Configs

Terminal setup

The default shell is sh that is symlinked to bash in most Linux distros

Ensure at least one Powerline or Nerd Font is installed to support special characters or glyphs in your theme. Refer my Fonts Guide

Shell: ZSH

Install the zsh shell via your package manager

# Fedora (dnf):
sudo dnf install -y zsh
# Ubuntu (apt):
sudo apt install -y zsh

Make zsh as your default shell. Ensure the chsh command is found on your system

# List all available shells
cat /etc/shells
# Make 'zsh' the default shell
chsh -s $(which zsh)

Reboot the system. Open the terminal, it opens the setup wizard asking for multiple options to configure ZSH. In the wizard, select options as per your preference. These will be saved in your Shell config file i.e. ~/.zshrc
Ensure your shell being loaded is zsh whenever you open terminal
```
echo $SHELL
# The output should be: /usr/bin/zsh
```

Instead of just one .zshrc file, you can separate your ZSH config into these files:

Config file	Purpose
`~/.zshenv`	Loaded for all `zsh` invocations (whether it’s interactive login or scripts). Used to store environment variables like `PATH`, `EDITOR`, `LANG` etc.
`~/.zshrc`	Loaded in non-login interactive shell, such as when you open the terminal. Used to store aliases, shell prompt, load plugins or functions, some UI tweaks etc.
`~/.zprofile`	Loaded only ONCE per session in your login shell. Used for session setup (like example SSH stuff), starting services etc.

You can refer my .zshrc and .zshenv config files

ZSH Plugins (manual updates)

Since I’m not using Oh-My-Zsh which acts like a plugin manager for ZSH plugins, I would need to manually download and update my required plugins. This isn’t much of an issue since most of those plugins are just ZSH shell scripts. You can browse the list of OMZ plugins or download from other sources

I’m storing my ZSH plugins in ~/.zsh_plugins:

mkdir -p ~/.zsh_plugins
# Download the plugin repos
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions.git ~/.zsh_plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ~/.zsh_plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions.git ~/.zsh_plugins/zsh-completions

Terminal Emulator: WezTerm

WezTerm is my preferred GPU-accelerated terminal emulator. Other popular options are Alacritty, Kitty or Ghostty

Following the Linux install instructions:

Install wezterm for your distro:

# Fedora (copr recommended):
sudo dnf copr enable wezfurlong/wezterm-nightly
sudo dnf install wezterm

# Ubuntu (configure apt):
curl -fsSL https://apt.fury.io/wez/gpg.key | sudo gpg --yes --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/wezterm-fury.gpg
echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/wezterm-fury.gpg] https://apt.fury.io/wez/ * *' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wezterm.list
sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/keyrings/wezterm-fury.gpg
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wezterm

WezTerm uses the Lua for configuration in the ~/.wezterm.lua config file, so create it and paste following starter contents

-- Pull in the wezterm API
local wezterm = require 'wezterm'

-- This will hold the configuration.
local config = wezterm.config_builder()

-- Changing the initial geometry for new windows:
config.initial_cols = 120
config.initial_rows = 28

-- Changing the font size and color scheme.
config.font_size = 10
config.color_scheme = 'AdventureTime'

-- Finally, return the configuration to wezterm:
return config

Sometimes, you might need to install the terminfo file for Wezterm for supporting all it’s new features:

cd ~
# Download latest terminfo from GitHub (check that URL exists)
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wez/wezterm/main/termwiz/data/wezterm.terminfo
# Compile and install it for your user
tic -x ~/wezterm.terminfo
# Now, you can remove the downloaded terminfo file
rm ~/wezterm.terminfo

It is installed as ~/.terminfo/w/wezterm

Refer my ~/.wezterm.lua config file and their Configuration page for more info

Shell prompt: Starship

Install Starship by following their install guide:
```
curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh
```

Add this line at the end in ~/.zshrc file:

# Initialize Starship prompt:
eval "$(starship init zsh)"

Create the ~/.config/starship.toml config file and paste following starter contents:

# Get editor completions based on the config schema
"$schema" = 'https://starship.rs/config-schema.json'

# Inserts a blank line between shell prompts
add_newline = true

# Replace the '❯' symbol in the prompt with '➜'
[character] # The name of the module we are configuring is 'character'
success_symbol = '[➜](bold green)' # The 'success_symbol' segment is being set to '➜' with the color 'bold green'

# Disable the package module, hiding it from the prompt completely
[package]
disabled = true

You can refer my starship.toml file and their Configuration page for more info

Useful CLI Utils

Package	Description
`fzf`	Fuzzy finder
`bat`	Colored `cat`
`eza`	Colored `ls`
`jq`	Pretty JSON
ripgrep (`rg`)	Regex `grep`
zoxide (`z`)	Smarter `cd`

Install those utils via your package manager:

# Fedora (dnf):
sudo dnf install -y fzf bat jq eza ripgrep zoxide
# Ubuntu (apt):
sudo apt install -y fzf bat jq eza ripgrep zoxide

Watch this video for a quick demo showcase 👇

More optional utils:

Fast, user-friendly find : fd
Multiple Runtime version manager : asdf
Run arbitrary commands on file change : entr
Midnight Commander, a visual file manager : mc