An very easy and safe way to change template's default shell from bash to zsh for root and user

Original forum link

https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/36940

Original poster

quer

Created at

2025-10-24 20:43:42

Last wiki edit

2025-10-24 20:54:20

Revisions

1 revision

Posts count

4

Likes count

7

Tags

configuration, template, version-r42, version-r43

Bash lacks support for autosuggestions and syntax highlighting.Fish is great, but its incompatibility with Bash syntax leads to some compatibility issues.Zsh is the only option left.

The whonix template come with a default zsh config and it work in other distro too.So you don't have to install OhMyZsh or anything else in your template.

1. apt install zsh-autosuggestions zsh-common zsh or dnf install zsh zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting
2. cd to /etc/zsh/ in whonix-gateway template and delete /etc/zsh/zshrc and /etc/zsh/zprofile otherwise copy to other vm wil fail.
3. Copy /etc/zsh/ from whonix-gateway template to fedora/debiantemplete and replace the original /etc/zsh if exists.
4. In debian, run

   ln -s /etc/zsh/zprofile.dist /etc/zsh/zprofile
   ln -s /etc/zsh/zshrc.dist /etc/zsh/zshrc
   

5. In fedora, run

   rm /etc/zshrc /etc/zprofile
   ln -s /etc/zsh/zprofile.dist /etc/zprofile
   ln -s /etc/zsh/zshrc.dist /etc/zshrc
   

6. Change shell

   sudo chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh user
   sudo chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh
   

7. Create empty ~/.zshrc in template's. For the appvm that already create, just select 0 when you first launch zsh.

Now you can use zsh everywhere with autosuggestions and syntax-highlighting