Oh yay, more tribalism.
but but but easy to theme
Am I out of the loop? what’s wrong with zsh?
Classic linux tribalism. Use what you like and don’t get involved with these confrontational nerds.
I mean, there’s some things that became validly toxic due to their developers, example off the top of my head: Reiserfs
True, software can call you a slur.
Or kill your mail order Russian wife.
wat?
There doesn’t have to be tribalism, people just need to accept that systemd is a botnet
It’s permissively-licensed (as opposed to bash, which is GPLv3). Pushing zsh over bash is part of a larger effort by corporations to marginalize copyleft so they can more easily exploit Free Software at the users’ expense. Don’t fall for it!
It’s such a shame that, if zsh gains enough critical mass, all copies of its source code will be deleted from the universe and no-one will be able to use it without paying any more.
It’s such a shame that you can’t customize the version of zsh running on your Linux-based embedded device because it’s DRM’d to prevent the modified version from being installed.
…oh wait, that’s not sarcasm because it’s actually plausible.
Cool.
And what, exactly, is the path from “pushing back on zsh” to “embedded device manufacturers can no longer lock down their devices?”
A plausible path is precedent and normalization, not zsh specifically.
If a widely used copyleft component (like a shell) starts being accepted as “OK to lock down” in consumer or embedded devices, manufacturers and courts get comfortable with the idea that user-modifiable software is optional rather than a right tied to distribution. Over time, that erodes enforcement of anti-tivoization principles and weakens the practical force of copyleft licenses across the stack.
Once that norm shifts, vendors can apply the same logic to kernels, drivers, bootloaders, and userland as a whole—at which point locked-down embedded devices stop being the exception and become the default, even when the software is nominally open source.
It’s stinky and smelly and smells bad.
I switched from bash to zsh a while ago, mostly just for shits and giggles. I really can’t see any reason to form a strong opinion on it one way or the other.
Bash is copyleft (GPLv3). Zsh is permissively-licensed.
Apple, for instance, switched from bash to zsh when the GPL version upgraded because they wanted to withhold those rights from their users.
Zsh should be considered harmful as a tool of corporate encroachment and subjugation of Free Software.
Calm down RMS, you’re going to have another episode.
I went from bash to fish to zsh. I can see why people would like having fish as a shell. but I hated scripting on it and if I’m going to be triggering a different shell for scripts anyway, I might as well skip the middleman, not re-invent the wheel and just use zsh with plug-ins that way I only have two shells installed instead of three. Adding the auto-complete plugin and a theme plugin for zsh gives most of fishes base functionality and design while making it so I don’t nerd to worry about compatibility.
Maybe someday when I’m less code oriented, I will re-look at fish, but I don’t see it happening in the foreseeable future.
If you wanna try something different, give nushell a try. It’s like magic to me.
I don’t have an opinion either but you could try using Starship on top of ZSH:
It’s supposedly lighter than OhMyZSH with the same features.
Starship is also available with other shells, and even Powershell which is nice because having the same tool everywhere is always better.
What about ksh?
