I set out wanting to add a little flair to the terminal on a new Ubuntu 25.04 install, and wound up having some fun with the Message of the Day. Queue rainbows and unicorns, because I was feeling special with a new Matte Pink Edition Geekom A6 mini-pc.
And before we move on, let me list the specs of this little beast:
- AMD Ryzen 7 6800H w/Radeon 680M graphics
- 32GB DDR5 (expandable to 64GB)
- 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (upgradeable to 2TB, with an additional PCIe slot for up to 1TB 2242 m.2 SSD)
Disclaimer: I put this together from a couple of different projects, namely https://github.com/Serubin/Dynamic-Motd and https://github.com/JayKey/unicornsay, so have a look there as well and all credit due.
There are some pre-requisite packages to install, so let us do that after a quick update:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install fortune cowsay lolcat figlet lsb-release python-aptAnd then, from the projects listed above, work through getting the BASH script in place for the unicorn, I have mine in my home directory, as well as the unicorn.cow file needed:
#!/bin/bash
fortune | cowsay -f ./unicorn.cow | lolcatunicorn.sh
Next, we want to work through the other project I have listed for a dynamic MOTD, and that is listed here. Look through the script and clone it, run it, this is going to be modifying /etc/update-motd.d/*.
Once you run the script from the project, you should have a good base to work from and then edit the /etc/update-motd.d/* files as needed to get rid of spaces or redundant information at the terminal login.
Let me know what you think, I definitely enjoy the fortune, the color, and the fun!
~Christopher
