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Z Shell (zsh)

Key Features

1. Interactive Shell: Zsh provides a highly interactive shell experience with features like advanced tab completion, spelling correction, and syntax highlighting.
2. Extensive Customization: Users can customize Zsh to suit their preferences and workflow by configuring various options and settings. This includes defining aliases, customizing prompt appearance, and setting up plugins and themes.
3. Powerful Tab Completion: Zsh’s tab completion is highly sophisticated and can complete commands, filenames, options, and even suggest completions based on the context.
4. Plugin System: Zsh has a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions that add additional functionality and integrations with other tools and frameworks.
5. Advanced Scripting: Zsh supports advanced scripting features, including associative arrays, parameter expansion, and various control structures, making it suitable for writing complex shell scripts.

Install

• Check current SHELL:

  echo $SHELL
  

  If the output is /usr/bin/zsh, you do not need to reinstall. Proceed to install OhMyZsh.

• On Ubuntu/Debian:

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install zsh
  

• On CentOS/RHEL:

  sudo yum install zsh
  

• On macOS using Homebrew:

  brew install zsh
  

Verify

• After installation, you can verify if Zsh is installed by running:

  zsh --version
  

Set Zsh as Default Shell

• Set Zsh as the default shell:

  chsh -s $(which zsh)
  

  For the changes to take effect, log out of your shell session and log back in or restart your computer.

Oh My Zsh

Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open-source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, themes, and more.

OhMyZsh’s homepage

Install

• Install OhMyZsh with curl:

  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
  

• Or with wget:

  sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"
  

Theme

• You can use any theme from Zsh by manually setting it in the Zsh profile file ~/.zshrc.
  For example:

ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell" # Edit this line

Plugin

You can also use Plugins depending on your purposes and preferences.

OhMyZsh Plugins Wiki

Powerlevel10k

Powerlevel10k is a theme for Zsh. It emphasizes speed, flexibility, and out-of-the-box experience.

Install Fonts

1. Download the fonts:

   • MesloLGS NF Regular.ttf
   • MesloLGS NF Bold.ttf
   • MesloLGS NF Italic.ttf
   • MesloLGS NF Bold Italic.ttf

2. Install the fonts by right-clicking and selecting “Install,” or copy the font files to:

   • ~/.local/share/fonts (for a user-specific installation)
   • /usr/local/share/fonts (for a system-wide installation)

3. Start the Powerlevel10k installation:

   • Clone the repository:

   git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
   

   • Set ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k" in ~/.zshrc.

   • Reload the Zsh profile:

   source ~/.zshrc
   

   Note: It will start asking you some questions to customize your shell. Choose according to your preferences.

4. In the final step - Instant Prompt Mode, choose option (3) Off.

5. Done!