Master Zsh: Install, Configure, and Supercharge Your Shell with Oh‑My‑Zsh

Linux shells

Linux/Unix provides many shells (sh, bash, csh, etc.). List the shells installed on the system with:

cat /etc/shells

Zsh overview

Zsh is a powerful, programmable shell that is included in most Linux distributions and can be installed via package managers such as apt-get, yum or urpmi. Its main features are:

Out‑of‑the‑box programmable command‑line completion.

Shared command history across all running shells.

Extended globbing that can replace external find commands.

Improved variable and array handling.

Multi‑line command editing in the buffer.

Compatibility modes (e.g., emulating the Bourne shell).

Highly customizable prompts.

Loadable modules for TCP/Unix sockets, FTP client and advanced math functions.

Full customizability.

Oh‑My‑Zsh

Oh‑My‑Zsh is a community‑driven framework that extends Zsh with plugin management, theme selection and enhanced auto‑completion. Repository: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.

Installing Zsh

sudo apt-get install zsh

Configuring Zsh

You can copy a ready‑made .zshrc file into your home directory, or adapt an existing Bash configuration because Zsh is largely compatible with Bash.

Set Zsh as the default shell

sudo usermod -s /bin/zsh username

chsh -s /bin/zsh

To revert to Bash:

chsh -s /bin/bash

Installing Oh‑My‑Zsh

Clone the repository and copy the template:

git clone git://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.orig
cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrc

Run the install script via curl:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Run the install script via wget:

sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"

Customizing the theme

Set the ZSH_THEME variable in ~/.zshrc to a theme name, for example: ZSH_THEME="agnoster" Or enable random theme selection:

ZSH_THEME="random"

Enabling plugins

Edit the plugins array in ~/.zshrc:

plugins=(git bundler osx rake ruby)

Update control

Disable the weekly update prompt: disable_update_prompt=true Disable automatic updates entirely: disable_auto_update=true Manual update can be triggered with:

upgrade_oh_my_zsh

Uninstalling Oh‑My‑Zsh

Run the uninstall command to remove Oh‑My‑Zsh and restore the previous configuration:

uninstall_oh_my_zsh zsh