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Baru edited this page Aug 28, 2026 · 1 revision

Requirements

Required

Requirement Why
Neovim 0.11+ Uses the native vim.lsp.config / vim.lsp.enable API
git The plugin manager clones every plugin with plain git clone
A C compiler (gcc/clang/cc) Treesitter compiles parsers with it
A terminal with 16-color ANSI theming Basically any modern terminal — this is what the colorscheme reads from

Check your Neovim version with nvim --version. If it's below 0.11, update Neovim before doing anything else — everything here depends on it.

Recommended

Tool Why
fzf fzf-lua wraps the real fzf binary
ripgrep (rg) Powers live-grep search
fd Makes file finding faster (falls back to a slower method without it)
Node.js + npm Mason installs several LSP servers this way (ts_ls, html, cssls, jsonls, yamlls), and prettier needs it
Python + pip For the pyright LSP server and the black formatter
A Nerd Font in your terminal Without one, icons render as boxes/question marks

Formatters (used by conform.nvim)

These aren't installed automatically — conform.nvim runs them, it doesn't install them:

  • stylua (Lua)
  • black (Python)
  • prettier (JS/TS/JSON/YAML/Markdown/HTML/CSS)
  • shfmt (shell)

Easiest path: skip installing these manually and run :MasonInstall stylua shfmt from inside Neovim once it's set up — Mason handles it.

Linters

  • shellcheck (shell scripts)

Quick install (Ubuntu/Debian)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y git build-essential curl unzip fzf ripgrep fd-find \
    nodejs npm python3 python3-pip shellcheck

# Ubuntu packages fd as "fdfind" — symlink it so fzf-lua finds it as "fd"
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && ln -sf $(which fdfind) ~/.local/bin/fd

# Neovim from apt is usually too old — add the stable PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/stable -y
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y neovim

npm's default global install location needs root on most distros. Point it at your home directory instead of using sudo npm install -g:

mkdir -p ~/.npm-global
npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global
echo 'export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

npm install -g prettier

See Installation for what to do once these are in place.

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