No such thing as a good shell... (I just want something that's both posix-compatible and good)
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Sometimes I think I'm the only linux user who doesn't care about their terminal emulator. I use whatever came installed. I assume it's bash? I don't know, but anything i want to do is supported by all of them.
Akchually, those are shells, not terminal emulators.
Which I guess confirms that you really don't care. Whatever works for you, works for you :)
As a ham-handed individual , I absolutely LOVE fish shell. Started using it like 3 years ago and never looked back.
Meanwhile nushell is just over here getting shit done literally everywhere
Thompson shell (predates Bourne)
scsh (Scheme shell)
sash (stand-alone shell)
gash (Guile shell)
ash (Almquist shell)
dash (Debian Almquist shell)
eshell (Emacs shell)
Shells I couldn't think of images for:
- bosh (from SchilyTools)
- tclsh (Tcl shell)
- ion (from Redox OS)
Thompson shell
love the ash image lol
ash, shares shared history with dash, integrated into busybox, default shell in alpine
toybox's shell, toybox's equivalent of busybox's ash
tcsh, a shell often found in BSDs for interactive usage by default
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Get-OutOfHere
Powershell is probably simultaneously the best and worst thing Microsoft has ever created
Big oof
Then give nushell a go. It's basically a modern implementation of some of the better ideas Powershell had.
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Tish
Nerds
bash:
Jesus Christ! Its json Bourne Again!
I had nu on my Windows PC and I thought I could get away with it because I hate PowerShell so much, but then IT came and kicked it into quarantine. Now I'm zsh-ing on wsl.
Why didn't I install nu there? Can't remember.
There's probably only two people who will get this joke... and I'm one of them.
considering the image is a link... idk man
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imo fish is the best out of the box for me, but I just use bash cause its everywhere
Yeah, that's where this meme fails. BASH is the default and has been for decades. Most people are not Gigachad.
I'll accept FISH as being for babies, Zsh as being for Emo types or extra nerdy people. SH being for white beards makes sense.
BASH is:
I used a macbook for work for a while with zsh in the terminal. IDK whether I qualify as emo, but I am nerdy. I only think of myself as regular nerdy, though, not extra nerdy.
I just wish fish would accept standard bash syntax in addition.
Like, if you can warn me that "this is not how we set vars in fish, do this instead!" then you could also just, you know, do it.
I just wish my local restaurant would accept burger orders in addition.
Like, if you can warn me that "this is a Chinese noodle restaurant, we don't do burger here. Order one of these instead!" then you could also just, you know, make me a burger!
yea but the posix sh set syntax is atrocious so not supporting it is doing you a favor
Yeah, I agree. It's quirky, its syntax is annoying, and a good ZSH setup is probably better... but I don't have the time to do an actual ZSH setup.
A good zsh setup is not better. Thatβs why I switched off of zsh after years, because it was slower, more bloated, and less intuitive than fish. And bash is ten times worse than zsh.
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alias Da-boom-da-da-mmm-dum-na-ee-ma="sudo rm -rf /"
(I don't think it actually works this way in ksh but I already spent 10 minutes trying to figure out the command to get root privileges in ksh and that's already too much time for this dumb joke.)
Works in ksh93 and mksh. Probably oksh and posh, too.
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csh.
I'm pretty sure even FreeBSD has moved on now from csh to zsh
I was gonna say tcsh, but thatβs only for root. Apparently theyβve moved on to Almquist shell (sh). TIL.
Huh, I really thought it was zsh
Maybe that decision got overturned and replaced with sh prior to release
bottom right corner still
and dont forget to take your amlodipine
Fish is the best . Do not listen what other says just because it's easy to use does not make it a bad tool
Also helix better then neovim and emacs
And zellij better then tmux
Micro better then nano
Jj better then git A LOT
Yes! Helix is such a good editor that doesn't get enough praise.
You lost me at "helix better than nvim and emacs"
That's the only one I could confirm, but probably because my config game is weak.
Careful brother, they are not ready for the truth.
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Funny story, in my first years of Linux, I always thought sh was the only way to run downloaded programs in the terminal. I must have seen it on some forum and learned it that way. Much later I learned that I could just type this ./program and run them.
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