Table of Contents
Ubuntu Zsh Without Oh My Zsh
Everybody loves Zsh. And most, if not every tutorial teaches to use Oh My Zsh (OMZ) to manage plugins and themes. But the truth is, you can do all of that without Oh My Zsh. Also OMZ makes the terminal really slow. You will probably only utilize about 5 to 10 percent of all the stuff that's shipping with OMZ so why not utilize Zsh with only the stuff you need and keep your shell responsive and fast ?
It's pretty straight forward really just add the following line to your .zshrc file.
source path/to/your/plugin
That's actually all there is to it. This guide will show you how to install zsh as our new shell as well as the following:
Unistall Oh My ZSH
Open a terminal and type the following.
cd ~ cp .zshrc .zshrc.backup uninstall_oh_my_zsh
In order for these changes to take effect you will have to log out and in again on your system. After login out and back in again you may be prompted with a zsh initial configuration screen when opening the terminal. This can be ignored. Just select (q) to quit this screen.
Installing Zsh
If you need to install zsh because (OMZ) reverted you back to a bash shell or if you did not infact had (OMZ) installed it can be done like this.
sudo apt install zsh chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh
In order for these changes to take effect you will have to log out and in again on your system. After login out and back in again you may be prompted with a zsh initial configuration screen when opening the terminal. This can be ignored. Just select (q) to quit this screen.
Getting Things Set Up
Now in this guide we are going to keep everything zsh related under the directory .zsh
cd ~ mkdir -p .zsh/plugins .zsh/themes touch .zsh/.zshrc touch .zsh/.zsh_history touch .zsh/.zsh_alias
History Optional:
moving your OMZ history file to the new setup.
mv .zsh_history .zsh/
Configuration Minimum
Add the following to your .zsh/.zshrc configuration file.
# ZSH CONFIGUATION # # HOME DIR export ZSH=$HOME/.zsh # HISTORY FILE export HISTFILE=$ZSH/.zsh_history # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS REMEMBERED export HISTSIZE=10000 # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS SAVED TO FILE export SAVEHIST=10000 # HISTORY DON'T SAVE DUPLICATES setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS # HISTORY DON'T SHOW DUPLICATES ON SEARCH setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS # HISTORY APPEND INSTEAD OF REPLACE setopt APPEND_HISTORY # EDITOR OPTIONAL SET TO VI setopt vi # PROMPT setopt prompt_subst
Custom Path Optional
I like to put a custom path in the configuration file you can. You can see you current path like this.
echo $PATH
We are going to add a quite simple path in this example. Don't use this one use your own this is just an example.
/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/snap/bin:/snap/bin
Add that to your .zsh/.zshrc configuration file at the top it should look a bit like this.
export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/snap/bin:/snap/bin:$PATH
Swith To The New Configuration
So far nothing has changed zsh is still using the old config file. We are changing this now. Remove the old ~/.zshrc (keep the backup)
cd ~ rm .zshrc ln -s -T .zsh/.zshrc .zshrc source .zshrc
Note The .zshrc file may not exist when you try to delete it which is fine.
Theme
The Agnoster theme requires a specific font called Powerline to be installed in order to work you can install it like this.
sudo apt install fonts-powerline
Next lets grap the theme.
cd .zsh/themes git clone https://github.com/agnoster/agnoster-zsh-theme.git
Tell zsh to use the Agnoster thene. Add the following to your .zsh/.zshrc configuration file.
# THEME source $ZSH/themes/agnoster-zsh-theme/agnoster.zsh-theme
Your configuration file should now look something like this.
# ZSH CONFIGUATION # HOME DIR export ZSH=$HOME/.zsh # HISTORY FILE export HISTFILE=$ZSH/.zsh_history # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS REMEMBERED export HISTSIZE=10000 # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS SAVED TO FILE export SAVEHIST=10000 # HISTORY DON'T SAVE DUPLICATES setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS # HISTORY DON'T SHOW DUPLICATES ON SEARCH setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS # HISTORY APPEND INSTEAD OF REPLACE setopt APPEND_HISTORY # EDITOR OPTIONAL SET TO VI setopt vi # PROMPT setopt prompt_subst # THEME source $ZSH/themes/agnoster-zsh-theme/agnoster.zsh-theme
Im not really fan of the colors so I set my terminal to use the Solarized theme. You can do this in the preference menu in your terminal.
Plugins
cd ~/.zsh/plugins
Now clone the following plugins
git clone https://github.com/zdharma-zmirror/fast-syntax-highlighting.git git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions.git git clone https://github.com/ael-code/zsh-colored-man-pages.git git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions.git
Zsh Completions is loaded differently like this: fpath=($ZSH/plugins/zsh-completions/src $fpath)
Enabling the plugins
Add the following to your .zshrc configuration file.
# PLUGINS source $ZSH/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting/fast-syntax-highlighting.plugin.zsh source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-colored-man-pages/colored-man-pages.plugin.zsh # PLUGIN Zsh Completions fpath=($ZSH/plugins/zsh-completions/src $fpath)
Your zsh configuration file should no look something like this. Nice clean uncluttered and fast.
# ZSH CONFIGUATION # HOME DIR export ZSH=$HOME/.zsh # HISTORY FILE export HISTFILE=$ZSH/.zsh_history # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS REMEMBERED export HISTSIZE=10000 # HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS SAVED TO FILE export SAVEHIST=10000 # HISTORY DON'T SAVE DUPLICATES setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS # HISTORY DON'T SHOW DUPLICATES ON SEARCH setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS # HISTORY APPEND INSTEAD OF REPLACE setopt APPEND_HISTORY # EDITOR OPTIONAL SET TO VI setopt vi # PROMPT setopt prompt_subst # THEME source $ZSH/themes/agnoster-zsh-theme/agnoster.zsh-theme # PLUGINS source $ZSH/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting/fast-syntax-highlighting.plugin.zsh source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-colored-man-pages/colored-man-pages.plugin.zsh # PLUGIN Zsh Completions fpath=($ZSH/plugins/zsh-completions/src $fpath)
Close and open your terminal again for the changes to take effect.
Note Regarding Zsh Completions. From the documentation from the developers site there is a note that says you may need to execute the following command in order to make this work. I did not have to do this though.
rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit
Alias
Normally aliases would go into your .zshrc file, but I find this pollutes the configuration file. Another solution is to use a seperate file for aliases. This can be achieved by putting these lines in your configuration file.
# Alias
if [ -f ~/.zshalias ]; then
source ~/.zshalias
print "404: ~/.zshalias not found."
Your configuration file should no look something like this.
# ZSH CONFIGUATION
# HOME DIR
export ZSH=$HOME/.zsh
# HISTORY FILE
export HISTFILE=$ZSH/.zsh_history
# HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS REMEMBERED
export HISTSIZE=10000
# HISTORY NUMBER OF COMMANDS SAVED TO FILE
export SAVEHIST=10000
# HISTORY DON'T SAVE DUPLICATES
setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS
# HISTORY DON'T SHOW DUPLICATES ON SEARCH
setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS
# HISTORY APPEND INSTEAD OF REPLACE
setopt APPEND_HISTORY
# EDITOR OPTIONAL SET TO VI
setopt vi
# PROMPT
setopt prompt_subst
# THEME
source $ZSH/themes/agnoster-zsh-theme/agnoster.zsh-theme
# PLUGINS
source $ZSH/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting/fast-syntax-highlighting.plugin.zsh
source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh
source $ZSH/plugins/zsh-colored-man-pages/colored-man-pages.plugin.zsh
# PLUGIN Zsh Completions
fpath=($ZSH/plugins/zsh-completions/src $fpath)
# Alias
if [ -f $ZSH/.zsh_alias ]; then
source $ZSH/.zsh_alias
else
print "404: $ZSH/.zsh_alias not found."
fi
And we are done. Close and open your shell in order for changes to take effect.