Ah, Neofetch, the tool that many of us count on to show off our rad-looking Linux systems on r/unixporn or even on It's FOSS Community. It is one of those CLI tools that has become synonymous with the Linux community.
However, there is some bad news about Neofetch. Let's dive in.
All Good Things Come to an End?
On April 26, 2024, the lead developer of Neofetch, dylanaraps archived the GitHub repo for Neofetch, making it read-only. This meant that there won't be any kind of development work on Neofetch going forward.
Even though people can fork the repo to build something based on it, it is the end for Neofetch as a standalone tool.
Surprisingly, they also archived all of their other GitHub repositories, with Kiss Linux being another popular project getting the axe.
If you ask me, this was coming, but we never knew when. You see, the lead developer has had past instances where they would go AWOL without any clarification or explanation whatsoever.
Coinciding the archiving of all their GitHub repositories, dylanaraps also added the following to a README file:
Have taken up farming.
I guess that's pretty self-explanatory? Whatever their reasoning or circumstances for closing up shop might be, we can only look ahead.
As for the users of Neofetch, you don't need to worry; there are many alternatives that you could switch to, that perform just as well, or even better in some cases.
One such alternative is Fastfetch, which is a faster alternative to Neofetch that has been primarily written in the C programming language. It is a cross-platform system information-fetching CLI tool that can be run on Linux, FreeBSD, Android, Windows, and macOS.
You don't have to worry about updates, as it is actively developed with a great community backing it that regularly contributes to it. Just keep in mind that when you post your Fastfetch screenshots on the internet, your local IP address will also be revealed.
You could keep it as is or censor it out by using a tool like Obfuscate if you don't like having it out in the open.
There are many Linux distributions that have Fastfetch in their repositories. However, many include an older version of the program. You can grab the latest Fastfetch release from its GitHub repo.
💬 Have you used Fastfetch before? Prefer some other system info fetching CLI tool over neofetch? Let me know your thoughts!
Credits to Joey, for bringing this to our attention. 😃
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