Those who use UNIX-like operating systems, as in the case of GNU / Linux, they spend many hours sitting in front of a terminal, a console from which they work in text mode in many cases. Even if you are not a system administrator and you are a Linux user, surely more than once you have had to use the console to perform any type of installation or management that you have not been able to do from the graphical environment. Therefore, having a good shell is essential for the efficiency of our work.
As always happens in the open source world, there are many forks and alternatives for the same tool, making it sometimes difficult to choose between the existing ones. And of course the shells were not going to be alien to this, that is why there are many and all of them with advantages or peculiarities compared to the rest that may interest us according to our needs or tastes. That is why in this article we will introduce you five of the best, in case you didn't know them yet ...
The selection is as follows:
- Bash: it is the most popular and widespread, it is installed by default in most distributions. It is a clone of the original Bourne shell that AT&T created for UNIX. As I always say, to taste the colors, but for me personally it is the one I like the most ... that does not mean that it is neither better nor worse.
- KSH: Korn Shell is another of the shells created by AT & T's Bell Labs, specifically by David Korn, hence its name. The motivation was to improve what already exists. Although it is not as popular in the Linux world as bash, it is a great and powerful shell.
- ZSH: originally created in the 90's and with similar characteristics to ksh, it was also created based on the Bourne Shell as bash, fixing and improving many things. Both this and the previous ones are open source, specifically this one is distributed under the MIT license.
- HSCT: It is based on the famous Berkeley csh, a C shell for Unix and from which it inherits some features with other improvements that have been incorporated. It is distributed under a BSD license.
- FISH: it is a less known shell even than the previous ones. It is relatively modern, since it was created in 2005 and includes numerous changes that bring a fresh and friendlier air.
The most practical and complete is Fish but it is incompatible with the rest of shells. Zsh is my second choice.
Who told you that Unix is Gnu / linux, Unix is a proprietary operating system created in bell labs, the gnu / linux kernel is simply called Linux.
Now speaking of command interpreter, so you must describe the Shells because they are programs that filter the reading of the bash in another program to wait for commands, they are called Shells.
There you lack many terminals such as Gnome terminal, Konsole, Xterm, the strongest Yakuake and finally mine Call Manager - ((JOU)) which is an Operations Manager, let's say it is the best of all because it has menus with help explanations executions Synchronize commands, add them to a list, load them from a txt and have an alarm etc.