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Top 23 Shell Shell Projects
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ohmyzsh
๐ A delightful community-driven (with 2,500+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration. Includes 300+ optional plugins (rails, git, macOS, hub, docker, homebrew, node, php, python, etc), 140+ themes to spice up your morning, and an auto-update tool that makes it easy to keep up with the latest updates from the community.
We've all been there. You install Zsh, and the very next recommendation you see online is to install Oh-My-Zsh. For a long time, I did exactly that. But over time, the "magic" of heavy frameworks started to wear thin.
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Your shell looks up npm in your PATH and finds it โ often inside whatever directory nvm installed Node into, or at a system path like /usr/local/bin/npm. It hands control to the npm CLI, which is itself just a Node.js script.
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Project mention: ๐๏ธ Building my home server P5: Network-wide ad blocking with Pi-hole | dev.to | 2026-03-16
In my previous blog post, I covered deploying containers, configuring UFW, and setting up Nginx as a reverse proxy for my services. In this post, I'm taking things a step further by adding network-wide ad blocking to my home lab using Pi-hole. Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that blocks ads and trackers at the network level, meaning every device on my local network benefits from it without needing any client-side software. It also comes with a slick web interface for monitoring DNS queries and managing blocklists. On top of that, I configured Pi-hole to handle local DNS resolution for all my home lab services, so I can access them by their subdomain names instead of remembering IP addresses and port numbers.
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Project mention: Installing a Let's Encrypt TLS Certificate on a Brother Printer with Certbot | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-27
* https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/How-to-use-A...
BIND 9 example:
* https://dan.langille.org/2020/12/19/creating-a-very-specific...
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Install runtimes for your programming languages (e.g., Python, Node.js) using package managers. Use version managers (e.g., pyenv, nvm) to handle multiple language versions across projects.
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zsh-autosuggestions gives you fish-like behavior in ZSH. As you type, it shows a grayed-out suggestion based on your history. Press the right arrow to accept it.
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.tmux
Oh my tmux! My self-contained, pretty & versatile tmux configuration made with ๐๐ฉท๐๐คโค๏ธ๐ค
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zsh-syntax-highlighting highlights your commands as you type. Valid commands go green, invalid go red. It's instant feedback before you even hit enter.
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openvpn-install
OpenVPN road warrior installer for Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS and Fedora
ะดะปั OpenVPN
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Project mention: Starship: The minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-06-24
Happy user of spaceship prompt for zsh: https://spaceship-prompt.sh, and, among other things, it runs repo status asynchronously.
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# Install dependencies to run ruby sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y git curl build-essential libz-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev libyaml-dev # Clone rbenv and install it git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv ~/.rbenv/bin/rbenv init source ~/.bashrc git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git "$(rbenv root)"/plugins/ruby-build
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lynis
Lynis - Security auditing tool for Linux, macOS, and UNIX-based systems. Assists with compliance testing (HIPAA/ISO27001/PCI DSS) and system hardening. Agentless, and installation optional.
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git clone --recursive https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto.git "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zprezto"
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There's so many plugin systems for zsh. From comments it seems like Pretzo is the main one suggested.
But there's a huge list of different offerings. Looking at https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure?tab=readme-ov-file#inte... , there's also for example zim, zplug, zinit, zi. It's be so great to have see some deeper investigations or comparisons: is Pretzo really the best choice? Aside from seeming popularity, why?
At least found this neat gist with a cheat sheet for different zsh plugin systems (and how very many there are!)
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Gogh
Gogh is a collection of color schemes for various terminal emulators, including Gnome Terminal, Pantheon Terminal, Tilix, and XFCE4 Terminal also compatible with iTerm on macOS.
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nb
CLI and local web plain text noteโtaking, bookmarking, and archiving with linking, tagging, filtering, search, Git versioning & syncing, Pandoc conversion, + more, in a single portable script.
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zsh-completions GitHub
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Shell Shell discussion
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Whohas โ Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search
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My Terminal Setup: Zsh, Oh My Zsh, Powerlevel10k and Tmux
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My .config Ship of Theseus
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 6 Jun 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Shell projects in Shell? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ohmyzsh | 187,794 |
| 2 | nvm | 93,676 |
| 3 | Pi-hole | 59,139 |
| 4 | acme.sh | 46,803 |
| 5 | pyenv | 44,846 |
| 6 | zsh-autosuggestions | 35,637 |
| 7 | .tmux | 25,028 |
| 8 | zsh-syntax-highlighting | 22,698 |
| 9 | openvpn-install | 20,550 |
| 10 | spaceship-prompt | 20,504 |
| 11 | rbenv | 16,697 |
| 12 | lynis | 15,737 |
| 13 | Kaldi Speech Recognition Toolkit | 15,402 |
| 14 | bash-it | 15,081 |
| 15 | prezto | 14,543 |
| 16 | pure | 14,272 |
| 17 | ani-cli | 12,532 |
| 18 | oh-my-fish | 11,336 |
| 19 | Gogh | 10,236 |
| 20 | hyprdots | 8,549 |
| 21 | antigen | 8,308 |
| 22 | nb | 8,198 |
| 23 | zsh-completions | 7,795 |
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