Installing Zsh on Windows 10

1. Activating "Windows for Linux Subsystem" feature

Run this script on powershell

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

Better to follow this guide https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 and make sure to use wsl 2. That will further help in vscode integration. This VS Code extension will be useful- "Remote - WSL" https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl

Restart your machine.

2. Install a Linux Distribution

Open Microsoft Store App, search for a disto and install it. I went with Ubuntu 20.04

3. Install Zsh

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install zsh
zsh

Proceed with the basic configuration of zsh If you have an existing .zshrc .profile .bashrc which you want to use then go to c:/Users/{name}/AppData/Local/Packages/{disto name}/LocalState/rootfs/home/{name} and then update those files and restart your terminal.

Adding github ssh keys to .profile so that I don't have to enter credentials everytime on push I usually set all the default starting script in the .profile file and then source it in .zshrc source ~/.profile

eval $(ssh-agent)
ssh-add ~/.ssh/githu

Make sure that only owner has the read permission to this file. set chmod 400 to the private public key files

4. Install Oh My Zsh!

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

You can also play around with the plugins available for zsh

5. Setup VS Code shell integration

Go to user settings.

Currently I was having bash installed

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe",

So replaced this with

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Users\\ayush.sharma\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\WindowsApps\\ubuntu.exe",

6. Install Node

Node for windows is fine but you will need to install it for your disto as well.

sudo apt-get install build-essential

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm" && (
  git clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git "$NVM_DIR"
  cd "$NVM_DIR"
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1)`
) && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"

Need to add this in the .profile or .zshrc wherever you are keeping the default startup commands

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

You may also look at nvm docs for installation instructions.

- Ayush 🙂