Skip to content

Install oh-my-zsh system-wide

In this short guide, I will teach you how to easily install oh-my-zsh for an entire system.

1. Requisites

You need to have the dependencies for oh-my-zsh installed in your system. Those are:

  • git
  • sudo
  • zsh
  • chsh (optional)

2. Install oh-my-zsh as root as usual

You can follow the instructions in their website. It's important that you do it as root, not with sudo.

3. Copy the installation folder to a location available for all users

I chose to use /opt/etc, so my command would be: 

cp -r /root/.oh-my-zsh /opt/etc/oh-my-zsh

4. Modify the ZSH variable in the .zshrc file of root

Modify the document so it has this line: 

export ZSH="/opt/etc/oh-my-zsh"

5. Clean up

You can now remove the directory /root/.oh-my-zsh

6. Optional - Create a template of the .zshrc file for other users

You can get the template of the .zshrc file in /opt/etc/oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template. Copy it to another location (to avoid being overwritten when updating) and modify the lines that sets the location of the oh-my-zsh directory, and disable auto-updates, like so: 

export ZSH="/opt/etc/oh-my-zsh"
zstyle ':omz:update' mode disabled