Fish, short for Friendly Interactive Shell, is an easy to install and use shell for Unix systems. The shell comes with interesting features such as auto-completion suggestions. It has a lot of themes that you can switch among to make your shell look beautiful, with different colors and highlights. Other features include searchable history, smart search and web-based configurations.
Oh My Fish
OMF is a Fish shell utility that allows one to install themes, change shell look, install, remove, list and update packages. You need to have first installed fish shell on your system in order to configure Oh My Fish.
Install Fish Shell on Linux
Use the guide in the link below to install Fish Shell on Linux:
Fish Shell Usage
To begin using fish, just type the command fish and your terminal will switch to fish shell.
$ fishOr if you want to permanently use fish shell, run the below command:
chsh -s /usr/bin/fishInstalling Oh My Fish on Linux
On fish shell, run the below command to install Oh My Fish.
Requirements
- fish shell, version 2.2 or later
- git, version 1.9.5 or later
The command will download the installer script and begins installation.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish/master/bin/install | fishYou can also opt to first download the installer script and customize the install.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish/master/bin/install > install
fish install --path=~/.local/share/omf --config=~/.config/omfAnother option is to install Oh My Fish from Git with the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish
cd oh-my-fish
bin/install --offlineOr get from releases page and install offline
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish/master/bin/install > install
fish install --offline=omf.tar.gzFish Configuration Files
Once you install Fish shell and Oh My Fish, you should find the configuration files in /.config in home directory
⋊> cloudspinx@elearning ⋊> ~/.config ls -l
total 92
drwx------ 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 31 21:35 dconf/
drwx------ 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 31 18:09 eog/
drwx------ 3 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 18 15:26 evolution/
drwx------ 5 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:42 fish/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 3 Mar 18 15:27 gnome-initial-setup-done
drwx------ 3 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 30 09:48 gnome-session/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 27 Mar 18 15:27 GNOME-xdg-terminals.list
drwxr-xr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 18 15:26 goa-1.0/
drwx------ 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 31 09:42 gtk-3.0/
drwx------ 3 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 18 15:26 ibus/
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 31 18:59 kitty/
-rw------- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 1062 Mar 31 18:58 konsolerc
-rw------- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 43 Mar 31 18:58 konsolesshconfig
drwxr-xr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Mar 18 15:26 nautilus/
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:59 omf/
Using OMF
Oh My Fish comes with a utility, omf, that is used in installing, listing, updating and removing packages and themes. Examples:
# Update all packages and repositories
$ omf upate
Oh My Fish is up to date.
You are now using Oh My Fish version 7.
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master... Done!
default is already up-to-date.
# To update omf only
$ omf update omf
Oh My Fish is up to date.
You are now using Oh My Fish version 7.
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master...Done!
# List installed packages
$ omf list
Plugins
fish-spec omf
Themes
default
# List available themes
$ omf theme 10:37:34
Installed:
default
Available:
agnoster boxfish dangerous fishbone gnuykeaj krisleech nai plain sashimi spacefish uggedal
aight budspencer default fishface godfather l nelsonjchen pure scorphish sushi will
ays cbjohnson dmorrell fishy-drupal graystatus lambda neolambda pygmalion separation syl20bnr wolf-theme
barracuda chain doughsay fisk harleen lavender numist random shellder taktoa yimmy
batman clearance eclm flash idan lolfish ocean randomrussel simple-ass-prompt technopagan zeit
beloglazov cmorrell edan fox integral mars one redfish simplevi toaster zephyr
bira coffeeandcode eden gentoo jacaetevha mish pastfish red-snapper slacker tomita zish
bobthefish cor emoji-powerline gianu johanson mokou perryh rider slavic-cat trout
bongnoster cyan es gitstatus kawasaki mtahmed pie robbyrussell solarfish tweetjay
# Install theme, e.g ocean
$ omf install ocean 10:39:56
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master... Done!
Installing package ocean
✔ ocean successfully installed.
# Apply theme, e.g Ocean
$ omf theme ocean
# Install Plugins, e.g weather
$ omf install weather ~ 10ms
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master... Done!
Installing package weather
Installing package config
✔ config successfully installed.
Installing package spark
Submodule 'spark' (https://github.com/holman/spark) registered for path 'spark'
Cloning into '/home/lorna/.local/share/omf/pkg/spark/spark'...
Submodule path 'spark': checked out 'ab88ac6f8f33698f39ece2f109b1117ef39a68eb'
✔ spark successfully installed.
✔ weather successfully installed.
# plugin-git
$ omf install https://github.com/jhillyerd/plugin-git ~ 0ms
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master... Done!
Installing package git
✔ git successfully installed.
# fzf (fuzzy finder) plugin.
$ omf install https://github.com/jethrokuan/fzf ~ 1.018s
Updating https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master... Done!
Installing package fzf
✔ fzf successfully installed.
# manage omf repositories; obtained from omf install
$ omf repositories list ~ 2.58s
https://github.com/oh-my-fish/packages-main master
# Remove a package or theme
$ omf remove <package|theme name>
# Unistall Oh My Fish
$ omf destroyDotfiles
Fish and OMF configuration files contain the current state of Fish shell set up.
⋊> cloudspinx@elearning ⋊> ~ ls -l /home/cloudspinx/.config/ 12:03:11
drwx------ 5 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:42 fish
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:59 omfFor fish, you should get the following files:
⋊> cloudspinx@elearning ⋊> ~ ls -l /home/cloudspinx/.config/fish/ 12:08:13
total 20
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:42 completions/
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:59 conf.d/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 87 Apr 1 11:42 config.fish
-rw-r--r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 1310 Apr 1 11:42 fish_variables
drwxrwxr-x 2 cloudspinx cloudspinx 4096 Apr 1 11:42 functions/- Conf.d – individual configurations
- functions – custom functions
- fish_variables – custom variables
For omf you will find three files; themes, bundle and channel.
⋊> cloudspinx@elearning ⋊> ~ ls -l /home/cloudspinx/.config/omf/ 12:10:05
total 12
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 14 Apr 1 11:59 bundle
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 7 Apr 1 11:59 channel
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudspinx cloudspinx 8 Apr 1 11:59 theme- Theme – theme currently active
- Bundle – all installed packages and themes
- Channel – where OMF gets updates e.g stable
You can choose to create and customize the files to be used by Fish when it boots up. Fish reads from the configuration files for the currently applied settings.
- init.fish – Custom script sourced after shell start
- before.init.fish – Custom script sourced before shell start
- key_bindings.fish – Custom key bindings where you can use the bind command freely
Init.fish
The file contains startup commands for fish shell and the most used setting is variables. You can globally define your preferred variables as shown in the examples below:
# For Golang developers
set -xg GOPATH $HOME/gocode
# Python developers
set -xg PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE 1This has been a guide on how to install and configure Fish with Oh My Fish. Fish shell is quite interesting due to the various themes and plugins it supports. It provides you with a beautiful terminal and it is easy to use. It also has a web-based configuration that can enable you to easily customize it. Enjoy!
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