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Pop!_OS Terminal Improvements Guide

January 202614 min read

Supercharge your Pop!_OS terminal with lsd, fzf, starship, and more. Also includes a guide to uv, the lightning-fast Python package manager.

Better File Listings with lsd

sudo apt update && sudo apt install lsd -y

# Add aliases to ~/.zshrc
alias ls="lsd"
alias ll="lsd -lh"
alias la="lsd -lAh"
alias lt="lsd --tree"
alias l="lsd -lah"

🧭 Navigation Aliases

# Navigation aliases
alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."

# Quick directory jumps
alias ~="cd ~"

# List after changing directory
cd() { builtin cd "$@" && lsd; }

# Create and enter directory
mkcd() { mkdir -p "$1" && cd "$1"; }

🎨 Visual Improvements

1. Starship Prompt

curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh
echo 'eval "$(starship init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

2. Zsh Plugins

# Syntax Highlighting
sudo apt install zsh-syntax-highlighting

# Auto-suggestions
sudo apt install zsh-autosuggestions

🔍 Search & Navigation

Fuzzy Finder (fzf) & Zoxide

sudo apt install fzf
curl -sS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide/main/install.sh | bash
echo 'eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

UV - Fast Python Package Manager

UV is a drop-in replacement for pip that is 10-100x faster.

# Install UV
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Basic UV Shortcuts (add to .zshrc)
alias uvi="uv pip install"
alias uvr="uv pip uninstall"
alias uvl="uv pip list"
alias venv="uv venv"
alias va="source .venv/bin/activate"

# Quick Project Setup
uvproject() {
    mkdir -p "$1" && cd "$1"
    uv venv
    source .venv/bin/activate
}

Performance

# pip install pandas (old way) -> ~ 10-30 seconds
# uv pip install pandas (UV way) -> ~ 1-3 seconds