Ars Technica invites community to submit custom terminal configurations and CLI tweaks
The feature request highlights a specific workflow involving the fish shell on macOS and bash on Linux, alongside custom fonts and editor plugins
Ars Technica has launched a feature request inviting readers to submit their customised terminal shells, command-line interfaces, and related software tweaks for a potential community showcase. The article, titled "Ars Asks: Share your shell and show us your tricked-out terminals!", details the author's personal setup while soliciting contributions from the wider tech community.
The publication seeks submissions ranging from simple neofetch login splashes to fully custom terminal emulators. The author recounts a migration from a Windows-based workflow to a Unix environment in 2007, driven by professional necessity to administer EMC Celerra NSX appliances via bash scripts and dissatisfaction with the performance of Windows Vista.
Currently, the author utilises the fish shell on macOS and bash on Linux. Specific customisations highlighted include the use of the Monaspace Neon font and the Terminal.app application on macOS, despite testing alternatives such as Ghostty, iTerm2, and Warp. On Linux systems, the author employs Vim with the Airline and Promptline plugins, alongside a .bashrc function that timestamps commands and appends exit status indicators to the prompt.
The piece also references the use of the GRC tool to add syntax highlighting to standard CLI tools. The author notes that while modern shells like zsh exist, they remain committed to their current configuration due to personal preference and the inertia of a long-standing workflow.
Ars Technica explicitly invites the community to contribute their own configurations, reflecting a broader sysadmin culture that values precise text-based interaction over graphical user interfaces. The publication plans to promote the best submissions below the article for everyone to see.
