How I Use: Linux Shell

I use the terminal a lot. Here's how:

Summary

• I use Guake as my terminal
• I use zsh, probably installed through oh-my-zsh
• I use the ctrl-r keybind extremely frequently
• I use the home key to go to the start of the line
• I use ctrl + arrow key to skip across words

Guake

I use Guake as my terminal.

I press ctrl-gravekey to toggle the terminal.

I press ctrl-shift-tab to open a new terminal tab.

I press ctrl-shift-w to close the current terminal tab.

I press ctrl-pageup or ctrl-pagedown to move through terminal tabs.

The terminal is fixed to one monitor.

It is attached to the top of the screen.

It takes up about 80% of the vertical screen height.

It takes up about 80% of the horizontal screen width.

I use a fixed-position terminal so it is always accessible.

I never need to look for the terminal window.

The terminal takes focus immediately after toggling it open, so I can type in my terminal after pressing my keybind.

zsh

I use zsh, probably installed through oh-my-zsh, as my shell.

I press ctrl-r to search my command history. I highly recommend trying this.

I use !! to redo the previous command. As an example, I do sudo !! to run the previous command with sudo.

I press the home key to go to the start of the line.

I press the end key to go to the end of the line.

I press ctrl + arrow key to skip across words.

I have the following block in my .zshrc. It allows me to easily jump to my projects directory. It has tab completion, so I can type something like w seanw, which will get autocompleted to w seanwilson.ca:

export w="/home/sean/projects"
w () {
  cd "$w/$1"
}
_w () {
  _files -/ -W "$w"  
}
compdef _w w

I use zsh in this matter because it has nice colors out of the box (robbyrussell theme), shows indicators for the exit code of the previous command (green = success, red = failure), and shows the current git branch.

I have used zsh for so long now that I forget what is missing in other shells. I believe zsh has better tab-complete functionality too, especially for fuzzy cases or case-insensitive cases.

I have a zsh keybind bindkey -s '^T' 'tig status^M' so that I can press ctrl-shift-t to open tig. For more information, see How I Use: Tig for Git.

I have a zsh keybind bindkey -s '^q' '!!\n\n' so that I can press ctrl-q to re-run the last command. I use this very often when trying to exec into a docker-compose stack that is still booting.

I have a cowsay MOTD: fortune | cowsay -f beavis.zen | lolcat

 _______________________________________
/ You definitely intend to start living \
\ sometime soon.                        /
 ---------------------------------------
   \         __------~~-,
    \      ,'            ,
          /               \
         /                :
        |                  '
        |                  |
        |                  |
         |   _--           |
         _| =-.     .-.   ||
         o|/o/       _.   |
         /  ~          \ |
       (____@)  ___~    |
          |_===~~~.`    |
       _______.--~     |
       \________       |
                \      |
              __/-___-- -__
             /            _ \

I sometimes have a bigger cowsay MOTD: paste <(fortune | cowsay -f ren) <(fortune | cowsay -f stimpy) | pr -t -eexpr $(tput cols) / 2 | lolcat

 _________________________________________         ________________________________________
/ Live in a world of your own, but always \       / Compassion -- that's the one things no \
\ welcome visitors.                       /       | machine ever had. Maybe it's the one   |
 -----------------------------------------        | thing that keeps men ahead of them.    |
   \                                              |                                        |
    \                                             | -- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer",     |
    ____                                          \ stardate 4731.3                        /
   /# /_\_                                         ----------------------------------------
  |  |/o\o\                                         \     .    _  .    
  |  \\_/_/                                          \    |\_|/__/|    
 / |_   |                                                / / \/ \  \  
|  ||\_ ~|                                              /__|O||O|__ \ 
|  ||| \/                                              |/_ \_/\_/ _\ |  
|  |||_                                                | | (____) | ||  
 \//  |                                                \/\___/\__/  // 
  ||  |                                                (_/         ||
  ||_  \                                                |          ||
  \_|  o|                                               |          ||\   
  /\___/                                                 \        //_/  
 /  ||||__                                                \______//
    (___)_)                                              __ || __||
                                                        (____(____)