Install Neofetch and Screenfetch on CentOS 8

Sometimes we need basic information about a computer with Linux. Especially if the computer is not ours or we want to share certain features of it with the rest. I can imagine that for technical support. In desktop environments, there are several ways to do it using the graphical interface but today we will do it from the terminal. To do this we have to install Neofetch or Screenfetch and we will do it in CentOS 8.

Wait a minute, what are Neofetch and Screefetch?

Both Neofetch and Screenfetch are tools written in bash language that allows showing in the terminal the basic information of the computer. Some of this information is related to the CPU, RAM, hard disk and so on.

Many times we can ask ourselves which is the utility of these tools. We must take into account that not always there are Linux computers that have graphic interfaces and then it becomes necessary to use some of these applications.

In question of functioning, both are practically the same, but Neofetch is a little more flexible in the configuration by means of a file that can manipulate everything. It is also possible to use another configuration file than the default one.

So today we will install them both on CentOS 8.

Install Neofetch and Screenfetch on CentOS 8

Let’s go to Neofetch first. This one supports almost 150 operating systems so let’s imagine how well done it is. We also have the possibility to show the logo of our application in ASCII or a normal image.

Best of all, Neofetch has a package built for CentOS 8. This package is available in the EPEL repository, so let’s go for it.

Open a terminal session or connect to your server using SSH.

Then, add the EPEL repository, with the following command

:~$ sudo dnf install epel-release
Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:49 ago on Sat Mar 14 10:29:06 2020.
Dependencies resolved.
=========================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                                     Architecture                          Version                                   Repository                             Size
=========================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 epel-release                                noarch                                8-5.el8                                   extras                                 22 k
Transaction Summary
=========================================================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package
Total download size: 22 k
Installed size: 30 k
Is this ok [y/N]:

There the process will start and when it is finished, you can install Neofetch:

:~$ sudo dnf install neofetch

And that’s it. It is ready to be used using the neofetch command.

:~$ neofetch

In the image above you will see all the information available to be shown. Remember that this is non-sensitive information.

The first time you run Neofetch the following configuration file is created:

$HOME/.config/neofetch/config.conf

You can modify it but be very careful.

Now it’s Screenfetch’s turn

Screenfetch is not available in the EPEL repository or in the CentOS 8 officers, but it is also quite easy to install.

First, let’s install Git to clone the application’s repository.

:~$ sudo dnf install git

Now we can clone the repository and download the source code from Screenfetch.

:~$ git clone git://github.com/KittyKatt/screenFetch.git screenfetch
Cloning into 'screenfetch'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 27, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (27/27), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (21/21), done.
remote: Total 4101 (delta 14), reused 14 (delta 6), pack-reused 4074
Receiving objects: 100% (4101/4101), 4.33 MiB | 37.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2364/2364), done.

This command will create a folder called screenfetch where the application will be.

Now copy the Screenfetch binary to the directory where the rest of the system binaries are. Then, assign permissions to it.

:~$ sudo cp screenfeth/screenfetch-dev /usr/bin/screenfetch
:~$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/screenfetch

Finally, run it:

:~$ screenfetch

As you see both are similar but now you have the opportunity to choose which one you stay with and which one suits you.

Conclusion

These tools that we sometimes consider so simple are the ones that end up solving serious problems in serious situations. With these two you can show basic information about the computer in almost any current operating system.

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