So I’m currently using zsh + oh my zsh, and have been using it for some years now. It’s good, it has amazing features (via plugins) and overall I’m happy with it. But lately it has become laggy for me (probably because of plugins) and I want to see if there’s any other shell with features like ZSH but faster and lighter?
I’ve tried Fish, and usually install it on my servers, but it’s not POSIX compliant so learning what commands actually do what in Fish seems like a hassle.
I’ve heard of Oilshell, Yash, Nushell but haven’t tried any of them.
What is your setup for your interactive shell?
Bash. I used ZSH for a while too, but without Oh My Zsh, installing only a handful of plugins manually (or I used a simple plugin manager, honestly forgot if). It was nice, but I had ton of stuff that was not really necessary. And with the next OS install I decided to try a Bash only system. And you know what, it feels so much better and I appreciate simplicity a bit more than before.
But I think you won’t go back. Fish is nice first, but it’s too different from Bash and Zsh. I had constantly think about the differences and most of my scripts are Bash anyway. So I did not want to have a scripting language that is different from interactive shell. A language like Fish is too similar, while being different. This messes with my brain, the language itself seems to be fine.
What’s left? PowerShell… nah, just joking. The problem is, most are different languages and not like Zsh and Bash at all. You listed Nushell, there is also a Python like shell language Xonsh. There is also a C like one Csh But to be honest, if you want a POSIX compliant one, then you don’t have much to choose from. Either start your ZSH setup from scratch, with the knowledge you have now, or go back to Bash. That’s what I did and kept using it since.
Bash has a very strange sequence of sourcing scripts like .bash_profile and others, and the type of shell (interactive or not) adds fuel to the fire. There is no chance to sort through this bunch of init files in order to correctly and conveniently set up environment variables. In zsh, only 3 files are needed for proper configuration; it couldn’t be easier.
There is no chance to sort through this bunch of init files in order to correctly and conveniently set up environment variables.
Just use .bash_profile for environmental variables. This file is loaded up each time you login. I use Bash for quite some time now with this file and there is no need to go through various sourced init files. This is the file you need.
There is also a system wide universal file dedicated to all shell environmental variables: /etc/environment . This file however is not a script and it does not understand variables either; as this is the first that runs. But this is active for all users and all shells.
When I used Zsh it was not better than Bash to setup environmental variables, so not sure why you think one or the other is less complicated.
so not sure why you think one or the other is less complicated
Because of this:
And some note by the author of the scheme:
Unfortunately, the operation of bash startup scripts is dependent on patches added by OS distributions
Why should I guess at the tea leaves instead of just using deterministic zsh?
