Customising Terminal on Ubuntu

I’ve been getting to know Ubuntu and wanted to share how I’ve been customising my terminal. I’ve taken the lead from a few articles and YouTube videos to come up with something I like.

I’m using the stock terminal that comes with Ubuntu.

Install zsh

sudo apt install zsh

If you don’t have Git installed you’ll get an error saying it needs to be installed first:

sudo apt install git

Install Oh My Zsh

Go to ohmyz.sh for the install command:

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

The installer will ask if you want to change your default shell from bash to zsh. I went ahead and said yes — I haven’t run into any issues with it.

Add the autosuggestions plugin

The zsh-autosuggestions plugin remembers your previous commands and shows a dim suggestion as you type — PowerShell users will recognise this from PSReadLine.

Clone the plugin into your Oh My Zsh custom plugins folder:

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

Then edit .zshrc to enable it. If you don’t have gedit installed yet (leave me alone Linux heads, I’m still working up to Vim…):

sudo apt install gedit
gedit ~/.zshrc

Find the plugins line near the bottom and add zsh-autosuggestions:

plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions)

Reload the config:

source ~/.zshrc

Test it by typing g — the previous gedit command should appear as a dim suggestion. Press the right arrow to accept it.

Install PowerLevel10k

You can browse built-in Oh My Zsh themes on the themes wiki, but the one I use is PowerLevel10k — it’s not in that list but it’s very popular and gives a rich, icon-heavy prompt similar to what I use in Windows Terminal.

Clone it into your Oh My Zsh custom themes folder:

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

Open .zshrc again and update the theme line (it’s around line 18):

ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"

Reload the config:

source ~/.zshrc

The PowerLevel10k configuration wizard will launch automatically on first load. It walks you through choosing your prompt style — just follow the prompts and it’ll generate a ~/.p10k.zsh config file with your choices. If you want to re-run the wizard at any time:

p10k configure