How to plant a cool digital bonsai tree on your computer screen in Ubuntu

Learning Linux has quite a curve to it and sometimes taking a break and planting a digital tree might do some good. In this article, I am going to guide you on how to plant a cool digital bonsai tree that you can even set as a wallpaper for your Ubuntu box.

For those who lacks a little bit of general information about agriculture, a bonsai tree is an art form originated from the land of the rising sun, Japan. It is to mimic the shape and scale of full sized trees through special cultivation techniques and these miniature trees are grown in small containers.

Guide on how to plant a cool digital bonsai tree: Getting your Ubuntu environment ready to compile C++ code

First, you need to install the build-essential package which includes all the tools for building Ubuntu packages from c or c++.

But before that as always update and upgrade your Ubuntu installation first by running the below command.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Next install the build-essential package by running the command below into the terminal.

sudo apt install build-essential

Since the code is hosted at gitlab run the command enable pulling packages from there.

sudo apt install build-essential git pkgconf

Ensure that ncurses library is installed to avoid the fatal error: ncurses.h: no such file or directory. Run the command as below.

sudo apt install libncurses6 libncurses-dev ncurses-base ncurses-bin

Now you can start to compile and install the program. Run the commands below to encomplish it.

git clone https://gitlab.com/jallbrit/cbonsai
cd cbonsai
make install PREFIX=~/.local

You will get the results below if compilation finishes successfully.

cc -Wall -pedantic    cbonsai.c  -lncurses -ltinfo -lpanel  -o cbonsai
install -TDm 0755 cbonsai /home/tech201/.local/bin/cbonsai

Guide on how to plant a cool digital bonsai tree: Getting started with the bonsai tree generator

Head over to the location where cbonsai was installed. Type in the command below to run the program as well.

~/.local/bin/cbonsai

If you would like to view the bonsai tree grow as live, please use the below command.

~/.local/bin/cbonsai --live

To set the digital bonsai tree as a screensaver, enter the command below.

~/.local/bin/cbonsai --screensaver

If you want to add a custom message to your bonsai, use the command below.

~/.local/bin/cbonsai -l -m "Welcome to tech201"

Conclusion on the topic of how to plant a cool digital bonsai tree

You can achieve a lot of things running Linux and having a digital bonsai tree growing on your screen is one of them.

Sometimes doing things off the path makes learning a little more fun and imaginative. You get to explore more and pick up something new along the way.

Read more: Learn how to setup a fast LiteSpeed Enterprise web server and CyberPanel on Ubuntu