I am a huge fan of snow and hacky one line linux commands. Thanks to some amazing people on twitter and a little too much free time at the end of the year they have both combined to bring snow to your terminal window just in time for your winter based holiday.
This command works on OSX out of the box:
for((I=0;J=--I;))do clear;for((D=LINES;S=++J**3%COLUMNS,--D;))do printf %*s.\\n $S;done;sleep .1;done
This command is a little longer and requires PV (sudo apt-get install pv) but looks amazing on Ubuntu:
yes $COLUMNS $LINES|pv -qL50|perl -ne'$|=1;($c,$r)=split;$s||=$"x($c*$r);print$s;$s=$"x$c.$s;substr$s,rand$c,1,"*";$s=substr$s,0,$c*$r+$c;'
