Question

What is your favorite shell and why?

Posted on November 3, 2019
Linux Basics Linux Commands
Asked by bitmap

Hi all,

I’m just getting started with Linux and I’ve been experimenting with different shells like bash, sh and fish.

So far I quite like fish because it is quite friendly and interactive shell.

What is your favourite shell and why?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• November 3, 2019

Accepted Answer

Hello,

It really depends on your needs and what you’ve gotten used to. My personal favorite is bash. I love the syntax, the autocompletion and it is installed by default on almost all servers that I have to work with on a daily basis.

If you want to learn more about Bash, I would suggest checking this open-source eBook on GitHub: Introduction to Bash Scripting eBook

Regards, Bobby

Jan Bridges • November 4, 2019

Hello,

My favourite is definitely zsh. It’s like bash but you can set it up to have nice git integration which is why I like it so much. From the command line I can then always see what repo/branch I am in as well as the state of that branch (staged files, commits, matching upstream, etc.).

alexdo

Site Moderator

• November 3, 2019

Hey,

I agree that it really depends on what you need. I’ve seen a lot of people using fish just for the auto-suggestion based on history or for the tab completion using the man-page data. Keep in mind that in bash you can use the reverse–isearch by clicking Ctrl+R.

People also use fish to for the syntax highlighting and the colors as this comes by default and in the other shells you need to setup this on your own.

It will be nice if everyone can explain what shell they use and what they have added to it.

Regards, Alex