How To Install cowsay on Debian 9

In this tutorial we learn how to install cowsay on Debian 9. cowsay is configurable talking cow

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install cowsay on Debian 9.

What is cowsay

cowsay is:

Cowsay (or cowthink) will turn text into happy ASCII cows, with speech (or thought) balloons. If you don’t like cows, ASCII art is available to replace it with some other creatures (Tux, the BSD daemon, dragons, and a plethora of animals, from a turkey to an elephant in a snake).

There are three methods to install cowsay on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install cowsay Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install cowsay using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install cowsay

Install cowsay Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install cowsay using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install cowsay

Install cowsay Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install cowsay using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install cowsay

How To Uninstall cowsay on Debian 9

To uninstall only the cowsay package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove cowsay

Uninstall cowsay And Its Dependencies

To uninstall cowsay and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove cowsay

Remove cowsay Configurations and Data

To remove cowsay configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge cowsay

Remove cowsay configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove cowsay configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge cowsay

Dependencies

cowsay have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install cowsay package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.