Some Funny commands of Linux

3 min readSep 23, 2021

Linux is fun! Huh. OK, so you don’t believe me. Mind me at the end of this article you will have to believe that Linux is actually a fun box.

Some Funny Commands are-

1. Command: sl (Steam Locomotive)

You might be aware of command ‘ls‘ the list command, which is used frequently to view the contents of a folder but because of miss-typing sometimes you would result in ‘sl‘, how about getting a little fun in the terminal and not “command not found“.

root@tecmint:~# sl

2. Command: telnet

No! No!! it is not as much complex as it seems. You would be familiar with telnet. Telnet is a text-oriented bidirectional network protocol over a network. Here is nothing to be installed. What you should have is a Linux box and a working Internet.

root@tecmint:~# telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl   [No longer working]

3. Command: fortune

what about getting your random fortune, sometimes funny in terminal.

root@tecmint:~# fortune

You're not my type.  For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
Future looks spotty.  You will spill soup in the late evening.
You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You are not paid enough to worry.
Your love life will be... interesting.

4. Command: rev (Reverse)

It reverses every string given to it, is not it funny.

root@tecmint:~# rev123abc 
cba321 xuniL eb ot nrob
born to be Linux

5. Command: factor

Time for some Mathematics, this command output all the possible factors of a given number.

root@tecmint:~# factor 55 
5: 5 12 
12: 2 2 3 1001 
1001: 7 11 13 5442134 
5442134: 2 2721067

6. Command: script

OK fine this is not a command and a script but it is nice.

root@tecmint:~# for i in {1..12}; do for j in $(seq 1 $i); do echo -ne $iÃ—$j=$((i*j))\\t;done; echo;done 1Ã—1=1	
2Ã—1=2	2Ã—2=4	
3Ã—1=3	3Ã—2=6	3Ã—3=9	
4Ã—1=4	4Ã—2=8	4Ã—3=12	4Ã—4=16	
5Ã—1=5	5Ã—2=10	5Ã—3=15	5Ã—4=20	5Ã—5=25	
6Ã—1=6	6Ã—2=12	6Ã—3=18	6Ã—4=24	6Ã—5=30	6Ã—6=36	
7Ã—1=7	7Ã—2=14	7Ã—3=21	7Ã—4=28	7Ã—5=35	7Ã—6=42	7Ã—7=49	
8Ã—1=8	8Ã—2=16	8Ã—3=24	8Ã—4=32	8Ã—5=40	8Ã—6=48	8Ã—7=56	8Ã—8=64	
9Ã—1=9	9Ã—2=18	9Ã—3=27	9Ã—4=36	9Ã—5=45	9Ã—6=54	9Ã—7=63	9Ã—8=72	9Ã—9=81	
10Ã—1=10	10Ã—2=20	10Ã—3=30	10Ã—4=40	10Ã—5=50	10Ã—6=60	10Ã—7=70	10Ã—8=80	10Ã—9=90	10Ã—10=100	
11Ã—1=11	11Ã—2=22	11Ã—3=33	11Ã—4=44	11Ã—5=55	11Ã—6=66	11Ã—7=77	11Ã—8=88	11Ã—9=99	11Ã—10=110	11Ã—11=121	
12Ã—1=12	12Ã—2=24	12Ã—3=36	12Ã—4=48	12Ã—5=60

7. Command: Cowsay

An ASCII cow in the terminal will say whatever you want.

root@tecmint:~# cowsay I Love nix 

 ____________
< I Love nix >
 ------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

How about pipelining ‘fortune command‘, described above with cowsay?

root@tecmint:~# fortune | cowsay  _________________________________________
/ Q: How many Oregonians does it take to  \
| screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to |
| screw in the light bulb and two to fend |
| off all those                           |
|                                         |
| Californians trying to share the        |
\ experience.                             /
 -----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||