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Jin Li

oh-my-zsh Shell and Neovim Configuration for Commandline Users

·992 words·5 mins
Software Oh-My-Zsh Commandline
Jin Li
Author
Jin Li
Fate lies within the lightcone.
Table of Contents

Shell Configuration
#

Configurations for Linux shell and Neovim

Linux Shell Configuration
#

Shell Appearence

Features
#

Notice
#

The powerlevel10k theme is no longer maintained as of May 2024, but it should still work fine. The author, romkatv, believes that powerlevel10k is mature and feature-complete. Most issues are either personalized requests or involve underlying changes that are unnecessary for 99% of users. If you are not in that 99%, you need to be able to modify the code to meet your needs. Therefore, romkatv has decided to stop maintaining the powerlevel10k theme. Here are the relevant discussions:

This post is now deprecated as the primary installation guide. The P10k-based configuration is kept here for reference, but new installations should use the successor post and its Oh My Posh-based configuration. The new setup uses one theme across Zsh and PowerShell and separates shared configuration from machine-local settings.

If you still need the legacy P10k setup, continue with the instructions below. Otherwise, follow the Oh My Posh migration guide.

Other alternatives include:

  • starship: A cross-platform command line prompt that supports various shells. Compared to powerlevel10k, starship is easier to configure.
  • oh-my-posh: A cross-platform command line prompt that was originally designed for PowerShell but now supports various shells, including zsh. oh-my-posh is also easy to configure.

Install
#

Method 1: Use Installation Script (Recommend)
#

  1. Download the installation script:

    1

    curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jin-li/ShellConfig/main/install_OhMyZsh_p10k.sh -o install_OhMyZsh_p10k.sh

  2. Run the script:

    Do NOT run it in root NOR using sudo, just run it as a normal user. When it prompts for password, then enter the root or sudo password.

    1
2

    chmod +x install_OhMyZsh_p10k.sh
./install_OhMyZsh_p10k.sh

Method 2: Manual Install
#

  1. Install Meslo Nerd Font

    Download these four ttf files:

    Double-click on each file and click “Install”. This will make MesloLGS NF font available to all applications on your system.

    For setting up the font in the preference of the terminals, please refer to p10k Font.

  2. Install zsh

    • Ubuntu, Debian & derivatives

      1. Update apt sources

        1

        sudo apt update

      2. Install prerequisite tools (git, wget, python3, pip3)

        1

        sudo apt install wget git python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools

      3. Install zsh

        1

        sudo apt install zsh

    • Arch Linux or Manjaro

      1

      sudo pacman -S zsh

    • Fedora

      1

      sudo dnf install zsh

  3. Install oh-my-zsh via wget

    1

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

  4. Install powerlevel10k

    1

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

  5. Install plugins and tools

    • zsh-autosuggestions
      1

      git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
    • fast-syntax-highlighting
      1

      git clone https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting

  6. Download configuration files and link to home directory

    1. Download ShellConfig from GitHub
      1
2
3

      mkdir -p ~/Documents/GitHub
cd ~/Documents/GitHub
git clone https://github.com/jin-li/ShellConfig.git
    2. Backup old configuration files
      1
2

      mv ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc_bak
mv ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc_bak
    3. Link configuration files to home directory
      1
2
3

      ln ~/Documents/GitHub/ShellConfig/.bashrc ~/.bashrc
ln ~/Documents/GitHub/ShellConfig/.zshrc ~/.zshrc
ln ~/Documents/GitHub/ShellConfig/.p10k.zsh ~/.p10k.zsh

  7. Restart terminal

Vim Configuration
#

Vim Appearance

Motivation
#

I migrated from vim to Neovim because of the better performance and more features.

LazyVim is a starter-friendly configuration for Neovim with the commonly used plugins. It is easy to install and use.

Method 1: Use Installation Script (Recommend)
#

  1. Download the installation script:

    1

    curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jin-li/ShellConfig/main/install_LazyVim.sh -o install_LazyVim.sh

  2. Run the script:

    1
2

    chmod +x install_LazyVim.sh
./install_LazyVim.sh

Method 2: Manual Install
#

  1. Remove vim-tiny or vim-minimal

    The default vim in Debian OS is vim-tiny (in Fedora is vim-minimal), which does not support the plugins. Use following command to check your vim version first before using this configuration.

    1

    vi --version

    If there is “Small version without GUI” in the output, it means your vim is vim-tiny or vim-minimal. You can remove it:

    • Debian / Ubuntu
      1

      sudo apt remove vim-tiny
    • Fedora
      1

      sudo dnf remove vim-minimal

  2. Install Neovim

    Then install Neovim.

    • Debian / Ubuntu

      Since LazyVim requires Neovim 0.8 or later, in Ubuntu 22.04, the neovim version is 0.6.1. Therefore, We need to install the newer version of neovim from the official website.

      1. Download the pre-built binaries of Neovim from the official website
        1

        curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/latest/download/nvim-linux64.tar.gz
      2. Extract the downloaded file
        1

        sudo tar -C /opt -xzf nvim-linux64.tar.gz
        This will install Neovim to /opt/nvim-linux64 directory.
      3. Create a symbolic link to the Neovim executable
        1

        sudo ln -s /opt/nvim-linux64/bin/nvim /usr/bin/nvim

    • Fedora

      In Fedora 40, the Neovim version is 0.9.5, which is new enough to use LazyVim. So we can install it using dnf directly.

      1

      sudo dnf install neovim

  3. Install LazyVim

    Refer to the official website, we can install LazyVim using the following command:

    1. Install LazyVim

      1

      git clone https://github.com/LazyVim/starter ~/.config/nvim

    2. Remove the .git folder, so you can add it to your own repo later

      1

      rm -rf ~/.config/nvim/.git

    3. First time run nvim will install the plugins automatically. It may take a while to finish.

      1

      nvim

Replace macOS Terminal
#

After installing LazyVim, I found that the display effect of LazyVim in macOS Terminal is very poor, with dim colors and low contrast:

LazyVim in macOS Terminal

The reason is that the macOS Terminal’s color scheme does not support 256 true colors, while LazyVim defaults to a 256-color color scheme. I heard that iTerm2 supports 256 true colors, so I decided to migrate from the macOS built-in terminal to iTerm2. After installing iTerm2, you need to set iTerm2 to use the Meslo Nerd font you downloaded and installed earlier. Then open LazyVim in iTerm2, it looks much better now:

LazyVim in iTerm2

Issues
#

On Fedora 42, after running the above script, when opening nvim, the nvim interface shows the following error:

1

No C compiler found! "cc", "gcc", "clang", "cl", "zig" are not executable.

It’s because some plugins in LazyVim need to be compiled, but there is no C compiler installed on the system. You can install a C compiler, such as gcc or clang, to resolve this issue. For me, I installed zig, which is a lightweight compiler, also supports C:

1

sudo dnf install zig

After installing zig, restart nvim, and the error should be resolved.