The Zsh is a Unix shell, which has been developed since 1990. Especially by the extensions you can install via the Oh My Zsh framework, the work in the termial is greatly simplified.

This article describes step by step how to install the Zsh including the Oh My Zsh framework.

  • The following packages need to be installed on your system:

    • zsh - the Z shell.

    • curl - tool used to download installation files for Oh My Zsh (there is an alternative way using wget).

    • git - source control management tool used internally by Oh My Zsh to update itself.

  • To check if the packages are installed, run dpkg-query -l zsh curl git (also see https://stackoverflow.com/a/1298103)

  • Install zsh, curl and git by running

    sudo apt-get install zsh curl git

  • Follow the installation instructions on the GitHub page of Oh My Zsh. Currently it is running the following command:

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

  • During the installation, Zsh is set to be your default login shell. Thus, manually running chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh is not necessary.

  • Logout and login.

  • DONE

  • Now you can change the settings in the file ~/.zshrc.

    • There should be already several examples in the file ~/.zshrc (also see the .zshrc template on GitHub).

    • Example: for using the zsh-theme bira add ZSH_THEME="bira".