Some overlapping reasons: Ash is smaller: - small binary size - low memory usage - smaller attack surface Ash is faster: - startup time is far lower; this

Some overlapping reasons: Ash is smaller: - small binary size - low memory usage - smaller attack surface Ash is faster: - startup time is far lower; this is actually noticeable to me as an end-user. - better run-time performance Ash is simpler: - Ash sticks to POSIX much more closely than other shells and avoids almost any non-POSIX feature; if you're writing portable scripts, Ash is a good shell to test against - Some non-standard shell features can be footguns; ash lacks these. - Codebase is simpler to grok, relatively speaking - See the "Size" section above It's also easier to build ash as a static binary, which can be useful. Ash won't replace your interactive shell; it's better for running shell scripts.