Why use oh my zsh, what advantages does it offer over other shells? Zsh is a shell, like bash, tcsh or csh. It has lots of features though, and some nice options:

Why use oh my zsh?

1. Syntax highlighting

When you enter code in the terminal, it will highlight it and show simple errors (e.g., if you try to move a file into itself).

2. A nice completion system

If you’re typing an ambiguous command (e.g., if I type “l” then press TAB), it will list all the commands that might exist with that letter in them (like “ls”, “less”, and “locate”). It also tries to predict what you want by using commands from your current working directory (“cd ..

3. Plugins

Pretty much, oh my zsh has plugins for everything. It even has one that helps out if you like to use vim for all your text editing needs.

4. Themes

You can choose from a plethora of available themes and change whenever you like, read more here.

How to install oh my zsh

You can install oh my zsh in two ways

1) Using wget

Open the terminal and type the following

sh -c "$(wget https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"

2) Using curl

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Follow the instructions that will be presented to you during installation.

That’s it!

Here’s a screenshot of what the version is like for me, the version may differ on yours.

Read documentation from the official oh my zsh site here.

Read about 12 beginner coder tips here.