I’m a big fan of the command line interface on my Ubuntu machine… I hate using my computer mouse! This motivated me to search for great tools to enhance my user experience on the CLI. I came across Oh-My-Zsh during my internship. Some friends convinced me to use the Zshell because of its simplicity and adjustability. As a bonus, the CLI is extendable with many plugins. This is a list of its : capabilities Command validation Spelling correction Sharing of command history among all running shells Themeable prompts (Agnoster, RobbyRussell, …) Directory history Startup/shutdown scripts via , , , , and zshenv zprofile zshrc zlogin zlogout Strong autocomplete capabilities. You can use the TAB key to navigate through the different options and use enter to select the right folder. Bash for example would print all the options. This is fairly spammy and pollutes your scrollback. Add : e.g. Git plugin with a huge list of useful Git .This plugin shows the active branch and gives visual feedback about your Git status: - Green: branch if no changes occurred- Yellow with a circle icon: untracked files- Yellow with a plus icon: files ready to be committed plugins aliases Installation Guide I’m performing this installation guide on my Ubuntu 16.04 Virtual Machine. To show you the underlying power of Oh-My-Zsh, I will install the Git plugin (Git-core). This plugin gives visual feedback about the Git status of a project. Install prerequisite packages$ sudo apt install git-core zsh Install Oh-My-Zsh from Robby Russell’s repository$ sh -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh )" Install the Powerline font to spice up your CLI with icons$ sudo apt install fonts-powerline Change theme from ‘robbyrussell’ to ‘agnoster’ for the legendary Oh-My-Zsh theme$ nano ~/.zshrc Find the variable and change it: ZSH_THEME ZSH_THEME="agnoster" I don’t like it that the theme shows my username and host. To get rid of this, we change the directory to $ cd ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes Next we open the theme file for ‘agnoster’ in the editor $ nano agnoster.zsh-theme Now we can change the ‘Main prompt’. We don’t need to prompt_context in the function . Just comment out this line or remove it. At last, change the variable to . build_prompt() PROMPT $(build_prompt) Agnoster theme configuration To actually see the theme, you have to source your file like this: . If everything worked out fine, you should see something like the cover image! .zshrc source ~/.zshrc : Set zsh as our default shell. Execute this in your default shell, in most cases this will be bash. If you execute this command in zsh, it won’t change anything: Extra $ chsh -s $(which zsh) : If you use it will change the shell for not for your working user. Note sudo root, but Install Plugins All plugins listed on the are pre-installed with Oh-My-Zsh at . Custom plugins can be installed at . To use a plugin, you can simply add it to the plugins list in your file. Add wisely, as too many plugins slow down shell startup. Leave a blank between each plugin. plugins Github page ~/.oh-my-zsh/plugins ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins ~/.zshrc Colored-man-pages In this example, I’ve installed a useful plugin to give color highlighting to your . To be able to use the plugin, source your file: man pages .zshrc $ source ~/.zshrc Colored Man Page of command ls Zsh-syntax-highlighting Another great plugin is for your shell. Besides that, this plugin has the capability to verify the correctness of your command. syntax highlighting This plugin isn’t installed with Oh-My-Zsh. Navigate to and clone the code from Github into this folder: ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins $ git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting You will see a folder named . This is the name that needs to be added to the plugins list. zsh-syntax-highlighting Zsh-autosuggestions You can also use for command completion. It suggests commands based on your command history. Very useful! To select the proposed command, press the right arrow key. zsh-autosuggestions Installation is the same as with : And add to the plugins list. zsh-syntax-highlighting $ git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions zsh-autosuggestions Takes Care of Alias Enthusiast Directory History Oh-My-Zsh automatically remembers the 20 last directories you have visited. You can list the history chronologically with or just . dirs -v d Normally, you can use to go to the previous directory and so on. Oh-My-Zsh made this even more straightforward, now you can use the number of the entry in the directory history you want to visit… . cd +1 1 Other Interesting Aliases : List all aliases. You can pipe the output to to search for a particular alias. alias grep : / cd / : ~ cd ~ : ... cd ../.. : .... cd ../../.. : I think you get it, right? ..... cd ../../../.. : Creates a folder named and changes to it take test_folder test_folder : Extract archive of types x tar, bz2, rar, gz, tbz2, tgz, zip, Z, 7z : Easy commando for upgrading your installation upgrade_oh_my_zsh Well-known Problems & Solutions Corrupt History File It can happen the history file gets corrupt. Don’t ask me the specific details. Each time you launch a new terminal, you get this message: zsh: corrupt history file /home/myusername/.zsh_history Let’s fix it with the following commands. Make sure you are in the root of homefolder. The fc command lists, edits, or re-executes commands previously entered to a shell. The history command allows you to use words from previous command lines in the command line you are typing. mv .zsh_history .zsh_history_badstrings .zsh_history_bad > .zsh_historyfc -R .zsh_history Conclusion Oh-My-Zsh is just awesome! Useful Links and Sources This article was made with the help of TheLedger . Oh-My-Zsh: http://ohmyz.sh/ Plugins: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/tree/master/plugins Themes: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/tree/master/themes/ Git plugin with all aliases: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Plugin:git Customizing your shell prompt: http://www.nparikh.org/unix/prompt.php#zsh ArchWiki about Zsh: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/zsh#Autostart_X_at_login Zsh syntax highlighting plugin: https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting Zsh autosuggestions plugin: https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions RobbyRussell Wiki about customization of Zsh: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Customization

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