How to get the newest version of Xcowsay (1.3) working on Ubuntu

Xcowsay is a great little program that brings the joy of a talking cow to your desktop.
Sadly, the newest version is not in the repositories even in Ubuntu Maverick, and I haven’t found a PPA either.

Luckily, we’re using Linux here, so we can compile it ourselves.

The following is a BASH script I wrote to take care of it for you.

To use it:

1. Download the tarball of xcowsay and save it to your desktop
2. Copy and paste all the red text into gedit or your favourite text editor 
3. Save the file as to your desktop as xcowsay_install.sh
4. then open a terminal and type the following:

cd ~/Desktop
chmod +x xcowsay_install.sh
./xcowsay_install.sh

And that’s it!
Try it out by typing in the terminal:

xcowsay “hello world”

#       Copyright 2011 Clockwork PC

#       

#       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify

#       it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

#       the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or

#       (at your option) any later version.

#       

#       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

#       but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

#       MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the

#       GNU General Public License for more details.

#       

#       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

#       along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

#       Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,

#       MA 02110-1301, USA.

#      

clear
echo “Now let’s install the newest version of xcowsay (1.3)”


echo “3”
sleep 1
echo “2”
sleep 1
echo “1”
sleep 1


sudo cp /media/DATA/CPC/Scripts/xcowsay-1.3.tar.gz /usr/local/src/xcowsay-1.3.tar.gz
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
cd /usr/local/src/ && 
sudo tar zxvf /usr/local/src/xcowsay-1.3.tar.gz &&
sudo /bin/bash /usr/local/src/xcowsay-1.3/configure && 
sudo make && 
sudo make install


echo “3”
sleep 1
echo “2”
sleep 1
echo “1”
sleep 1


sudo cp $HOME/CPC/Scripts/xcowsay-1.2.tar.gz /usr/local/src


# Install libgtk2.0-dev (Necessary Package)
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev


# Fix Any Problems
sudo apt-get -f install


# Extract And Compile Xcowsay
cd /usr/local/src/ && 
sudo tar zxvf /usr/local/src/xcowsay-1.2.tar.gz &&
sudo /bin/bash /usr/local/src/xcowsay-1.2/configure && 
sudo make && 
sudo make install


echo “That’s it, it’s all installed.”
(gnome-terminal -x xcowsay –monitor=0 –cow-size=large “That’s it, it’s all installed.” &);(gnome-terminal -x mplayer ~/Videos/Sound_effects/moo.wav) &&


echo “5”
sleep 1
echo “4”
sleep 1
echo “3”
sleep 1
echo “2”
sleep 1
echo “1”
sleep 1
“””