You can now enjoy mysteries of the sea from the safety of your own terminal using ASCIIQuarium. It is an aquarium/sea animation in ASCII art created using perl.
Install Term::Animation
Fedora Linux user simply run the following dnf command:
$ sudo dnf install asciiquarium
Debian/Ubuntu Linux install Terminal ASCII Aquarium
First, you need to install Perl module called Term-Animation. Open a command-line terminal (select Applications > Accessories > Terminal), and then type the following apt command:
$ sudo apt-get install libcurses-perl
Debian Linux Install GNU GCC Compiler and Development Environment as follows using the apt-get command
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
Finally compile Term-Animation:
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KB/KBAUCOM/Term-Animation-2.6.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf Term-Animation-2.6.tar.gz
$ cd Term-Animation-2.6/
$ perl Makefile.PL && make && make test
$ sudo make install
Download and Install ASCIIQuarium
While still at bash prompt, type:
$ cd /tmp
$ wget https://robobunny.com/projects/asciiquarium/asciiquarium.tar.gz
## Extract tar.gz file on Linux or Unix ##
$ tar -zxvf asciiquarium.tar.gz
$ cd asciiquarium_1.1/
$ sudo cp asciiquarium /usr/local/bin
$ sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
Outputs:
mode of '/usr/local/bin/asciiquarium' changed from 0644 (rw-r--r--) to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)
How do I view my ASCII Aquarium on Linux?
Simply type the following command:
$ /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
OR
$ perl /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
(Fig.01: ASCII Aquarium [ click to enlarge ] )
Related media
Video 01: ASCIIQuarium – Sea Animation on Linux / Unix Desktop
Download: erminal ASCII Aquarium KDE and Mac OS X Version
Download asciiquarium. If you’re running Mac OS X, try a packaged version that will run out of the box. For KDE users, try a KDE Screensaver based on the Asciiquarium.
If you enjoyed this desktop fun app, you may also like to use the following apps on Linux:
- Terminal ASCII Aquarium
- Steam Locomotive
- Let it Snow On Your Desktop
- Summon Swarms Of Penguins To Waddle About The Desktop
- Text Mode Box and Comment Drawing
- Christmas Tree For Your Terminal
- Cat And Mouse Chase All Over Your Screen
- Bastet Tetris(r) clone with block-choosing AI for console
- The Digital Rain: Simulates the display from "The Matrix"
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You download version 2.6 but extract a different version:
tar -zxvf Term-Animation-2.4.tar.gz
Ah, yes. Fixed it. Thank you!
Can it be made as a screen saver..?
cd asciiquarium_1.0/needs to be
cd asciiquarium_1.1/They updated it.
can u tell, how must I do after I get this message : BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2. I used fedora, thanks
This is awesome! I turned all my tty1~6 into this aqarium xD
Not sure if posted. For OSX. I became root and issued the command:
prompt>cpanI then accepted all the default prompts.
Then I ran
cpan>install Term::AnimationThen I ran:
shine:~ jasonralph$ asciiquariumSince it was in my path the binary ran perfectly.
Afer that I was able to see the coolness. Very sweet.
Jaysunn
THis is really neat. LOve it>>>>
Jaysunn
That’s very funny ^^
Thank you very much
That’s very nice.
10 points for your “bash street credibility” 🙂
that’s cool
Redhat distro’s can also use “CheckInstall” to create an rpm package from the source code. Check out http://checkinstall.izto.org/ for more information. This should already be included in the latest CentOS repo’s. Works very well and allows one to easily remove the application with your package manager as well.
Thx For Your post
Is possible ascii aquarium in motd on ssh?
Thanks.
Glad you guys like it! I have a similar program that displays a scene based on the weather:
http://robobunny.com/projects/weatherspect/html/
If you have any problems or suggestions, let me know.
In addition to the KDE screensaver version, there’s now a live wallpaper for Android ported by Claudio Matsuoka:
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/org.helllabs.android.asciiquarium/Asciiquarium-Live-Wallpaper
Any idea how to Install Term::Animation on Fedora 14?
The perl ‘Makefile.PL && make && make test’ fails with message:
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2.
When I looked at this line I see:
use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
Then I installed the perl-MakeMaker-5.41-10.i386.rpm package from:
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12105913/dir/redhat_7.x/com/perl-MakeMaker-5.41-10.i386.rpm.html
Ok. Installed without errors.
Now I tried again ‘Makefile.PL && make && make test’
And again it complains about BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance
I don’t have a Fedora system to test on, but you might want to try looking for a perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker package.
Thanks for your suggestion, but after that I’ve got still the same error message.
you need to install Test::Pod
cpan get Test::podThanks. Finally it is working now!
Cool, Thanks for tip 🙂
Wow nice 🙂
Thanks!
I want this as screensaver, does anybody has a solution to do this?
Just a small detail: chances are you are not the owner of the file you just sudo cp’d into /usr/local/bin, so you won’t have the necessary permissions to chmod at the end. It should be ‘sudo chmod’.
A great find. Thanks.
Cool, I see it is already installed by default in my KDE (Mandriva Linux). Love it.
FYI: There is a slight difference between ASCII and ANSI. 😉
Strictly speaking this is a curses animation, it will work over any terminal with a proper curses descriptor not just an ANSI terminal.
Nice. Someone must have been really bored to do this…
If anyone asks – in OpenSuse 11.3 you need to add the CPAN repository (if you don’t have it):
sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_11.3 perl
and install perl-Curses (for some reason the package name is different than in Ubuntu):
sudo zypper install perl-CursesHave fun!
As I know, in rpm-based OSes it’s preferable to build rpm with rpm-build and than install it.
Debian / Ubuntu
dh-make-perl --build --cpan Term::AnimationForgot, then afterwards
dpkg -i libterm-animation-perl_2.4-1_all.debThere is nothing about libcurses-perl in CentOS yum programme.where can i get it?
See comment # 5
How can I compile rpm for CentOS 5.5?
Cent OS users, try:
yum install perl-Cursesinstead of
sudo apt-get install libcurses-perlWorked for me 🙂
That’s cool 🙂
cpan install Term::Animation
Thank you.nice!
You need to cd to asciiquarium after tar -zxvf asciiquarium.tar.gz