Shell & Environment

Updates & Config 2026-09-24

Shanios ships a fully configured terminal environment: Zsh as the default shell, with Bash and Fish configured the same way, a Starship prompt, fuzzy history and file search, modern replacements for ls/cat/find/grep, and matching Saturn colours across the prompt, tmux and editors. Your shell configuration lives in your home directory and persists across every OS update and rollback.

Default Shell Stack

Tool	Role
Zsh	Default login shell for all users
Starship	Prompt: user, directory, git, language toolchain, with exit code and duration on the right
McFly	Context-aware command history search on `Ctrl+R` (Zsh, Bash and Fish)
FZF	Fuzzy file finder on `Ctrl+T`, fuzzy `cd` on `Alt+C`, with previews
zoxide	`z <part-of-dir>` jumps to directories you visit often; `zi` picks interactively
eza	`ls`, `ll`, `la`, `lt` with icons, git status and colours
bat	`cat` with syntax highlighting; also colours `man` pages
fastfetch	System summary with the Shanios logo when a terminal opens
zsh-syntax-highlighting	Fish-style inline syntax colouring (Zsh only)
zsh-autosuggestions	Ghost-text suggestions from history; press → or End to accept (Zsh only)
zsh-history-substring-search	Up/Down search history for any part of what you've typed (Zsh only)

Zsh, Bash and Fish share one set of aliases, key bindings and tool integrations. The shared settings live in /usr/share/shani/shell/common.sh (Zsh and Bash) and /usr/share/shani/shell/shani.fish (Fish). Your own rc files (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, ~/.config/fish/config.fish) source them, so fixes to the defaults arrive with system updates while your own additions stay yours. To opt out completely, delete the source line from your rc file.

Terminal Emulator

The default terminal app differs by edition — all of them run the same shell stack above.

KDE Plasma: Konsole, pre-installed, with the Saturn colour scheme and a translucent blurred background. It launches the shell named by the shani.profile terminal profile (Command= under [General]), which ships as fish; change that key to use a different shell in Konsole/Yakuake. Note this is not the same as your login shell: chsh changes /etc/passwd, so it affects Konsole only while the profile inherits $SHELL, and a chsh-based expectation does not hold now that the shell is pinned. FiraMono Nerd Font is the system fixed-width font, shared by Konsole, Yakuake, Kate and every other KDE app (System Settings → Text & Fonts → Fixed width). Yakuake, a drop-down terminal, is also pre-installed: press F12 to toggle it from anywhere.
GNOME: GNOME Console, pre-installed.
COSMIC: COSMIC Terminal, pre-installed.

The prompt and ls icons are Nerd Font glyphs. Shanios ships FiraMono Nerd Font plus the Nerd Font symbols as a fallback for any monospace font. If you pick a different fixed-width font, choose a Nerd Font variant. Konsole (Qt) can't borrow the prompt's rounded separators from the fallback font.

Welcome Screen (fastfetch)

Every new terminal starts with a fastfetch summary: the Shanios logo, OS, kernel, package counts (pacman, Flatpak, Snap, Nix, Homebrew, AppImage), desktop and theme, plus hardware, memory and disk usage. It is skipped in terminals smaller than 105×20 (split panes, a short Yakuake), in pipes and in scripts.

touch ~/.config/shani/no-fastfetch   # turn it off (all shells)
rm ~/.config/shani/no-fastfetch      # turn it back on
fastfetch                            # run it any time

The system-wide layout is /etc/xdg/fastfetch/config.jsonc. To customise it, copy it to ~/.config/fastfetch/config.jsonc and edit the copy.

Changing Your Shell

chsh -s /bin/bash    # switch to Bash
chsh -s /bin/fish    # switch to Fish
chsh -s /bin/zsh     # switch back to Zsh (default)

Log out and back in for the change to take effect. This sets your login shell. On KDE Plasma, Konsole and Yakuake use the shell pinned in the shani.profile terminal profile instead, so update that profile's Command= under [General] as well if you want them to follow:

# ~/.local/share/konsole/shani.profile, [General]
# Command=/usr/bin/zsh
kwriteconfig6 --file ~/.local/share/konsole/shani.profile \
  --group General --key Command /usr/bin/zsh

Customising Zsh

micro ~/.zshrc    # add your own settings at the end, under "Your own additions"
exec zsh          # reload

Useful built-in keys:

Key	Action
`↑` / `↓`	Search history for what you've typed so far (any part of it)
`Ctrl+R`	McFly history search
`Ctrl+T` / `Alt+C`	FZF file picker / fuzzy `cd`
`Alt+S`	Put `sudo` in front of the current (or previous) command
`Ctrl+Z`	On an empty line, bring the suspended job back (`fg`)
`Ctrl+←` / `Ctrl+→`	Move by word
`Ctrl+Backspace` / `Ctrl+Delete`	Delete a word

History holds 50,000 entries with timestamps. It is shared live between open terminals, and commands typed with a leading space stay out of it.

Starship Prompt

The prompt is a two-line "pill" layout. The left side shows ♄ user, the directory (truncated at the repo root), and the git branch and status. It also shows the active toolchain for the project you're in: Python, Node, Rust, Go, Java, containers, Nix shells and more. The right side appears only when relevant: how long the last command took (over 2 seconds), its exit status when it failed, background jobs, cached sudo, low battery, and the hostname over SSH. You type on the second line after ❯.

micro ~/.config/starship.toml
starship explain      # what each part of the current prompt means

McFly History Search

McFly replaces Ctrl+R with a context-aware history search that learns which commands you run where. Everything runs on-device — no data leaves your system.

# Press Ctrl+R to open McFly
# Type to filter; Enter to run, Tab to edit first; Esc to cancel
ls ~/.local/share/mcfly/     # the history database

Shipped settings (in the shared shell files):

MCFLY_FUZZY=2                 # fuzzy matching
MCFLY_RESULTS=25              # results shown
MCFLY_INTERFACE_VIEW=BOTTOM   # results anchored at the bottom
MCFLY_RESULTS_SORT=LAST_RUN   # most recently run first

Override any of them by exporting the variable in your rc file before the source line.

FZF Integration

Keybinding	Action
`Ctrl+T`	Fuzzy file finder (uses `fd`, previews with `bat`) — inserts the path at the cursor
`Alt+C`	Fuzzy `cd` into any subdirectory (previews the tree with `eza`)
`**<Tab>`	Fuzzy completion in Zsh and Bash, e.g. `vim <Tab>`, `cd <Tab>`, `kill **<Tab>`

Ctrl+R is McFly in every shell, not FZF.

git branch | fzf | xargs git checkout   # fzf works in pipelines too

Pre-Installed CLI Tools

Aliases and helpers

Command	Runs
`ls` `ll` `la` `lt`	eza: list / long with git status / all / tree (2 levels)
`cat`	`bat` without paging or decorations (`command bat` for the full view)
`z <dir>` / `zi`	zoxide jump / interactive jump
`mkcd <dir>`	create a directory and `cd` into it
`backup <file>`	timestamped copy (`file.bak.20260924-101500`)
`hw`	hardware summary (`inxi`, serial numbers masked)
`jctl` / `sctl`	this boot's errors / failed system and user units
`ports`	listening ports and the processes behind them
`tldr <cmd>`	short, example-first help pages (downloaded on first use)

cp, mv and ln ask before overwriting in interactive shells. Aliases never apply inside scripts, so scripts behave normally.

rg "search term"           # ripgrep — fast recursive search, respects .gitignore
fd name                    # fd — fast find by name
plocate filename           # indexed filename search — see Storage

System monitoring

htop                       # classic process viewer
fastfetch                  # system summary
ncdu                       # interactive disk usage
df -h                      # mounted filesystems

Text processing and compression

echo '{"key": "value"}' | jq .
7z a archive.7z file.txt
tar -xvf archive.tar.zst     # tar auto-detects gz/xz/zst/bz2
unrar x archive.rar          # extraction only — RAR is proprietary

Git

System-wide defaults live in /etc/gitconfig; anything in your ~/.gitconfig overrides them.

delta is the pager: syntax-highlighted diffs with line numbers. Press n/N to jump between files.
Better merges and diffs: zdiff3 conflict style, the histogram diff algorithm, moved-line detection, and rerere to remember conflict resolutions.
New repositories start on main. git push sets up the upstream branch for you, and fetch prunes deleted branches.

Alias	Does
`git st`	short status with branch
`git lg`	coloured graph log
`git br`	branches with upstream and last commit
`git amend`	amend the last commit, same message
`git undo`	undo the last commit, keep the changes staged
`git unstage <file>`	unstage
`git wip`	commit everything as "WIP"
`git aliases`	list all aliases

Set your identity once: git config --global user.name "…" and git config --global user.email "…".

Tmux

Tmux is pre-installed and configured system-wide in /etc/tmux.conf, with a Saturn status bar, mouse support, true colour and a 50,000-line history. Put your own settings in ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf; they load after the system file, so they override it.

tmux new -s work              start a named session
Ctrl+B |    Ctrl+B -          split side-by-side / stacked (in the current directory)
Alt+←/→/↑/↓                   move between panes (no prefix needed)
Alt+1 … Alt+9                 switch windows (no prefix needed)
Ctrl+B h/j/k/l                move between panes, vim-style; H/J/K/L resize
Ctrl+B [   then v, y          copy mode: select, copy (reaches the desktop clipboard)
Ctrl+B S                      type into all panes at once (toggle)
Ctrl+B r                      reload the configuration
Ctrl+B d                      detach; `tmux attach -t work` to return

Editors

micro — the default $EDITOR/$VISUAL. Uses the Saturn colour scheme, Ctrl+S/Ctrl+Q/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V like a desktop editor, and restores the cursor position and undo history when you reopen a file.
nano — line numbers, mouse, syntax highlighting for 44 file types, and reopens files where you left off (~/.config/nano/nanorc).
vim — Vim's own defaults plus line numbers, mouse and persistent undo (~/.vimrc). "+y copies to the desktop clipboard through the terminal (OSC 52), because Arch's vim has no built-in X/Wayland clipboard.

Other Package Managers in the Shell

Shanios's root is read-only, so extra software comes from Nix, Flatpak, Snap, Distrobox or, optionally, Homebrew. The shared shell files make sure their commands are on your PATH in every terminal, not only in login shells. This matters most for Fish, which never reads /etc/profile.d:

Nix — ~/.nix-profile/bin (after your first nix-env -i) and the default profile.
Snap — /var/lib/snapd/snap/bin.
Flatpak — exported app commands in /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin and ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin.
Homebrew — picked up automatically once installed, with no brew shellenv line to add.
~/.local/bin — always first on PATH: distrobox-export --bin and tools like OpenCode install here.

Inside a Distrobox container, your home directory (and so your rc files) is shared with the host, but /usr is the container's. The rc files fall back to the host's copies under /run/host, so the same aliases, key bindings and Zsh plugins work inside containers. Tools that exist only on the host (Starship, eza, bat…) are skipped unless you install them in the container.

Shell Configuration Files

~/.zshrc                     — Zsh (options, completion, keys, plugins, your additions)
~/.bashrc                    — Bash (created from ~/.bashrc_shani at first desktop login)
~/.config/fish/config.fish   — Fish
~/.inputrc                   — readline keys for Bash, Python, sqlite and others
~/.config/starship.toml      — prompt
~/.config/micro/  ~/.config/nano/nanorc  ~/.vimrc   — editors
~/.config/bat/  ~/.config/eza/theme.yml  ~/.config/tealdeer/
~/.local/share/mcfly/        — McFly history database
~/.config/environment.d/     — session environment variables (Wayland/X)

/usr/share/shani/shell/      — shared shell defaults (updated with the OS)
/etc/gitconfig  /etc/tmux.conf  /etc/xdg/fastfetch/config.jsonc   — system defaults

Everything under ~ is in @home — never touched by OS updates or rollbacks. The files under /usr and /etc are the system defaults, updated with the OS. Override them from your home directory (~/.gitconfig, ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf, ~/.config/fastfetch/) rather than editing them in place.

Environment Variables

Shanios sets these system-wide defaults in /etc/environment.d/90-shani.conf, read by systemd user sessions (not just login shells). They therefore apply to sudoedit, visudo, crontab -e, systemctl edit and anything else that uses $EDITOR:

EDITOR=micro
VISUAL=micro
SYSTEMD_LESS=FRXMK      # systemctl/journalctl pager: colours, no wrapping

Override per user rather than editing the drop-in, which lives on the read-only root:

# Session environment (Wayland/X sessions)
# ~/.config/environment.d/my-vars.conf
EDITOR=nvim

# Shell only: in ~/.zshrc
export EDITOR=vim

Nix Package Manager

Nix is pre-installed on the dedicated @nix subvolume. Install CLI tools without root — they survive all OS updates and rollbacks, and appear on your PATH in every shell:

nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs
nix-channel --update

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.lazygit
nix-env -q          # list installed
nix-env -u '*'      # upgrade all