Uninstall Oh My ZSH Right Now And Do This Instead

Whenever I bring up ZSH there's always at least one person who thinks I'm talking about Oh My Zsh and get confused when I tell them I think the application serves no purpose so today I thought I should explain again why you shouldn't bother with Oh My ZSH.

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==========Time Stamps==========
0:00 Introduction
1:19 ZSH != Oh My ZSH
3:00 Problem With Preinstalled Plugins
5:24 Oh My ZSH Plugins
6:48 Plugins Without Oh My ZSH
8:04 Don't Need Plugin Manager
9:47 Confusing Resources
10:24 Oh My ZSH Advantage

==========Credits==========
🎨 Channel Art:
All my art has was created by Supercozman

#BrodieRobertson #ZSH #Linux #OhMyZsh

🎵 Ending music

DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase I may receive a small commission or other compensation.

[VinceAggrippino]

Do what instead? The only tip I saw was to source shell scripts.

Doesn't Oh My Zsh automatically configure some things, hands-free, like completion?

How is Oh My Zsh a massive waste of time? Just install it and everything works smoothly. Want a plugin, just add the name of it to the plugins list. No additional steps like downloading or `source`ing required.


0:58 Zsh is configured poorly out of the box. How again is a tool that's configuring it for you wasting your time?

Then you recommend copying another person's dotfiles because you like their YouTube videos?! Everyone sets up their own dotfiles for their own specific needs. Blindly copying and pasting them will not likely end well. You're setting people up for failure.

There are no valid arguments against using Oh My Zsh in this video.

[pawekoaczynski]

Would you like to update Oh My Zsh to the newest version? [Y/n]

[smilebot]

This is a general problem in computing. So many libraries and frameworks hide obvious stuff and include tons of unnecessary complexity for next to no benefit.

[clinton]

Thank you for this video, helped me setup my zsh without ohmyzsh and all the unnecessary stuff it comes with.

[GafftheHorse]

I switched from Bash to ZSH on Arch a few years ago. I looked at Oh My Zsh, it looked like a way easier way of setting Zsh up, but too many plugins I wasn't going to use, and the updater gave me a few concerns.
I ended up setting up Zsh manually, it was a fair bit more work, but I've not had to touch it in years and I know what my system is doing as I built it myself.

[Ciborg]

Wanted to do this for a bit but didn't know what the best way was thx bruv

[sliceoflife]

Having just spent a week setting my zsh console manually on my qubes machine, never having heard of ohmyzsh, I am eternally grateful to be one of those people who were conflating the two. 🙏

[billeterk]

Using ancient, crufty bashrc and profile that’s sort of grown like mould over the last 25 years here :-). I have briefly looked at zsh and will possibly switch at some stage — some aspects are cleaner and just.. easier. Just a small quibble, “source” has a fairly specific meaning in that it updates the current shell environment rather than running in a sub-shell :-)

[xxxPrzybyLxxx]

At the end of the day I think it's important to really understand what the program/shell/plugin manager does and answer a question: do I need it?

[nezu_cc]

personally i run oh my zsh + powerlevel10k. Is it bloated? Yes. Is it good? Also yes. I find that most of the aliases that are there by default are really good so I only have to define 2 or 3 extra ones.

[ItayFlikier]

Thanks you so much! I've watched your video 2 days before moving to zsh and I have all the plugins I need without oh my zsh :-) I prefer so much to have more control on what exactly is running and how!

[joetheman]

I don't use ZSH but I have a thought / question. To keep the ohmyzsh plugins having a plugin kind of feel couldn't you just save each one as a file in a certain folder and then source them from your .zshrc? This way you can create a section in your .zshrc and title it PLUGINS or something and then source a list of "plugins" from a plugin folder in your home. If you want to "uninstall the plugin" just delete the file. Would that work? BTW I agree with you on the ohmyzsh. It doesn't seem to make sense to use it if it is just adding things to your zsh config in the end.

[gusslx]

I think most of the problems you pointed out are not Oh My Zsh's fault, just people using a tool they don't take the time to understand.

To clarify some points:

1. Omz does not install/source plugins by default. You choose the ones that you want to use. Not knowing what the plugin actually does (i.e. not reading it's README) is your fault.

2. It includes an "aliases" plugin that show all aliases (even grouped by plugins). So if something's wrong, you can't check that and have a single global view for them. And again, not knowing what aliases omz included means that you installed a plugin without reading it thoroughly.

3. Although some plugins are almost never updated, it's nice to know for sure that when one actually does, you get the new version without much trouble.

4. Yeah you could source everything manually, but the "plugins = (a b c)" syntax is more concise than doing ”source ./.../a; source./.../b; ..."

[sagichdirdochnicht]

I can see your points, but ultimatively I disagree. I use omz, because it just has some "advanced" Plugins that I want. "Advanced" meaning, they add like 20 ++ lines of code and at this point, I would DEFENETLY source those parts in seperate files, because I just don't feel comfortable with a convoluted, unreadable config.

And yes, I could just download the text, place it in files and source it. But why the hell should I?! Omz does allready exist and does what it is supposed to, and everything is clean.

For the rest of the Plugins - yeah, don't use them. There ist no point in loading Plugins, that only load like 5 shell aliases or something. It's easier and faster to just create them yourself in like 1 Minute.

And keep in mind: I'm still having a damn .zshrc! That I can edit like any other .zshrc! And so I did. You are almost making it like installing omz will force you to only use omz feautres and nothing else. That is simply not the case.

[solvm]

Agreed. All those aliases and plug-in aliases will bite you in the ass one day. Totally unneeded.

[laughingvampire]

a plugin manager would be something like antigen, fresh, zplug, dotzsh, omz has a lot of prescription in its usage and only manages the plugins that are within its own repo, it goes to no other place, while the others don't have any integrated plugins and they do only manage plugins.

[Aerodos]

Oh don't worry... Despite it being installed on my distro, i have plans to downsize this.

Edit: Just did it hours ago. kept some useful plugins and the powerlevel10k theme, but the rest is gone.

[fawzanfawzi]

Can you do a video tutorial on fontconfig? I have this problem of my fonts overriding each other (like Nerd Font overriding Font Awesome 5).

[chris]

I am new to zsh and a few things are lacking from this video. For those who have already installed oh my zsh you didn't tell us where they store their aliases or how to uninstall oh my zsh. Also is missing how to use a theme as most of them recommend installing oh my zsh first.

[xuedi]

Its also a bit of a security risk some "plugins" are quite complex, it easy to sneak in code that then gets auto updated onto every command