Terminal Stack

BruceOS ships a complete terminal environment: Ghostty as the emulator, Fish as the shell, Starship as the prompt, Zellij as the multiplexer, and Atuin for shell history. Everything is configured system-wide out of the box.

User-level overrides in ~/.config/ take precedence over the system defaults described here.

Ghostty

System config: /etc/ghostty/config

font-family = JetBrains Mono
font-size = 13
theme = catppuccin-mocha
shell-integration = fish
gtk-single-instance = true
quit-after-last-window-closed = false
keybind = ctrl+grave_accent=toggle_quick_terminal

Key settings

Font. JetBrains Mono at 13pt. Change it in ~/.config/ghostty/config if you prefer something else.

Theme. Catppuccin Mocha (dark). Ghostty ships with Catppuccin built in, so no external theme files are needed.

Dropdown terminal. Press Ctrl+\`` to toggle a dropdown terminal from the top of the screen. This is the toggle_quick_terminal` keybind.

Single instance. gtk-single-instance = true means opening Ghostty from the dock or a file manager reuses the existing process instead of spawning a new one.

Shell integration. Fish shell integration is enabled. This gives Ghostty awareness of the current working directory, command boundaries, and exit codes.

Override

Create ~/.config/ghostty/config with any settings you want to change. Ghostty merges user config on top of the system config.

Fish

System config: /etc/fish/conf.d/bruce.fish

# BruceOS default Fish configuration
starship init fish | source
atuin init fish | source
zoxide init fish | source

# Aliases
alias ls="eza --icons"
alias ll="eza -la --icons"
alias cat="bat --paging=never"
alias tree="eza --tree --icons"

What this does

Starship init. Activates the Starship prompt. Fish's built-in prompt is replaced.

Atuin init. Hooks into Fish's history system. Press Ctrl+R to search command history with Atuin's fuzzy finder instead of Fish's default history search.

Zoxide init. Replaces cd with z for smart directory jumping. Use cd normally or use z partial-path to jump to frequently visited directories.

Aliases

Alias	Expands to	Why
ls	eza --icons	Colored output with file type icons
ll	eza -la --icons	Long listing with hidden files
cat	bat --paging=never	Syntax highlighting, no pager
tree	eza --tree --icons	Tree view with icons

Override

Add your own Fish configuration to ~/.config/fish/config.fish or drop files in ~/.config/fish/conf.d/. Fish sources all .fish files in conf.d/ directories, so the system-wide BruceOS config and your personal config both apply.

Starship

System config: /etc/xdg/starship.toml

# BruceOS Starship Prompt
format = """
$directory\
$git_branch\
$git_status\
$character"""

[directory]
truncation_length = 3
truncation_symbol = ".../"

[git_branch]
symbol = " "

[character]
success_symbol = "[❯](bold green)"
error_symbol = "[❯](bold red)"

What you see

The prompt shows three things and nothing else:

1. Directory -- current path, truncated to 3 levels deep
2. Git branch -- shown with a branch icon when inside a git repository
3. Git status -- modified, staged, or untracked indicators

The prompt character is ❯. Green means the last command succeeded, red means it failed.

Override

Create ~/.config/starship.toml to replace the system config entirely, or set the STARSHIP_CONFIG environment variable to point to a custom location.

Zellij

System config: /etc/xdg/zellij/config.kdl (copied during build from config/zellij/config.kdl)

// BruceOS Zellij Configuration
theme "catppuccin-mocha"

default_shell "fish"

pane_frames false

keybinds {
    shared {
        bind "Alt h" { MoveFocusOrTab "Left"; }
        bind "Alt l" { MoveFocusOrTab "Right"; }
        bind "Alt j" { MoveFocus "Down"; }
        bind "Alt k" { MoveFocus "Up"; }
    }
}

Key settings

Theme. Catppuccin Mocha, matching Ghostty.

Default shell. Fish. New panes and tabs open Fish, not Bash.

Pane frames. Disabled. Panes are separated by thin lines instead of bordered frames, which saves screen space.

Navigation. Vim-style with Alt as the modifier:

Keybind	Action
Alt+h	Move focus left (or previous tab)
Alt+l	Move focus right (or next tab)
Alt+j	Move focus down
Alt+k	Move focus up

Override

Create ~/.config/zellij/config.kdl to override the system config. Zellij does not merge configs -- the user config replaces the system config entirely.

Atuin

Atuin is initialized via the Fish config (atuin init fish | source) but has no custom BruceOS configuration. It uses its defaults:

• SQLite database for history storage at ~/.local/share/atuin/
• Ctrl+R opens the interactive history search
• History is stored locally by default (cloud sync is opt-in)

Configure Atuin by creating ~/.config/atuin/config.toml. See the Atuin documentation for options.