Making eza Your Default

In the previous post, I wrapped up the installation story. We now have four strategies for getting software onto a fresh machine. But installing tools is only half the job — they need configuring. And eza is the perfect place to start, because it’s a drop-in replacement for something I use hundreds of times a day: ls.

Why Replace ls?

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The standard ls does its job, but it hasn’t changed much in decades. eza brings color-coded file types, git status integration, and — with a Nerd Font installed — file type icons right in your terminal. Once you’ve seen a directory listing with icons and git markers, plain ls feels like reading a wall of text.

But eza only shines if it’s actually the command you reach for. Typing eza instead of ls every time isn’t realistic — muscle memory runs too deep. The fix is aliases.

The Aliases I Want

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At my company, I had a set of shell aliases that replaced the standard listing commands. I want to recreate that setup, adapted for eza:

• ls — replaced by eza with icons and color
• la — list all files, including hidden ones
• ll — removed (too easy to confuse with the others)
• lla — long listing with all files, git status, and header
• lls — tree view for quick directory overviews

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

alias ls='eza --icons=always'
alias la='eza -a --icons=always'
alias lla='eza -la --icons=always --git --header'
alias lls='eza -T --icons=always'

The --icons=always flag requires a Nerd Font in your terminal. I’m using Alacritty with a Nerd Font installed, so this works out of the box.

Adding the Aliases to .zshrc via chezmoi

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Back in the first post, we added a minimal .zshrc to chezmoi. Now it’s time to edit it. Since chezmoi manages the file, I don’t edit ~/.zshrc directly — I edit the source:

chezmoi edit ~/.zshrc

This opens the source file in chezmoi’s directory. I add the aliases at the end:

# eza aliases
alias ls='eza --icons=always'
alias la='eza -a --icons=always'
alias lla='eza -la --icons=always --git --header'
alias lls='eza -T --icons=always'

Then I apply the change:

chezmoi apply

That’s it. The updated .zshrc is now in place. To verify:

source ~/.zshrc
ls

If eza is installed and a Nerd Font is active, you’ll see colorized output with file type icons.

Seeing the Difference

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To appreciate what eza brings to the table, here’s a side-by-side comparison. First, the classic approach using tree:

tree -a -L 2 -u -g -h -D -C

And the same directory with eza:

eza -T -L 2 -la --icons=always --git

The eza version adds git status markers, file type icons, and consistent color coding — all without installing a separate tool for tree views, since eza handles trees natively with -T.

The Aliases in Action

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Here’s what it looks like when all four aliases are in use — ls, la, lla, and lls — in a single terminal session:

Committing the Change

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To push the changes to the dotfiles repo:

chezmoi cd
git add -A && git commit -m "add eza aliases to zshrc" && git push

What We’ve Achieved So Far

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After chezmoi init --apply, a fresh machine now has:

• zsh installed and set as default shell
• The correct version of age, installed from source
• SSH keys decrypted and in place
• Git identity configured for the dotfiles repo
• SSH key linked to git, remote switched to SSH
• Ansible installed and used to manage software packages
• tmux installed via Ansible
• eza installed from an external apt repository via Ansible
• Onchange script that watches the entire ansible/ directory for changes
• Sudo password support for non-root environments
• fzf installed from a GitHub binary release via Ansible
• eza aliases configured in .zshrc — ls, la, lla, and lls

What’s Next

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eza is configured, but it’s just the first tool. tmux and fzf are installed but still running with defaults. Next up: giving tmux a configuration that makes it actually pleasant to use.