If you want to have fortune cookies displayed on your host as well, you'll have to download the cookie database and install the program to select and display a cookie.

Simply download the source files from the download directory and place them into /usr/share/games/fortunes or into a directory of their own (you need the .dat files as well). You can use wget to download the files. Some German fortune cookies are also included in the fortunes-de package.

Additionally you'll need to install the fortune command as well, which Debian ships in the fortune-mod package. When the files were placed in the global directory, a simple call to fortune should display a random cookie.

If that is done, simply place a command similar to the followings into your /etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file (or similar if you are using a different shell).

   echo
   /usr/games/fortune infodrom-linux linux
   echo
   echo
   /usr/games/fortune ~/fortunes/
   echo

The first command reads cookies from two files in the global directory. If you remove the filenames the file is chosen randomly. The second command chooses a cookie database in the given directory and displays a random cookie from it.

Depending on the place used to insert these commands you'll get a fortune cookie displayed each time you log in into your machine or whenever a new shell is spawned.