Bash is pretty much expected to be installed on any Linux distro. On FreeBSD (and likely other BSDs) it is an optional install. If you want a script to run on e

Bash is pretty much expected to be installed on any Linux distro. On FreeBSD (and likely other BSDs) it is an optional install. If you want a script to run on either, use sh. If strictly Linux, bash is probably safe. Bash/sh is good for when you need to combine some commands and what needs to be done can be accomplished mostly by CLI commands with a little glue to tie them together. Some times it is surprising what can be accomplished. I wrote a program to import pictures from an SD card on Windows using C#, copying pictures to C:\Pictures\YYYY\MM\DD according to the EXIF data or failing that, file time stamp. I tried to port it to Linux but ran into problems trying to connect to the EXIF library. After struggling with that, I rewrote it using sh, some EXIF tool and various file utilities. It took 31 lines, about half of which were actual commands and the rest comments or white space. A much bigger project is a script to install Debian with root on ZFS. It's mostly a series of CLI commands with some variable substitution and conditionals depending on stuff like encrypted or not.