Get PowerLevel9k — The Most Cool Linux Shell EVER!

“What’s your Shell” is the top asked question I got on my YouTube channel, followed by “Can you please demo how to set it up?” It was so frequently requested, that at some point I simply stopped using it, to skip the question!

So after 2 years, I got un-lazy, and tried to make a demo, which isn’t really good ..like all my videos anyway :)

PowerLevel9k has insane crazy configuration, so the point was mostly like “hey, there is this Shell, isn’t really hard to set it up!”, rather to show features!

PROJECTS LINKS I USED

1. https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
2. https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k
3. https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts
4. http://bluejamesbond.github.io/CharacterMap/

This story, actually follows the video!

Install ZSH!

PowerLevel9k is a prompt theme for ZSH, so we need that first!

>_ sudo dnf install zsh

After that, we normally want to set ZSH as our default Shell, with

>_ chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh #SKIP THAT!

But we don’t really need it, since Oh-My-ZSH will do it anyway!

Install Oh-My-ZSH!

Hey, I will give the commands just for reference, but please don’t copy them! Follow the documentation on original project pages!

>_ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Oh-My-Zsh on Github

This will do three things

1. It will write on $HOME/.zshrc
2. It will set ZSH as default Shell
3. It will create $HOME/.oh-my-zsh directory that contains OMZ scripts and plugins!

Note that OMZ will ask you for auto-updates every while, so you dont really to worry about that! Also you can force to check for updates by

>_ upgrade_oh_my_zsh

Install PowerLevel9k!

Then it’s time to install PowerLevel9k using the OMZ way!

>_ git clone https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k.git ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/themes/powerlevel9k
PowerLevel9k on Github

Then we set it on $HOME/.zshrc. Open a text editor and set:

ZSH_THEME="powerlevel9k/powerlevel9k"

Install Nerd Fonts!

PowerLevel9k accepts lots of fonts, but Nerds are the most complete set with lots of glyphs! Get whatever font you like, but on the video above I picked Hack

Install them with GNOME Fonts App, that basically moves them on $HOME/.local/share/fonts , pick them on Tilix, and on .zshrc add:

POWERLEVEL9K_MODE="nerdfont-complete"

Customize the Prompt a Bit!

PowerLevel9k has crazy customization options, so you need to check on their wiki, but for the video I went just with:

POWERLEVEL9K_DISABLE_RPROMPT=true
POWERLEVEL9K_PROMPT_ON_NEWLINE=true
POWERLEVEL9K_MULTILINE_LAST_PROMPT_PREFIX="▶ "
POWERLEVEL9K_MULTILINE_FIRST_PROMPT_PREFIX=""

Which is very explanatory, what each option does!

A Hint!

To see fonts glyphs and Unicodes this is a very nice webApp! Im using it on video at 5:04

Create a Custom Segment!

PowerLevel9k has an insane lots out of box segments, but if we want to add a custom one, in this case just our distro logo we can do

POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_FEDORA_ICON="echo <unicode logo icon> "
POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_FEDORA_ICON_BACKGROUND=069
POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_FEDORA_ICON_FOREGROUND=015

And then add the segment on the prompt

POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(custom_fedora_icon context dir vcs)

$CONTEXT displays username/hostname

$DIR displays the current working directory, that we can even trim path if we want!

$VCS displays the Git status in case we are inside a Git repository

For the context there are segments like {battery, background_jobs, ip and lots more}

To check for available colors (background/foreground)

>_ for code ({000..255}) print -P -- "$code: %F{$code}This is how your text would look like%f"

We can colorize any segment we want, and we can even override any icons we want! anyway, check on their Github!