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Powerline on bash and PowerShell for Linux and Windows

NOTE: If you find yourself getting thinking you may have gotten way too far down into the weeds with this, you might want to consider a much less involved alternative: bash-git-prompt (that's what I'm now using on all my Linux machines).

To be clear, this gist will focus on Powerline for the Gnome terminal on Linux and for PowerShell Core on Windows 10, because those are the combinations I use in my daily work.

There are two different open source products that make it easier to implement Powerline for bash and PowerShell:

Oh My Bash for bash on

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Removing flatpak

As an equal-opportunity employer, my notes on completely removing flatpak (may God have mercy on my soul):

Before starting, be sure to inventory what's installed:

$ flatpak list

Then run the following commands to remove all flatpaks and the flatpak service:

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Get the latest git for Ubuntu

The PPA referenced below is what you want, at least for Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 LTS:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
...
    [ENTER]
...
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

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Use ssh -X to launch gui apps remotely

Launching gui apps on Linux remotely can be easy as

$ ssh -X test1.example.com

Back in the bad old days of Unix when X Windows was first being developed, it was decided that having the ability to remote into a machine and launch graphical apps was a good idea. All versions of X11 have retained this capability to one degree or another, but it's one of the features dropped by the Wayland project.

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Install a Ubuntu VM using virt-install for KVM (libvirtd)

Ubuntu is a particularly difficult distro to work with virt-install for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it departs from its Debian base in many key respects: starting with disk images. What's more, those departures are mostly undocumented. Debian and CentOS are a lot easier. Given IBM's recent actions with regard to CentOS, I think Debian is the best choice going forward.

Main source for how to do this was:

How to install KVM on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Headless Server

For an interactive "graphical" console install

Two files, ubuntu.env for the environment variables, and inst-ubuntu.sh to run the commands.

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Installing a Debian VM with virt-install on KVM (libvirtd)

This turned out to be easier than I thought it would, especially after struggling with Ubuntu.

Both procedures use a common debian.env file to hold environment variables applied in the script.

When installing Debian always be sure to select an apt mirror when prompted, if you don't you'll regret it.

Environment variables

In a file, debian.env:

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Networking setup bug in Debian 10

Checking systemctl status networking on a fresh Debian 10 install, I saw the error:

Dec 23 15:36:50 testsrv01 ifup[628]: ifup: failed to bring up eth0

when /etc/network/interfaces had

allow-hotplug ens3

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Ubuntu Server Setup - with ifupdown

The assumption here is that you're starting with a Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server or newer, rather than Desktop, base (Ubuntu Desktop deploys NetworkManager rather than systemd-networkd by default). This box has an AMD Ryzen CPU.

The goal is networking configured for static addressing using using ifupdown, rather than the newer systemd-networkd and netplan, or (for Ubuntu Desktop) NetworkManager. It basically returns networking on Ubuntu to its Debian roots.

The physical network device name for the test machine was "ens3", it will be something else on different hardware.

NOTE: I am currently using netplan rather than ifupdown on my own Ubuntu servers. I'll keep these notes updated because the configuration is close enough to Debian that it may come in handy when I finally switch to Debian.

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Setting default branch name to main

GitHub is now naming the default branch for new repositories "main" instead of "master", while the latter is still the default for the git command-line tool. With git v2.28, you can configure git to set a name other than "master" for the default branch. Of course, once that's done there's still the "little" matter of making the change to all your repos. GitHub says they're going to do this in the background starting in January 2021, and in fact advise against making the change yourself.

Make git init use "main"

For all future repos created locally:

$ git config --global init.defaultBranch main

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Installing bash-git-prompt

On one level, bash-git-prompt isn't very impressive. The changes it makes to your terminal aren't the kind of eye candy other, more ambitious, shell prompt customizers like Powerline and its derivatives provide. But it is useful.

In fact, for me it turns out to be more useful than Powerline because it conveys a lot of information while remaining relatively unobtrusive. It also doesn't require any special fonts.

Steps to install and enable it on Linux, from the README on github:

1. Download the repo into the root of your user's home directory as a "dot" folder: