NvChad is a preset configuration for Neovim which provides you with a pretty awesome IDE.

The first step is to install one of the Nerd Fonts for your terminal. This is because they support a large number of icons. Go to the Nerd Fonts website and download your favourite font, for example “JetBrainsMono Nerd Font”. Then install it like thus:

$ mkdir -p ~/.fonts
$ unzip JetBrainsMono.zip -d ~/.fonts
$ fc-cache -fv

You can check the font has been installed properly like so:

$ fc-list | grep JetBrains
$ rm JetBrainsMono.zip

Now modify the configuration of your terminal emulator to use the font you just downloaded. By the way, the terminal should support truecolor, which you can check like this:

$ echo $COLORTERM
truecolor

The next step is to install Neovim. The best way to run Neovim is with the AppImage. Download latest neovim appimage from the official GitHub repo. Make the AppImage file executable and rename it to a useful name, such as nvim. You probably want to move it to somewhere in your PATH.

Now it’s time to install NvChad and its dependencies. Follow along:

$ sudo apt install git luarocks ripgrep xclip
$ [ -e ~/.config/nvim ] && mv ~/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvim.backup
$ [ -e ~/.local/share/nvim ] && mv ~/.local/share/nvim ~/.local/share/nvim.backup
$ rm -rf ~/.local/state/nvim
$ rm -rf ~/.cache/nvim
$ git clone https://github.com/NvChad/starter ~/.config/nvim --depth 1 && nvim

Wait for the packages to finish downloading, then run in Neovim:

:MasonInstallAll

And exit Neovim. Finally:

$ rm -rf ~/.config/nvim/.git

Now, you can even put your Neovim configuration in git if you want:

$ cd ~/.config/nvim
$ git init .

That’s it, your NvChad is ready to use! Just run nvim (or however you renamed the Neovim AppImage). A good starting point is to check the NvChad cheatsheet: start nvim and press ‘space’, then ‘c’, then ‘h’. Press :q to exit the cheatsheet.

To get started, you can change the theme to whatever you like. Start nvim and press ‘space’, then ‘t’, then ‘h’.