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Remove Fortune messages from Linux Mint's terminal

Learn how to remove the Fortune messages, jokes and pictures from the Bash terminal shell on Linux Mint.

When it's installed, Linux Mint configures a program called Fortune to run which places jokes and small ASCII-based pictures at the top of the shell. Personally, I find it takes up a bit too much space, so I prefer to have the plain old boring shell without Fortune running. Here's how to remove it.

1. Open bash.bashrc

The terminal program Linux Mint uses is called Bash (Bourne Again Shell) and it stores its configuration settings in a file located in the /etc/bash directory. You'll need to open this up in a text editor as the root user. The easiest way to do this is to enter: sudo gedit /etc/bash.bashrc

2. Edit bash.bashrc

The bash.bashrc file is quite large, but you only need to make a very small change. Scroll down to the very bottom of the file and look for a line which says /usr/bin/mint-fortune.

This is the command that triggers Fortune to start when the shell is opened, displaying its contents in the terminal window. To disable this, all you need to do is put a hash symbol # in front of the line to comment it out and prevent Bash from running the application.

This will make the line read: #/usr/bin/mint-fortune

When you've done that save the file, open a terminal and Fortune should be gone. If you want to bring it back, simply re-open the file and remove the hash symbol.