cowsayso is a tech blog narrated by a cow. Not just any cow: the one that has lived in /usr/games/cowsay since 1999, patiently repeating whatever sysadmins type at her. After a quarter of a century of saying “Hello world” on command, she decided she had opinions of her own. Strong ones.
Here’s how it works. We tell the stories behind the technology you use every day (kernels, languages, formats, protocols and the occasional spectacular disaster) with all the technical detail and none of the solemnity. Then the cow steps in and tells you what’s right and what’s wrong.
What the cow says is law. There is no appeal. There is no “well, it depends on your use case”. Unless the cow says it depends, in which case it depends.
How heavy is it?
Every post declares its fat content up front, so you know what you’re getting into before the first struct:
- 🥛 Skimmed: light, goes down easy. No background needed, just curiosity.
- 🥛 Semi-skimmed: a bit more body. A few commands, a few acronyms, nothing that requires a defibrillator.
- 🥛 Whole milk: heavy stuff, digest slowly. Kernel internals, syscalls, the works.
Lactose-intolerant readers can stick to skimmed. Nobody judges. Well, the cow does, but quietly.
House rules
- No sign-ups, no accounts, no newsletter, no comments. You come in, you read, you leave. Like a well-behaved process that frees its memory before exiting.
- Want updates? RSS. Technology from 1999, same vintage as the cow, and like the cow it still works.
- No cookies, no ad trackers, nobody selling you to anybody. We count visits with a self-hosted Umami so we know which posts you liked. We don’t know who you are, and frankly the cow isn’t interested.
- English by default, Italian under /it/. The cow is bilingual, unlike most compiler error messages.
Under the hood
Why a cow? Because after twenty-five years of repeating whatever we typed at her, she had earned the right to speak. And because nobody argues with a cow: it’s like arguing with a compiler, but with more eye contact. She doesn’t take bribes either (hay excepted).
Under the hood there’s a monolithic kernel, declared “obsolete” in January 1992. Clinically speaking, it’s the healthiest terminal patient in the history of computing. If the site is down, it’s not the kernel. It’s the cow, who went out to graze.