Are these not shell issues? I think actually that zsh makes a fine default shell for Konsole, though I prefer fish - it’s not a sane or reasonable choice for the default.
You have mixed Konsole specific issues (some of which are not issues on my system, with Konsole) with Shell issues, and compounded them confusing with Distribution choices.
- You need more focus.
I do find it rather laughable that you are trying to bring in super-nOOb support into your ARCH terminal…
How is anyone expected to be able to run Arch if they think they can use ‘apt-get’. It isn’t reasonable for a NEW user to install Arch, then type ‘apt-get’ because they have no experience, so they wouldn’t just suddenly think of this command.
It seems you are suggesting the ‘CachyOS’ idea of putting some alias commands in (as they came up with your idea)
# Help people new to Arch
alias apt="man pacman"
alias apt-get="man pacman"
alias please="sudo"
I prefer their suggestion to yours… but I think their idea is a little annoying. It assumes that everyone used Debian, which is almost as annoying as just straight up saying ‘Ubuntu’ is the default.
However, for my ‘new’ distribution I’d prefer a smarter function:
function pacman_redirect() {
echo "This is an Arch Linux system. Use pacman instead of $1."
echo "Common commands:"
echo " Install: sudo pacman -S <package>"
echo " Remove: sudo pacman -R <package>"
echo " Update: sudo pacman -Syu"
echo " Search: pacman -Ss <package>"
echo "For more info, see man pacman."
return 1
}
But then you STILL have the issue of all those commands - apt apt-get nala dnf yum pamac etc.
So you could use a ‘command_not_found_handler’
Solution
My new zsh for my new nOOb Arch zsh:
# List of package manager commands from other distributions
foreign_managers=(
apt apt-get aptitude # Debian/Ubuntu
dnf yum # Fedora/RHEL/CentOS
zypper # openSUSE
emerge # Gentoo
apk # Alpine Linux
slackpkg installpkg removepkg upgradepkg # Slackware
xbps-install xbps-remove xbps-query # Void Linux
pkg pkg_add pkg_delete # FreeBSD / NetBSD
pkgin # NetBSD
brew port macports # macOS
nix-env nix # NixOS
opkg # OpenWrt
# Add others as needed
)
# Helper function that prints a helpful message and suggests pacman equivalents
function foreign_pkg_manager() {
local cmd=$1
shift
local subcmd=$1
shift
local packages="$@"
echo "This system uses pacman as the package manager."
echo "You tried: $cmd $subcmd $packages"
echo ""
case $cmd in
apt|apt-get|aptitude)
case $subcmd in
install) echo "Try: sudo pacman -S $packages" ;;
remove|purge) echo "Try: sudo pacman -R $packages" ;;
update) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Sy" ;;
upgrade) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Syu" ;;
search) echo "Try: pacman -Ss $packages" ;;
show) echo "Try: pacman -Qi $packages" ;;
*) echo "Please see 'man pacman' for more information." ;;
esac
;;
dnf|yum)
case $subcmd in
install) echo "Try: sudo pacman -S $packages" ;;
remove|erase) echo "Try: sudo pacman -R $packages" ;;
update) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Syu" ;;
search) echo "Try: pacman -Ss $packages" ;;
info) echo "Try: pacman -Qi $packages" ;;
*) echo "Please see 'man pacman' for more information." ;;
esac
;;
zypper)
case $subcmd in
install) echo "Try: sudo pacman -S $packages" ;;
remove) echo "Try: sudo pacman -R $packages" ;;
update) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Syu" ;;
search) echo "Try: pacman -Ss $packages" ;;
info) echo "Try: pacman -Qi $packages" ;;
*) echo "Please see 'man pacman' for more information." ;;
esac
;;
emerge)
case $subcmd in
*) echo "Try: sudo pacman -S $packages (for a similar effect)" ;;
esac
;;
apk)
case $subcmd in
add) echo "Try: sudo pacman -S $packages" ;;
del) echo "Try: sudo pacman -R $packages" ;;
update) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Sy" ;;
upgrade) echo "Try: sudo pacman -Syu" ;;
search) echo "Try: pacman -Ss $packages" ;;
info) echo "Try: pacman -Qi $packages" ;;
*) echo "Please see 'man pacman' for more information." ;;
esac
;;
*)
# Generic fallback for any other foreign command
echo "This command is not supported. Please use pacman instead."
echo "Common pacman commands:"
echo " Install a package: sudo pacman -S <package>"
echo " Remove a package: sudo pacman -R <package>"
echo " Update system: sudo pacman -Syu"
echo " Search for a package: pacman -Ss <package>"
echo " Show package info: pacman -Qi <package>"
echo "For more details, see 'man pacman'."
;;
esac
return 1 # indicate failure
}
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Intercept non‑sudo foreign commands (they are not installed)
function command_not_found_handler() {
local cmd=$1
shift
if [[ " ${foreign_managers[*]} " =~ " $cmd " ]]; then
foreign_pkg_manager "$cmd" "$@"
else
echo "zsh: command not found: $cmd"
return 127
fi
}
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Override sudo to catch foreign commands, even when options are used
function sudo() {
# Parse arguments to find the first non‑option (the actual command)
local args=()
local cmd=""
local found=0
for arg in "$@"; do
if [[ $found -eq 0 && $arg == -* ]]; then
args+=("$arg")
elif [[ $found -eq 0 ]]; then
cmd=$arg
found=1
args+=("$arg")
else
args+=("$arg")
fi
done
if [[ -n $cmd && " ${foreign_managers[*]} " =~ " $cmd " ]]; then
echo "You used sudo with a foreign package manager: sudo $*"
foreign_pkg_manager "$cmd" "${args[@]:1}" # pass command and its arguments
return 1
else
# Otherwise, call the real sudo
command sudo "$@"
fi
}
Next…
It’s a long time since I used a terminal that didn’t complete commands, if you think it’s helpful then you can set up various autocomplete and suggestions in your configs.
Manjaro has a good setup for an initial zsh configuration - and then a visit tot he forum can get you all the information you need how to deal with problems and issues.
When using a keyboard, it’s also very awkward to click. It’s a very ‘Windows’ centric habit, and a bad habit at that.
For sure, distributions (or users) can develop some kind of helper… using Manjaro I have this:
❯ apt-get install pacman
.😭 I cannot find 'apt-get'
💡 Search using Pamac, Yay, or Flatpak? [P/Y/F/A for All, Enter to skip]
This is obviously not suitable for a distribution, however, because obviously AUR is not supported - and the choice of ‘yay’ is a personal one.
But for autocomplete it’s really quite hard to beat this:
But obviously this is fish…
It would be extremely trivial to add a similar function or suggestion to a shell - depending on which distribution we’re talking about.
zsh is a little more sober:
And then there are a million other things you can think of… I remember in my early Manjaro days, I would misread and confuse ‘pamac’ and ‘pacman’… and it’s a recurring issue that some folks will run sudo pamac install fish unintentially using sudo for a software that is not supposed to be run as sudo.
However, I fixed that in mine:
The fixes which you propose are problematic also in terms of implementation for KDE, because KDE is a desktop environment - it has nothign to do with package management.
So if you correct ‘sudo apt-get install kitty’ then it’s not going to work on Debian. If you don’t, then people will fail when they run Arch.
This is a distribution issue - bring that up with your specific distribution as a suggestion, though with ‘apt’ being the most common default (Ubuntu/Debian) it would be wrong to correct it…
Fedora could consider suggesting ‘Apt is a Debian based tool, and you’re using Fedora - did you mean ‘dnf’?’
Manjaro could also offer suggestions - but then there are many good alternative options, so really it’s up to the user to decide.
Editing Text
In Konsole, I just typed ‘convertmkv’ to get my abbreviation… but I want to edit and instead of mkv, convert avi files to mp4:
So I click on mkv and type avi… this works as do the usual navigation keys (Home/End, etc)
Also, Ctrl_Backspace and Ctrl_Del will delete Word backward and forward - these are basic text editing skills some of us learned in the last century that are universal.
middle-click I just dropped in here by selecting text in the terminal and middle clicking here… so I’m not sure why you need silly ‘Ctrl_C’ shortcuts in a terminal.
However, you can enter your own shortcuts if you don’t mind overriding potentially important system shortcuts.
For example, AltS prepends a command with sudo - but it won’t work if you have the annoying menu bar visible all the time.
Overall, I remember buying quite a few computers, the last of which was a HP desktop ‘Windows Vista’ machine which evolved into a Linux box.
Summary
It’s quite possible that I’m assuming too much, I installed Manjaro years ago which already came with some pretty advanced ‘tweaks’ which I always felt were huge upgrades to default/vanilla shells in any distributions I tried before.
They are extremely well thought out, and in my opinion one of the reasons that I still believe Manjaro stands (in many respects) head and shoulders above, despite some historical issues which are currently being finally ironed out (ah, the irony).
