Shell Bling Ubuntu

A few shell scripts to get us some command-line niceties, for a fresh new Ubuntu installation.

• Quickstart
• FAQ
  • What does it come with?
  • Can I run this on a live USB?
  • Does this work on Ubuntu Server?

📹 Video - silent install, 2023.12.06

output-fast.webm

The above is 10x to give a feel for how the commands work, it usually takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Normal-speed video: https://youtu.be/Nhf2YqibBqk?si=3AMowDq1fumrCmP-

Quickstart

From a brand spanking fresh new install of Ubuntu VM!

(optional) Bless your efforts

Before you begin whatever you're doing, take a deep breath, and say

*Satellite from days of old, lead me to your access code.*

Get the bling

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y curl   # well it can't all be in a script!
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu/main/shell-bling-sudo.bash | sudo bash

Close your terminal, and use Ctrl+Alt+T. This time you should open into the Kitty terminal emulator, not the stock Ubuntu one.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu/main/shell-bling-user.bash | bash

chsh -s $(which fish)

Close and reopen your terminal again.

# ⚠️ This will ask you DYNAMICALLY to pick your text editor.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu/main/shell-bling.fish | fish

Close and reopen your terminal one more time.

Then run nvim. You should see it pop up with all the neat little icons.

(optional) Add Copilot to Neovim

LazyVim was the only Neovim setup that had instructions for integrating it with Github Copilot last I checked, and now it's even easier to install.

1. Hit e to bring up "Lazy Extras". (It might also be x on your machine, look at the screen!)
2. Go to coding.copilot and hit x to install it. Then :quit Neovim and restart it.
3. Finally, run :Copilot auth to start the authentication process.

FAQ

What does it come with?

Look in the scripts and see for yourself! But here's a quick one-line explanation of everything in here so far, and why you might find it useful:

The Holy Trinity

• fzf: Fuzzy search anything. The best thing since sliced bread. I love fzf so much I have a whole blog post about it!
  • Before you ask, yes, this comes with the keybindings too! Ctrl+R search in fish and Alt-C should work out of the box.
• fd: Fastest find in the West. A simple, fast, and user-friendly alternative to the classic "find" command.
  • Works exceptionally well with fzf to find that specific file, whose name you know but just can't pin down, 7 or 8 subdirectories deep!
  • ⚠️ Note that we do symlink this to the fd command, which you have to do as an extra step on Ubuntu. (Otherwise it's just linked as fdfind, and really, who's going to go to the effort of typing two more letters just to use something better than find?)
• ripgrep: Fastest grep in the West. A line-oriented search tool that recursively searches your current directory for a regex pattern, faster than most other tools.
  • Works exceptionally well with fzf to find that specific line, in that specific file, 7 or 8 subdirectories deep!
  • ⚠️ Note that it is called rg at the command line, as in grep whatever == rg whatever. Not ripgrep whatever!

Shells and Terminal Utilities

• fish: The nicest out-of-the-box shell I've ever used. Gives you autocomplete, in-shell highlighting, the works!
• starship: A minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell! Shows the info you need while staying sleek and minimal. I like it especially because it works with bash, fish, PowerShell, elvish, you name it!
• tmux: A terminal multiplexer. Lets you work with multiple terminal sessions in one window and long-running, detachable SSH sessions, if, like me, you sometimes just want to remote into a machine once every 2 weeks for 6 months at a time without losing your place.
• kitty: A fast, feature-rich, GPU-based terminal emulator. (And the best one I know of which supports ligatures!)
  • And to get those ligatures, we set Kitty up to use Fira Code by default everywhere!
• xclip: A command-line interface to the X11 clipboard, allowing you to copy and paste between the terminal and GUI apps by piping to it. Comes in handy way too often for me to live without!

Help Text ... Helpers

• tldr: Simplified and community-driven man pages. It offers quick references to common command-line tasks.
• cheat: Allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.

File and Directory Utilities

• zoxide: A smarter cd that learns your habits and preferences over time!
• lsd: A modern version of the ls command with a lot of improvements such as color support, icons, and more.
• tree: Displays directories as trees (with optional color and HTML output). I'm just always surprised this isn't installed by default!

Text Editors and Viewers

• bat: cat but with syntax highlighting. I'm entirely serious, it's a big improvement!
• micro: Finally, a command-line editor for non-Vimmers! A modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor, similar to (but much nicer than!) the default nano.
• vim: The OG. An advanced text editor that's been around for decades, allowing efficient text editing with keyboard shortcuts.
• neovim: A modern refactor of Vim, which has since spawned its own huge community.
  • ⚠️ This installs the latest unstable Neovim version, not the woefully out-of-date one that comes by default with Ubuntu. We need this because we also install...
    • LazyVim, the only "full-featured" Neovim setup that actually has instructions on how to install Copilot. (It's possible in all of them, but actually being documented was what won me over!)
• helix: Post-modern, zero-config. A terminal-based text editor that's actually modern and intuitive, with a focus on speed and minimalism.

Development and Coding Tools

• git: The GOAT. The most widely used distributed VCS on the planet. Always surprised this doesn't come pre-installed!
  • git-delta: Never get confused by git diff again! A viewer for git and diff output with syntax highlighting and line numbers.
• entr: Run $COMMAND when $FILE changes. Crazy useful for setting up quick little auto-compiling/testing loops during development, especially if you're using tmux or kitty's tabs.

Data Manipulation and Viewing

• jq: A lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor. A must-have for parsing and manipulating JSON data.
• gron: Make JSON greppable! by transforming it into discrete, greppable assignments. Pairs surprisingly nicely with jq if you use it to figure out what to actually write in jq.
• csvkit: Your CSV scalpels, because we all know what file format the business world really runs on. (Plenty of other great options here! xsv, miller, and csv-to-sqlite to name a few! I chose this just because I like having separate commands for csvjoin, csvcut, etc.)

System Monitoring and Search

• htop: An interactive process viewer, providing a real-time, color-coded overview of running processes.
• lnav: An advanced log file viewer for the small-scale. It helps you navigate through your log files, and it can automatically identify and color-highlight different log file structures.
• bottom: CPU usage graphs? In my terminal? It's more likely than you think.

Things Other Things Here Need To Work Right

• curl: A command-line tool for getting or sending data using URL syntax. It supports multiple protocols, making it a go-to for many web operations. Needed to, well, curl the scripts here.
• gcc: The GNU Compiler Collection, providing compilers for various programming languages. Needed for some of the stuff LazyVim installs.
• make: A utility that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code. Needed for one of the packages LazyVim installs.
• g++: The GNU C++ compiler. It's an essential tool for compiling C++ code. Needed for some of the stuff LazyVim installs.
• nodejs: A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Essential for a variety of JavaScript tasks and development workflows. Needed for LazyVim's Copilot server.

If I've forgotten anything, let me know!

Can I run this on a live USB?

I don't recommend it; for some reason, every time I've tried these on a Live USB in a VM with 8 GB of RAM allocated to it, the VM shuts down mysteriously. Running watch free -h hasn't revealed to me any obvious out of RAM error, so I'm stumped! Can you help me debug this mysterious issue?

Does this work on Ubuntu Server?

Yes! Here's a Raspberry Pi SSH connection (using kitty +kitten ssh for true convenience) running Ubuntu Server 23.10. I had no issues at all installing it:

Where else does this work?

Here's a list of places your humble author has ran these scripts and found them to work unaltered:

• Laravel's Homestead VM.