Arch logo and text