Why is there an owl on my front page

2026-06-15

Why is there an owl on your front page, you ask. First of all, his name is Kaepora. The Zelda-fans will know. This little ascii art of an owl has basically become the mascot of my Linux journey. I’ve even pasted it to my desktop - blinking and all. It’s done using something called Conky, and there are entire online communities dedicated to “ricing” their desktop (dweeb term for customising it with visualisations of their computer’s specs).

One of the joys of digging yourself into a rabbit hole is to discover all the various online communities out there, dragging you further down the rabbit hole to the extent that you’re suddenly talking about “distro-hopping” and “ricing” to colleagues, only to be met with empty glares and a short “I’m happy this makes you happy” (you know who you are).

Back to Kaepora. When exploring online communities I found that you could, along with live visualisation of your computer’s specs and usage, have animated ascii art. I got so excited at the idea of having a little mascot living on my desktop. I spent forever looking up potential creatures, and landed on, together with ChatGPT (left them for Claude - rip), a tiny blinking owl and named him Kaepora. It’s a fitting mascot for a computer where I’m bringing all my files together.

And that’s where my motivation to begin this journey began. I mean, have you noticed how fragmented we are online? First there was dropbox, then maybe you organised some of your life in google docs. Get a Google Pixel and suddenly Google is your main cloud for all your photos. Switch to iPhone, and have them spam you for 2 years about iCloud subscription (“c’mon, it’s only 10kr a month” - no f¤ck you!). And to migrate your files? It’s an afternoon, and the inconvenience serves as a massive block. Then, of course you have the laptop you used during your studies. Formative files, essays, articles and resources. Then you start a new job, get another laptop, but now with TeAmS and MiCroSlop 365 CopIlOt App, and suddenly you live in yet another cloud. It’s exhausting.

To bring all my files, my documents, my photos, down to earth. To a system that is mine. A system that is quiet. No, not the machine. I mean never being asked to buy cloud storage again. And on my desktop, in the upper left corner, just above today’s date, my specs, and my storage, stands Kaepora and blinks at me - quietly.

Btw, if you haven’t done so yet: click the owl - I’ll update it every now and then ;)

If you want to go down the same rabbit hole:

• r/unixporn — the ricing hub (it's SFW I promise)
• r/Conkyporn — Conky specifically
• r/linuxmemes — the memes
• r/LinuxCircleJerk — a classic messy one

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