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I tried to give zsh a shot as a bash replacement but ultimately returned to bash. My main pain point was that zsh was really difficult to configure out of the

I tried to give zsh a shot as a bash replacement but ultimately returned to bash. My main pain point was that zsh was really difficult to configure out of the box and a lot of the completions were much slower (cpu/wall time) than the equivalent completion in bash. I'm sure some of that was simply ignorance on my part.

erhaetherth 3y ago
It still boggles my mind how CLIs are slow as molasses even on high end PCs. I will never understand.
GuB-42 3y ago
Bash improved a lot since the early 2000s, when I first assessed my options for shells and settled on zsh. As an interactive shell, zsh did more, and better, than any other shell I tried. Maybe it was slow, but not enough to matter at the time I used it. I guess that bash being the default practically everywhere nowadays made it so that it got a lot of love. For example, it is common to see command line tool come with bash completion files, less so with zsh. Also, while bash got better support where it matters, zsh mostly got bloat in the form of oh-my-zsh and the likes. You don't have to use it, but if you do, you tend to have all kinds of fancy stuff that affects performance. Also, if you want something fancy, you have fish now. I still use zsh (without oh-my-zsh) out of habit, but if I had to start over now, I would probably stay with bash, or maybe use fish, but not zsh.
- soraminazuki 3y ago
  zsh has better completion, command line editing capabilities, and language features. It's not even close. I can port my bash configuration to zsh in mere minutes, but it's impossible to port my zsh configuration to bash. The reason is simple. Bash just lacks so many features. > For example, it is common to see command line tool come with bash completion files, less so with zsh. It's rare for bash to complete anything but filenames. zsh gives me subcommands and flags with descriptions. > Also, while bash got better support where it matters, zsh mostly got bloat in the form of oh-my-zsh and the likes. zsh is a well-maintained project. It makes no sense to ignore that and instead fault them for oh-my-zsh's shortcomings, as if it has anything to do with upstream zsh. zsh doesn't rely on oh-my-zsh for any of its features.
  - unaindz 3y ago
    This. Plus it's not even slow. My zsh config does x5 as much as bash while being faster. If you want it fast keep away from plugin managers like oh-my-zsh and async load as much as you can.
  - stevekemp 3y ago
    > It's rare for bash to complete anything but filenames. zsh gives me subcommands and flags with descriptions. I think that hasn't been true for a very long time, although it might be that I'm biased because I've been installing the "bash completion" package alongside bash on all my systems. (In my case "apt-get install bash-completion".) bash typically completes commands, sub-commands, flags, and file/directory names for me. It is also common for new tools to ship with bash-completion support, often missing support for other shells.
    - soraminazuki 3y ago
      I have tried bash-completion and it doesn't make much of a difference. It's already underwhelming that bash requires third party completion frameworks to get completion working beyond command names, variable names, and filenames. But even with bash-completion, completion for the most common commands are either missing or incomplete. Take grep, for example. I only get --binary-files, --context, and --null. That's only three out of a few dozen options. Or tar, which only shows c, t, and x. For ls, probably the most frequently used command, only --color and --help. Git requires another third party completion framework. Unfortunately, those are the best case examples. For other commands like vim or emacs, option completion is missing. The same even goes for bash builtins. And don't get me started on completion behavior. Though I will say the lack of descriptions for each option takes away half the usefulness of shell completion. zsh can actually use completion functions written for bash. But I never felt the need.
      - stevekemp 3y ago
        Your reply suprises me, when I run "grep --[TAB]" I go a whole bunch of flags. I'd probably suggest that bash-completion being a "third party" package is a good thing, it's entirely external to the bash project and that's good. It means we're not pinned to releases alongside the shell. After all it has support for ssh, grep, and many more tools they should be able to contribute to one location and the shell-project itself would be thee wrong one. bash completion provides a framework for adding completion to "stuff", and the git-package on Debian uses that to drop a file into `/usr/share/bash-completion/completions/` so there's no need for any other third party framework: 1. Install git 2. Install bash completion package 3. Everything should just work. Anyway I guess a lot of this will depend on the system you're using, and how their packages are configured, but I don't personally believe that bash completion is in a terrible state.
ahartmetz 3y ago
I have had someone sing the praises of zsh, tried it, was like "that isn't so much better than bash" and went back. Then I heard about oh-my-zsh, tried zsh with oh-my-zsh, and stayed. I still think it's not a big deal, but it is an improvement.
- rnd0 3y ago
  I'm pretty much in the same boat. Heck, once I learned that BSD's /bin/sh gives you history (and I think filename completion?) I switched to that when I'm on BSD (I don't feel strongly enough about it on Lnux, which often uses dash and is more of a headache). Then again, I don't do much with the shell per se (not writing scripts or any thing like that).

erhaetherth 3y ago

It still boggles my mind how CLIs are slow as molasses even on high end PCs. I will never understand.

GuB-42 3y ago

Bash improved a lot since the early 2000s, when I first assessed my options for shells and settled on zsh. As an interactive shell, zsh did more, and better, than any other shell I tried. Maybe it was slow, but not enough to matter at the time I used it. I guess that bash being the default practically everywhere nowadays made it so that it got a lot of love. For example, it is common to see command line tool come with bash completion files, less so with zsh. Also, while bash got better support where it matters, zsh mostly got bloat in the form of oh-my-zsh and the likes. You don't have to use it, but if you do, you tend to have all kinds of fancy stuff that affects performance. Also, if you want something fancy, you have fish now. I still use zsh (without oh-my-zsh) out of habit, but if I had to start over now, I would probably stay with bash, or maybe use fish, but not zsh.

soraminazuki 3y ago
zsh has better completion, command line editing capabilities, and language features. It's not even close. I can port my bash configuration to zsh in mere minutes, but it's impossible to port my zsh configuration to bash. The reason is simple. Bash just lacks so many features. > For example, it is common to see command line tool come with bash completion files, less so with zsh. It's rare for bash to complete anything but filenames. zsh gives me subcommands and flags with descriptions. > Also, while bash got better support where it matters, zsh mostly got bloat in the form of oh-my-zsh and the likes. zsh is a well-maintained project. It makes no sense to ignore that and instead fault them for oh-my-zsh's shortcomings, as if it has anything to do with upstream zsh. zsh doesn't rely on oh-my-zsh for any of its features.
- unaindz 3y ago
  This. Plus it's not even slow. My zsh config does x5 as much as bash while being faster. If you want it fast keep away from plugin managers like oh-my-zsh and async load as much as you can.
- stevekemp 3y ago
  > It's rare for bash to complete anything but filenames. zsh gives me subcommands and flags with descriptions. I think that hasn't been true for a very long time, although it might be that I'm biased because I've been installing the "bash completion" package alongside bash on all my systems. (In my case "apt-get install bash-completion".) bash typically completes commands, sub-commands, flags, and file/directory names for me. It is also common for new tools to ship with bash-completion support, often missing support for other shells.
  - soraminazuki 3y ago
    I have tried bash-completion and it doesn't make much of a difference. It's already underwhelming that bash requires third party completion frameworks to get completion working beyond command names, variable names, and filenames. But even with bash-completion, completion for the most common commands are either missing or incomplete. Take grep, for example. I only get --binary-files, --context, and --null. That's only three out of a few dozen options. Or tar, which only shows c, t, and x. For ls, probably the most frequently used command, only --color and --help. Git requires another third party completion framework. Unfortunately, those are the best case examples. For other commands like vim or emacs, option completion is missing. The same even goes for bash builtins. And don't get me started on completion behavior. Though I will say the lack of descriptions for each option takes away half the usefulness of shell completion. zsh can actually use completion functions written for bash. But I never felt the need.
    - stevekemp 3y ago
      Your reply suprises me, when I run "grep --[TAB]" I go a whole bunch of flags. I'd probably suggest that bash-completion being a "third party" package is a good thing, it's entirely external to the bash project and that's good. It means we're not pinned to releases alongside the shell. After all it has support for ssh, grep, and many more tools they should be able to contribute to one location and the shell-project itself would be thee wrong one. bash completion provides a framework for adding completion to "stuff", and the git-package on Debian uses that to drop a file into `/usr/share/bash-completion/completions/` so there's no need for any other third party framework: 1. Install git 2. Install bash completion package 3. Everything should just work. Anyway I guess a lot of this will depend on the system you're using, and how their packages are configured, but I don't personally believe that bash completion is in a terrible state.

ahartmetz 3y ago

I have had someone sing the praises of zsh, tried it, was like "that isn't so much better than bash" and went back. Then I heard about oh-my-zsh, tried zsh with oh-my-zsh, and stayed. I still think it's not a big deal, but it is an improvement.

rnd0 3y ago
I'm pretty much in the same boat. Heck, once I learned that BSD's /bin/sh gives you history (and I think filename completion?) I switched to that when I'm on BSD (I don't feel strongly enough about it on Lnux, which often uses dash and is more of a headache). Then again, I don't do much with the shell per se (not writing scripts or any thing like that).