Bluefin is designed to be used by normal people, but the command line is our passion. Therefore we invest in the command line experience, knowing that most people will never see it. Slay out.
Installing Applications#
brew (Also known as Homebrew) is the package manager used for installing command line applications.
Note that the cask functionality in homebrew is macOS specific and non functional in Bluefin, Flatpak is used instead. Other package management tools like uv, pixi, asdf, and mise are available and work perfectly fine when installed via homebrew. Package managers inside of package managers ... hey look it was like that when we got here, this one isn't our fault! They do work great though, and some users may prefer those tools, so you have the option to forge your own path.
Message of the Day and fastfetch#
The project prefers to have functional bling that is slick but it must also serve a purpose. New terminals (Ctrl+Alt+Enter) display a message of the day with some basic information:
The bluefin-dx:beta line is the name of the OS image, and is a good way to remind yourself if you're on a pinned image as well as a quick reference to common commands. You can toggle it on and off with ujust toggle-user-motd. Note that the Tip rotates regularly in order to spread useful tips to the community.
We love to flex our machines and software. Run fastfetch:
This screen will show you hardware information, as well as your username, machine name, and kernel version. Each Bluefin image has a "Forged On" date, commemorating the initial installation of the machine.
Terminal Configuration#
Changing the default terminal shell#
Bluefin uses bash by default but also ships with fish (Donate) and zsh on the image for convenience.
Bluefin ships Ptyxis as the default terminal. It shows up as Terminal in the menu. It is strongly recommended that you change your shell via the terminal emulator instead of system-wide. First install the shell you want with brew install zsh or brew install fish. Click on the Terminal settings and edit your profile:
Then select "Use Custom Command" and then add the shell you want to use:
- zsh -
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/zsh - fish -
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/fish
Fonts#
Homebrew is also used for installing fonts, browse this page and install your favorite fonts. They will be copied into ~/.local/share/fonts
- Microsoft Fonts:
If you need to install Microsoft fonts in order to ensure compatibility with some documents, most of them are in Homebrew.
Be aware that some of these fonts are copyrighted by Microsoft.
Microsoft UK confirmed you are allowed to have them, provided that you own a copy of either:
- Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer (free, retired)
- May include PowerPoint Mobile (free)
- Microsoft Office (Any version, Windows or Mac)
Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel are included in font-microsoft-office, the others must be installed individually. You can install all of them at once by running the following command in a terminal:
brew tap colindean/fonts-nonfree && brew install --cask font-microsoft-office font-microsoft-aptos font-arial font-arial-black font-courier-new font-times-new-roman font-georgia