How to Make Linux Terminal look Awesome

Last Updated : 27 Jun, 2022

In this article, we will install and configure some themes and plugins to tweak our Linux terminal for better productivity and a fancier look. These features include autocompletion, autosuggestion, command-line search, syntax highlighting, and better support for git and environment managers.

Zsh

The Z-shell or Zsh is a UNIX shell with support for various plugins and themes.

sudo apt install zsh      [ Debian/Ubuntu ]
sudo yum install zsh      [ RedHat/CentOS ]
sudo pacman -S zsh        [ Arch/Manjaro ]
sudo dnf install zsh      [ Fedora ]
sudo zypper install zsh   [ OpenSUSE ]

Oh My Zsh

It is an open-source and community-driven framework for managing Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, plugins, themes, and much more.

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

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

Nerd Fonts

Nerd Fonts is a project to create patched fonts. Nerd Fonts takes popular programming fonts and patches them with a large number of glyphs (icons).

Download hack font and install it by double-clicking on the .tff file. You can also use any other font but make sure it supports all the icons and glyphs required by powerlevel10k.
Select Hack Font as the default font.

Powerlevel10k

Powerlevel10k is a theme for Zsh. It changes normal shell commands to colorful commands and emphasizes speed, flexibility, and out-of-the-box experience.

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

An installation prompt will begin by default, but if it doesn’t run.

$ p10k configure

Change the default theme to ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k" inside ~/.zshrc.
Commit the changes by running

$ source ~/.zshr

zsh-autosuggestions

Real-time type-ahead completion for Zsh. Asynchronous find-as-you-type autocompletion.

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

Add zsh-autocomplete to the list of plugins inside ~/.zshrc plugins=( [plugins...])
Commit the changes by running source ~/.zshrc

zsh-syntaxhighlighting

zsh-syntax-highlighting provides syntax highlighting for the shell zsh. It enables highlighting commands whilst they are typed at a zsh prompt into an interactive terminal. This helps review commands before running them, particularly in catching syntax errors.

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Add zsh-syntax-highlighting to the list of plugins inside ~/.zshrc plugins=( [plugins...])
Commit the changes by running source ~/.zshrc

diff-so-fancy

It is a tool that converts the output of diff utility into a more human-readable form. It improves the development speed by providing a simpler way to compare recent changes. With diff-so-fancy, one can focus on the code quality instead of figuring out what all the + and - mean?

$ npm i -g diff-so-fancy

To integrate diff-so-fancy with git.

$ git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"

$ git config --global interactive.diffFilter "diff-so-fancy --patch"

$ git config --global color.ui true

Now, we can simply use the git diff command to view recent changes.

$ git diff

bat

bat is a supercharged version of the native cat command. It includes features like syntax highlighting, git integration, automatic paging, and much more.

sudo apt install bat      [ Debian/Ubuntu ]
sudo yum install bat      [ RedHat/CentOS ]
sudo pacman -S bat        [ Arch/Manjaro ]
sudo dnf install bat      [ Fedora ]
sudo zypper install bat   [Image Widget OpenSUSE ]

Viewing the content of a file with first cat and then with bat.

fzf

It’s an interactive Unix filter for command-line that can be used with any list; files, command history, processes, hostnames, bookmarks, git commits, etc.