I don't understand the fascination with a program that tells you what kind of system you're using. I'm not trolling. Can someone enlighten me on its usefulness beyond "yep, that's what my system looks like"?
@unterzicht that IS it's use. It is primarily used in show-off posts where people present their systems so that people in the replies can get a quick glance on what they're running.
The reason this is big news is because neofetch was by far the biggest project of it's kind
It's a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.
Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It's a staple of "look at my system" brag posts.
But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don't know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it's a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.
I install it on servers and put it in my bash profile so it runs when I SSH in or open a new terminal tab. Mostly just as a safety thing. It’s basically a reminder to double check I’m on the correct machine/tab before I run any commands.
It doesn’t have to be neofetch but even in my containers and docker stuff, I try to put a little message so I don’t fuck up something.
Running through a checklist is important. I learned that from a helicopter pilot at a bar but I do think it’s true in our field. It’s not life or death on a server but training yourself to go through a simple checklist (even if it’s just “make sure this is the right terminal tab”) is good advice.