https:/.../clt25-11-deu-Pimp_your_shell_hd.mp4

Sound test?
[Translated by Tom Süßenbach (KYBS2001 course assignment at JYU.FI)]

Yeah, that sounds better.

That sounds better, good.

Who of you already uses a customized shell environment?

Maybe made a few adjustments to the prompt, maybe using ZSH,

Plug-in managers—those are the things I'd like to show you today.

Before I do that, a little
more about my

employer, B1 Systems.

I've been working for B1 for eleven years.

have also had contact with us.

B1 has been around for over 20 years now,
specializing in Linux and open source from the very beginning.

We have about 150 people now.
When I started 11 years ago,

we were still around 60.

So it's going pretty well, and we're
doing things like this, I always like to call,

the all-round happy package
everything around Linux in the data center.

From consulting to training to managed service operations.

As I said, I've been with B1 for, well, 10 years, now 11

years, working as a senior trainer and consultant.

The last few years, mainly
training, but recently

significantly more consulting, especially in the area of ​​security,

Automation and Kubernetes, a lot.

But that's not what we're talking about today, but rather
a bit of shell operation. Here again

a few key points. If you take a look around, we really have everything there.

from storage to virtualization,
config management. I'm also supposed to

do a bit of advertising
for our Linux Client Management, which

is the first product we've
released. a centralized

Management solution for Linux clients.

There's also a webinar, I think on April 8th.

That's April.

You can get more information about this
at our booth.

We'll also have a small raffle at our booth in 45 minutes.

Or not quite, in 40 minutes.

So if you're interested in
a plush Tux or an

Emser coffee mug or a Make subscription, feel free to stop by.

I'll make sure I finish on time so that

everyone can still come to our booth for the raffle.

Pimp Your Shell.

I've already seen that some people already have customized shell environments.

But let's start at the beginning.

Because such a nice terminal emulator as we use today

didn't always exist.

In the past, computers often didn't have their own displays or

keyboards, but rather had truly classic hardware terminals.

We see an example here, a VT100.

It was connected to the main computer
so that I could

operate it somehow and not just feed it with punch cards.

So it was a bit more convenient to
have a keyboard as an input option

and so that I could actually see something a screen.

These devices were
simply connected

So that I could even operate the computers
via a shell.

But then it was more or less
replaced by PCs, where I then

built the actual computer into boxes.

So now you work
with terminal emulators.

These are virtual devices that are
mapped in software.

You may be familiar with this if you
take a look around in the DevTree.

There I see DevTTY 0 to something.

I see my PTYs, i.e. my
virtual ones from the graphical interface.

If I start the GNOME Terminal, for example, I get

a corresponding virtual terminal,
which isn't a direct terminal.

So, the first graphical emulator
that existed was X-Term.

I could start it in my X server and then also had a corresponding option for issuing shell commands in my

graphical interface.

A few more examples are
listed here: the console, one could

also mention the GNOME Terminal,
and a few others that

I will also introduce again.

The Windows Terminal is, of course, also a terminal emulator.

or even iTerm from macOS.

So that's about terminals, now we're talking about shells.

This is the user interface of Unix-like operating systems.

Linux, BSD, and the like. It's used to execute commands.

On the one hand, there are built-in commands, shell build-ins, such as the

echo command to display something.

Or simply, I call
third-party programs, such as

for example, an editor, VI.

or I execute an IP command,

a Git clone, or whatever.

But shells can do a little more than just run programs.

Shells can also work with variables.

I can define variables in the shell and then reuse them later.

You might also be familiar with it from the
environment variables I have,

accessible via the ENDS command.

We can also take a quick look at what kind of
environment variables there are, but I can

of course, also define my own.

I can export them so that
they are then also available for other started

shells.

I can create linked conditions,
I can create simple if-then statements,

but I can also create loops,
so that things are simply executed

100 times.

A shell offers me such things
and I can, and this is important when

combining commands, use the output
of one command as input

for the next command.

This is done via the so-called pipe
or I redirect the output to a

file using output redirection.

The Born shell was used for a long time,
still found today

as BIN-SH on most systems
So the classic was eventually

replaced by Bash, and I've listed a few more here.

The Cornshell, Dash, which was standard in
Ubuntu for a while.

I don't even know if that's still the case.

I haven't had Ubuntu in my hands for a while.

ZSH or Phish as further examples.

I'll show one or two more again later.

Then we have the CLI, the command line interface, where I have

a line of text as input.

Which then executes the commands for me, interpreting them accordingly.

It's not just available as a shell,
but also in interpreted languages, for example.

For example, if I now call Python, I also have Python

An interactive way to enter it
via the command line.

In contrast, the graphical user interface, which then

I think Firefox or other graphical tools, my presentation tool here, which

is used, and of course
also graphical terminal emulators,

so I don't have to switch.

A quick recap of Shell history.

1941 was the first time, with the
Zuse Z3, that it was possible

to program computers using a keypad. Before that, it was really only possible

using appropriate circuitry.

The first real terminal that was
available was the Datapoint 3300, also known as

glass teleprinter. I could then
connect it and then control the connected

mainframe computers accordingly.

The first original Unix shell
was the Thomson shell.

And then a few years later, the Born shell came along.

was replaced primarily by Bash from 1987 onwards.

For a long time, it had simply been the default shell in many distributions.

Things are a little different these days.

Different distributions use
different default shells.

Then, yes, more history about the shell.

Shell History is a built-in function within the shell and

helps me to revisit commands that have already been executed.

How many commands are saved
is configurable via an

environment variable called HisSize. This
is usually set to 500 or 1000.

lines that are saved, which
I can then easily call up again.

I can also display the history
with the command History.

It then shows me all the commands
with a corresponding number.

When it was executed, it simply counts up.

And then I can directly execute the command again by entering
an exclamation mark followed by the

corresponding number.

Or even the last command entered
simply via the double exclamation mark

For example, if I forgot to
enter sudo before installing a package,

and then I'm not asked for the password somehow
via Polkit or something,

then I can simply
do, exclamation mark, exclamation mark

and then it will execute the last command. Run the command
again with sudo in front of it, ask me

for my sudo password, and
great, I can install the package.

And then we're talking about shell aliases. That's
the first thing I'd like to show you

again.

You may be familiar with this: the LL is often preconfigured in the

distribution, which then gives me a long listing, which allows me to

not only see the file names, but also the permissions,

the corresponding timestamps, the
number of hard links, and so on.

And I can configure these aliases very easily on the fly. I

simply enter "Alias," then I enter
the name for my alias and then

following the equal sign
the command I want to alias.

It's a very, very practical thing,
because especially complex, relatively long commands

like a Git checkout from
a specific branch or something like that.

tend to be a bit longer, and
of course, it's nicer if I can simply make it a bit shorter, and
I do that using an alias that I carry

5.000 / 5.000
920
I then create one—of course, I don't do this ad hoc, but I enter it

in my shell configuration file
in the etc-profile in the etc-bashrc in

the .bashrc in my home directory
or .zshrc, depending on

which shell I'm using

And these shell aliases are
a very, very nice thing.

This will allow me to make things shorter.

I'll show you soon, when I've updated my ZSH configuration with a few plugins, that there are often quite a few aliases involved.

Then there are shell functions.
So I can define things that I have

programmed in the shell as functions.

So that I can then call them like a normal external command.

Then I simply specify the name
of the function I have defined.

And then I can simply use it.

This function, which I listed here as an example, the prefix,

You'd better not run it.

What does the whole thing do at this point?

This defines a function,
those are the first three characters

called a colon.

So I define a function, and it's simply called colon.

Then the contents of the function appear in the curly braces.

And what does this function do?

It calls the command or function
colon and then pipes the

output to colon again.

That means I have an endless chain of ever-increasing

colon functions that are called
and at some point my

system simply crashes because the resources are exhausted.

I close the whole thing with
the semicolon, which is the end

of the function definition, and
then I call it at the end.

So if you enter that, it will only take a few seconds.

and your computer will be unusable.

Of course, that's not a great practical use case,

but that's how you saw it.

I don't have it here as a sticker for nothing, I think.

Okay, then shell plugins so that I don't have to do everything myself by hand.

Of course, I can also rely on functions and aliases

that people have already done and published.

For example, on GitHub.

And so that I can easily
reuse it, there are so-called

plug-in managers for the shell as well.

The most well-known, oh, my ZSH, that was
the first major plug-in manager.

And I still use it today. It has
some nice features, gives

me the ability to very, very easily
define a theme for my shell prompts.

and also gives me information about other plugins that I

can be easily activated, then nice
things come with it, like auto-completion

where you provide your own functions
or even a whole bunch of aliases

I work a lot with Kubernetes.

And all the kubectl commands, I might not want to

execute them forever, but I just do
something like that, then use my shortcut.

There are now also similar plugin managers for the
also widely used Bash and

Fish shells, and there are also similar plugin managers for a few
other shells.

And that brings us
a bit to the Beautiful Prompts.

I'll show you that in a moment.

So ein Share Prompt ist natürlich
konfigurierbar Häufig ist das

einfach User at Host und dann habe
ich da noch so ein Zeichen und dann

simply User at Host and then
I have another character there and then

geht mein eigentlicher Prompt los.
5.000 / 5.000
13:59,625 --> 00:14:02,265
A share prompt like this is, of course, configurable. Often, it's

my actual prompt starts.

So then I can type.

But I can also record further information with it.

For example, I can configure it so that the hostname is now

only displayed when I'm on a host via an SSH connection and

not displayed on my localhost, or when I'm somewhere via SSH, I can then color the whole thing red so that I know

I'm not on the current system.

I have to be a little careful when
I do a reboot, not to

restart any productive server all at once.

It actually happened to me once at a customer's, and it wasn't great.

I can also see additional information,
for example, the time or

even dynamic information,
for example, if I'm in a Git tree.

Then I can see which branch I'm on, where I stand with the upstream,

because I have any uncommitted stuff in there, am I ahead of

or behind the upstream, I can display all that stuff beautifully

and that via... Even with
graphical symbols so that I can have

a Git logo in there or I've also configured it in ZSH like this

so that I have the distribution logo at the beginning of the line, like a Fedora logo.

Or on the Mac, I have
a little apple next to it.

For Kubernetes, I can
create the Kubernetes logo

or, of course.

Put in a beautiful penguin.

In order for the shell to display such characters, I also need a

font that supports the whole thing.
These are the so-called nerd fonts.

There are a whole host of fonts,
which often also have all these

symbols in them, so that I can make my
Share prompt really colorful and

nicely decorated with symbols.

Are there a few themes for that too?

They preconfigure it for me
and customize it for me.

These are simply themes
from OhMyZSH, where I simply

found the names cool and the power level
10K, which I'm still using.

At least for me in the Z-Shell.

I'll also show you the Starship prompt, which I set up in

Bash.

It's very easy to install,
very easy to configure.

Then there are also a few newer shells that simply offer even more features

than classic Bash,
for example, extended file globbing,

things like inline tab completion,
auto-suggestions, and things like that.

As an example, I would like to use ZSH, which was

the first shell that was truly modern and offered an expanded range of

features.

Phish is a bit more suitable for beginners
because it simply

offers similar functionality to
Z-Shell, but is a bit

better preconfigured.

Or I've listed Elvish here, but I haven't used it myself yet.

It's also a relatively modern variant. There are also

a few specialized shells, for example, the Xon Shell as Python.

Shell, which is based on Python and is
ultimately a superset of Python.

So for those who program very, very extensively or almost

exclusively with Python, this might be an alternative. I don't work with Python that much myself,

so I haven't used it yet.

Then there's the NuShell, which also takes a slightly different approach.

For example, if I run a LS
or any other command

that has a relatively long output,

If I then only have a specific

information, some commands offer
appropriate options to filter out exactly

the information I want, other commands

cannot do that, and if I then only have a
specific information I want or

I want to reformat it, then I
quickly have to use

external tools like Grab or AWK, if

want to swap it around, then it quickly becomes complicated,
while the New Shell is a

A bit similar to PowerShell in terms of approach,
where I can also see the output

as objects individually can address.

And this is exactly the concept that NuShell follows, where I can then create selectors directly with Wear.

It's definitely quite exciting.

I've taken a quick look at it. For everyday use, it's probably not

yet for me, but it does offer
a few interesting features.

I also installed it and brought it along.

Or for SQL fans, Hoth Query, where I use SQL statements to

execute commands with my shell.

Also really exciting.

And then there are terminals. I'll show them now and then.

The classic, of course, is X-Term.

It's not really pretty, but it's
very, very functional and does what it's supposed to.

But there are also other terminals that
may be able to do a bit more,

that can also handle tabs,
like the GNOME Terminal

or Konsole, iTerm,
or even Thermos on Android.

If I want to have it as a dropdown,
there are also

solutions for Jaguarke, Guarke, or
Tilder, so that the shell then

simply opens dynamically via keystroke,
for example, F10 or F12,

usually drops down from the top.

It's quite practical because I don't have to
open a shell window,

but I basically always have it available behind
the keyboard shortcut.

Then there's multiplexing, which
I can then use to display multiple terminal windows

without having to
deal with the Sundays of Screen or

Temux.

But that's also possible, of course.

And more modern terminals like Alacrity or
Kitty, which I use myself, also offer such multiplexer functionalities
that I can very, very

easily divide my shell window
again.

I can arrange the shells in different layouts.

arrange them side by side without needing any additional tools.

for me, that's what the Kitty program does.

There's also the Warp Terminal,
which offers a bit of

built-in AI, with which I can then
also get suggestions. I

can actually ask questions.

Yes, how do I do that in Bash?

Which then talks to ChatGPT, I think, and looks up the answers for me.

Or relatively hyped, I am
I also came across it on
YouTube

GhostDeep. I want to bring the functionality of tools like Kitty

and it should be super fast.

I think I've installed it myself,
but haven't really tested it yet.

I'm very happy with Kitty.

And before we say thank you, let's go back

and open a bell.

I'll do that, slide 4.

We have a bell here.

Is it legible if I type something here now?

That's fine, right?

You've already seen when I do something like this here, it's actually

via the ZSH Auto Suggestions and the ZSH
Completion, which shows me directly here

First, the alias I assigned,
the K for kubectl, so that I don't always have to type it out,

but simply
K and then API Resources shows me

the API resources from Kubernetes
and then I search here

for the String Service Account.

Works pretty well so far, or something like that. If I now do a K

then we can also see here
the last directory I

created is called CLT 2025.

If I want to see a little more, I can also

look here using Control R and then I can see
here too what I have I

Because everything is listed here last,
I can search it wonderfully.

I think that's pretty sexy.

Then I can, for example,
look here for what

Brew has in it somehow.

We can see here that I also installed one or two things via Homebrew.

It just doesn't come directly from the Fedora package management.

We also see Fedora here, I'm
in my home directory.

I can also see how long the last command took.

I can then also do nice things
like... Like showing me whether

the last command was successful.

If I do something like that now, then we'll see, yes, it didn't find it.

That might not have been the best idea.

And I see the arrow is no longer green, it's red.

That also tells me directly that the last command was unsuccessful.

I can also configure it so that I can directly display the return value

of the last command.

If it's 0, everything's fine; if it's green, it's wonderful.

If it's red, then I might also want to know

what the return value is.

I wonder if that was an error in the shell because I mistyped the command, or if it's an error code from the command itself.

I can have things like that displayed.

I can have things like that displayed.

Here on the right side, I can also see which user I am and which host I'm on.

I see the current time.

These are all things like that, and
for me, they mostly come

from OMAZSH plugins.

And where did I configure them?

I have them in... Minus again

A1 to the point ZS HAC.

Maybe I should also tell them again what I

want to grepe for here, that's

Exactly, here we can see in Plugins
which plugins I have installed here.

I also had to reinstall a few things, for example

I think I had to install the autosuggestions later.

And we see, I have a few things here, for

Example of using Git.

I do a lot with Ansible, so I've installed something there too. I've installed

something for DNF. Because I'm on Fedora, which makes it a bit easier for me

so I don't have to run sudo dnf update or sudo dnf install

I don't have to do anything. I just say
dnfi and then I specify the package

I want to install.

So I'm bringing a few aliases with me that will make things a little easier for

me.

It brings a lot of aliases
with it, so I don't have to

complicatedly specify the brand
and what I'm doing with Git.

Then, of course, I have something for
kubectl.

OC is for OpenShift, and we'll see
a few other things

that I have in here.

FZF is a great tool for this.

For this, I need to have FZF installed as a fuzzy finder.

And that allows me to do things like this advanced reverse search,

that I configured, which I showed with CTRL-R, so that I

then get a direct list
with the things that I

displayed that were in there.

Likewise, the ZSH navigation tools
and the auto-suggestions, as well as

and the ZSH syntax highlighting.

You can also see it a bit,
if I enter a command here,

for example, mkdir, then
we see that it's a wonderful green.

As long as it's not a command it recognizes,
the whole thing is displayed in red.

and it's quite good. Nice, in any case.

The Colorize Output. That.

I definitely recommend anything
that starts with ZSH and FZF.

The Fark, I don't know
if you know it.

If I've entered a command incorrectly, I can say "Fark" and then

it will try to correct it for me.

There's also an auto mode.

That's just a gimmick.

I already said, I'm now
here in Kitty, and I said he

can multiplex, it's very easy
and I have a new shell here

inside, I can then also adjust the layout
accordingly here and, for example, place them side by side, it's very practical
I don't need Themux for that.

Okay, let's go back out and
then we can take another quick look at the Starship point.

in your line. It's very, very easy to configure, and I've

set it up in Bash.

So I'll just start a Bash
and we can see here, I'm on here

I chose Penguin because I couldn't find the Kubernetes logo

and then I see Default on Default, in
Default is of course, what is that?

This is my Kubernetes context. You
will then see which user I am in,

which cluster I am logged in to,
and which namespace I am in.

In this case, everything is now default.

Then I can also see here—I’ve expanded this a bit—

which shell I am in,
and what my username is.

If I now switch to a directory
where I...

have Git in there.

Let's take a look.

And then let's just take my Hyperlint Dots directory here.

We can also see which branch I'm in.

I can then also see the state of my
branch and ultimately whether I'm in it.

I think that simply means
there are things that have been marked.

We can take a look at that in the
config right now.

The Starship config is very, very simple and very,

very nicely modular.

And we can take a look at them too. We'll find them

under config starship-tommel.

Up here, I've enabled Kubernetes, which then also tells me

what format the whole thing should have.

This ensures that the
penguin is displayed, then my

Kubernetes user, my Kubernetes cluster,
and the Kubernetes context.

Then there's something for terraforming, and
then Shell and User, which shows me

which shell I'm in
and which user I'm logged in as.

and then the Git status stuff.

We see beautiful icons here,
but you can also customize them freely.

Okay, what else did we have?

I wanted to briefly show you the Nu Shell.

But I might have to
look it up myself again.

the syntax. I call it with Nu.

And now I have to
start it again very quickly.

I'm still here.

Oh God, oh God.

And then I can, for example,
do something like this: LS-Wear-Size over

10 megabytes and then Sort by Modified
without having to work with Grab and

Sort and any other shell tools.

Can I set such filters and sorting directly with NewShell?

And then get a completely different output than I'm used to from LS.

I can see it perfectly in the table here.

It's quite exciting. I haven't used it much myself yet, but I find it

very interesting, and I wanted to at least show it to you.

That's actually what I wanted to show you.

Do you have any questions?

Well, I also use a lot of aliases.

That's a Rust tool, a better LS.

But would that also work in this new shell, or is it a special

LS that's being referenced?

NewShell interprets
the output differently.

So it would also work with...
So would that work?

Yes.

Okay, that's what I wanted to know.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

Perhaps a brief
note on the New Shell.

Very closely resembles PowerShell.

And if you look at how it works internally, they have something like that

the... I'd say, typed pipelines.

Relatively exciting, if you talk a lot, I'd say, you could

even about object orientation, somewhere like that.

Very exciting when you move away from the
pure Bash, Shell, Dash environment

and a lot of, I'd say, intelligence into scripts like this

what we've just seen here.

The only disadvantage is,
very much on the power level

in terms of syntax.

Does Alias ​​somehow expand the command by default?

So, that I type LL and press Tab and the command

which I have set as alias [is auto completed]?
[Florian Winkler:] It depends, sometimes you have to

activate something for that. This is
how it is with Kubernetes.

Since the auto-completion for Kubernetes
works, where it then directly

requests the API, I also have to
turn it on again for the alias Completion

How do I turn it on?

It doesn't work for me.

I should also have that in the
ZSH-AC and

I'll pull that at the end, if I'm not very sad.

Okay, no, I don't seem to have that directly here.

The QCTL plugin does that for me.

Otherwise, I can
just quickly find it.

Let's take this one, just open
a new tab, k alias completion.

And there we see,
after I've defined the alias,

I still need the complete-f command, so that it
starts kubectl when I use the

alias. Then the built-in kubectl completion also works.

Okay, thanks.

Any further questions?

If not, thank you very much.

Then we'll all make it to the raffle.
[Translated by Tom Süßenbach (KYBS2001 course assignment at JYU.FI)]