From

Fortune

Fortunoid

Fortunoid is a Plasma Widget that serves as a frontend GUI for the fortune package.

Installing the Fortunoid widget package (in Kubuntu/KDE) by

sudo apt-get install plasma-widget-fortunoid

will also install the fortune package. If only the fortune package is desired (which can be run in a command-line terminal), it can be installed by itself:

sudo apt-get install fortune

or

sudo apt-get install fortune-mod

The fortune module can be customized.

The quotations themselves are stored in the /usr/share/games/fortunes folders.

There are multiple categories of quotations, and the file for each category can be edited directly.

When using the command-line, categories of quotations can be selected merely by specifying them. Example:

fortune zippy science

There are many options for the command-line fortune utility (see here). Any or all of these command-line options can be entered as an argument in the Fortunoid widget.

Adding categories of fortunes (fortune modules)

See this list of the original fortune modules (categories).
Other modules can often be found by a Google search for fortune-mod.
Wikiquotes is an online repository for quotations. A webpage can easily be copied to a text file, for conversion into a fortune data file (see below). An example page is Wikiquotes -- Zen proverbs.
See this brief tutorial.

Make sure fortune-mod is installed:

sudo apt-get install fortune-mod

Change to the fortune directory:

cd /usr/share/games/fortunes

Edit a category text file with quotations separated by % symbols:

I reject your reality and substitute my own...
%
This is one of those "What the hell am I doing?" moments, over!
%
We got a robot in the water, he's stuffed with tuna and it's just another day here at Mythbusters.

Then, for example, save this text file as newcategory1.

It is also possible to include a URL as the text in a quotation. (Most browsers will then automatically change the text into an actual link.) In this way, a list of random URL links can be displayed through the Fortune module.

My reality comes from http://ubuntuguide.org
%
When I wonder "What the hell I am doing?" I go to Kubuntuguide at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Kubuntuguide
%
MediaWiki is the premier wiki. Vist their website: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

There is also a UTF-8 file which is merely a symbolic link to the text file:

sudo ln -s newcategory1 newcategory1.u8

Convert the text file into a data file for use by fortune.

sudo strfile newcategory1 newcategory1.dat

Select newcategory1 as a command-line option or as an argument in Fortunoid.

Using Fortune in Drupal

A Drupal plugin for Fortune is available. While this is a nice module, the disadvantage of it is that it displays the quotations in Monotext; there is no ability to select font size and type.

On a server with Drupal installed, download the module:

cd /etc/drupal/6/all/sites/modules
sudo wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/fortune-6.x-1.0.tar.gz
sudo tar zxvf fortune-6.x-1.0.tar.gz
sudo rm fortune-6.x-1.0.tar.gz

Note: The module can also be placed in a particular subsite's module folder (if there are multiple Drupal subsites on the server), instead of in the sites/all/modules folder.

Enable the module:

Drupal -> Administer -> Site building -> Modules -> Other -> Fortune (ticked) -> Save configuration