What specifically do you dislike about zsh?
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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tbh it's fine and i use it a lot more than bash.
I'm not tring that on my machine. What does it does?
Prints out what shell you're using. Bash is default for most Linux distros. MacOS switched from bash to zsh as their default. Zsh is hella customizable, by default it functions more or less like bash.
Fish is cool, has neat quality of life features out of the box, but can also break scripts sometimes.
Thank you. TIL.
Fish was kinda cool when I tried it, but I don't really care about the benefits that much. I love Zsh's effortless customization with Oh My Zsh and the POSIX compatibility.
Default zsh is just bash, you need to add all the fancy plugins to get it to do cool stuff
fish is for people who don't want to spend the time setting it all up and to just get a shell that has most of the QoL fetaures builtin.
Fish is for people who like it when sometimes scripts don't work
Why would sometimes scripts not work? All scripts are executed with bash by default.
No, they are executed according to the shebang on the first line, which is usually bash. If it is missing, it will default to the current shell.
I like to gamble what can i say
But I'm a compliant little bitch for POSIX daddy
I tried switching to Nushell but certain things just wouldn't work so I switched back to zsh. sha512sum wouldn't work and there's no native replacement.
So write all your scripts in POSIX compliant bash and use the proper shebang?
You don't even need a proper shebang. Scripts without shebang are executed in bash by fish.
I literally do not notice any difference. If the folders and such get the pretty colors and tab works, I could give a damn.
zsh > bash
Brave stand, I will stand side by side with you until the first signs of mild resistance or mockery from the world!
Well guess what?
#include <string.h>
#include <iostream>
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
const int which = strcmp ("zsh", "bash");
std::cout << which << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Output
1
Me hitting tab on any shell that isn't fish
"What the hell was that I ran the other day?"
start typing, ctrl+right, up, up, up, up, up, up
"Gotcha, bastard!"
right, enter
π¦
I have never really ever used bash and thought, "Man, I wish my shell was better . . . ". Using ctrl+r to recall past commands, using sudo !! to fix missing permissions and writing small bash scripts all work very well.
That being said, if you use anything else, and you like it, I'm happy for you, but I do wonder, what leads people to other shells? What problems do they have with bash?
Try fish for a week, use the online help to familiarise with the completion stuff... see if you still find bash adequate.
alias fuck='sudo !!' is probably the best thing I've ever added to my profile
There's also this
The heavy-handedness of that absolutely terrifies me, but at least it asks for confirmation first.
I script everything in bash, but for everyday use fish just has some modern QoL things that make it easier to get around. For me, specifically, it's the way you can recall commands by seeing a ghost version of your history, as you type. You can even scroll through a filtered history if you're part-way through typing some long command that matches what you have typed.
Another neat thing, it does it's best to predict what I want to type and remembers common locations, showing them as ghost text as well.
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