Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kali Linux 2020.3

kali.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#51

Post by ti_ranger »

sbarre wrote: post #40
ti_ranger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Oh-my-zsh has a lot of plugins for auto-completion As does bash-completion, which is available in many (but not all :-/) Linux distros and via Homebrew on MacOS and [pre-dates]( https://github.com/scop/bash-completion/tree/09b07d57a7031d9... ) [oh-my-zsh]( https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/5da20b9dddb1f7a91106... ) by about 6 years. But, zsh users and oh-my-zsh fan-boys seem to be entirely ignorant of bash-…

I never understand comments like these. Why do you have to twist this to be about "ignorant fan boys"? Not enough drama in the world already?

Actually, maybe it's more the fact that at a prominent tech company: * zsh is the default shell on a large proportion of servers that have read-only /home, so you can't easily change to your preferred shell * a training guide that many new developers follows states incorrectly that:

> If you are using Bash and you have the option of using ZSH, you should switch to it. ZSH has additional auto-complete and history features that Bash doesn’t have (but don't worry - those features will not be relevant to this tutorial.)

oh-my-zsh seems to be recommended by a lot of developers in this company, even though: * the default mechanism to install is curl|sh (there is no Homebrew package) on developer machines which have privileged access to a lot of resources * installing it via its recommended installation procedure on dev machines would violate company policies, whereas installing bash-completion wouldn't

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#53

Post by xenadu02 »

kristopolous wrote: post #4
bartvk wrote: post #2

That's a funky prompt they're showing there. Since it came by default on macOS, I'm using zsh. But to be honest, my Linux box still remains on bash. The differences, to my usage, are minimal.

Fun fact: That's a legacy openstep thing. I was using an x86 version of openstep in a VM just for fun a few months back and it had a 1994 copy of zsh on it. I also remember using it on OS X server 1.0 in around 1999. I have an actual nextstation in my parents garage. I wonder if it's on that...

OS X used tcsh as the default shell way back. Later it used bash 3.x as the default up until Catalina. As of Catalina zsh is the default for new users (and the version of zsh that ships with macOS is relatively up to date).

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#54

Post by 50ckpuppet »

DominikD wrote: post #25
ggm wrote: post #8

Fascinating that the conversation goes to zsh over bash. You'd think a decent Bluetooth risk tool was more relevant given the covid19 dependency on more bt always on and so more bt drive-by

People who don't use Kali comment on whether move from one shell to another was right for the Kali users. This drive by commenting is sadly omnipresent in the open source world. OpenBSD uses CVS? They should use git. XServer? Why not Wayland? Oh, libsdl is using Mercurial, but they should totally use git. And on, and on.

Drive by comments are typically from people who want to sound like an expert.

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#55

Post by Jach »

enriquto wrote: post #22
Nullabillity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. Zsh can use the subfolders to disambiguate which parent you meant, bash can't.

Wow. While this is quite slick (and must have been funny to implement), I actually hate this kind of "magic" behavior.

For about a decade I've had in my bashrc

    C() { cd `$HOME/path-selector.sh "$@"`; }
where path-selector is from https://github.com/MarcWeber/path-selector

Opt-in bash extensions can do basically whatever people complain bash can't do. Though to be honest I don't use it that much over the last, say, 5 years. If I know a deep directory tree that well, I can just type it explicitly and/or tab complete it without losing much time. If I don't know it that well, FZF is quite nice.

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#56

Post by Spooky23 »

saagarjha wrote: post #17

With a heavy heart I join the rest of the zsh discussion because these aren’t even factual: > You can do a lot of advanced things with bash, and customize it to do even more, but ZSH allows you to do even more. Bash can do a lot of things zsh can’t, and vice versa. > Fish is a nice shell (probably nicer than ZSH), but realistically it was not a real consideration due to the fact that it is not POSIX compatible. Neith…

What we really need here is for someone to explain why all of these issues are moot because Emacs the best, most ethical solution.

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#57

Post by jdubb »

Taek wrote: post #35
ggm wrote: post #8

Fascinating that the conversation goes to zsh over bash. You'd think a decent Bluetooth risk tool was more relevant given the covid19 dependency on more bt always on and so more bt drive-by

I have to say this is the most disappointed I've been with a comment section in a while. Not that the comments are awful or in bad faith, it's just not got any of the topics I was hoping to read about.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is because the original title was something like "Kali Linux switches from bash to zsh".

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#58

Post by enriquto »

Since this has turned into a bash/zsh thread...

The only real (non-cosmetic) feature missing in bash that zsh has is process substitution using files. In bash you can use <() to capture the output of a pipeline into a filename, but it is implemented as a non-seekable pipe. In zsh, you have that, but you also have =() that gives you a real, temporary file. It is extremely useful in the rare cases when it is needed.

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#59

Post by zests »

mapolone wrote: post #32
idoubtit wrote: post #11

I think the move of Kali Linux from bash to zsh is sane. I sometimes have to use the default shell of Linux distribution, especially on servers, and my main pain points with bash are: - The history is editable by default. If I move to a previous history line and change it, the old line disappears. Hitting Ctrl-c will remove it from the history. - If I use simultaneous shells (screen, tmux, or several ssh connections)…

Not to mention: - Oh-my-zsh has a lot of plugins for auto-completion - FZF (fuzzy finder), for command history is a big hit (supports bash too)

I tried using ZSH. My first experience was using a bunch of plugins like zsh spaceship and having the shell slow to a complete halt.

I then used "stock zsh" and running commands was fine except some autocompletes like git-autocomplete were terribly slow and, for example, did not support `git switch`. This broke my workflow and it was easier to just go back to bash than to figure out how zsh works. I found that autocomplete in zsh is a lot more opaque than in bash. I'm sure there are ways to fix it. My way was to switch to bash.

(Now I use magit so the need is lessened.)

Re: Kali Linux 2020.3

#60

Post by elagost »

Timpy wrote: post #48

I always thought Kali wasn't really for daily use. Not a vehicle for every day driving around town, more like a secondary vehicle you only use for work. HiDPI, tool icons, and gnome themes make it seem otherwise. Sure, these things are nice whether you're using it for work or play, but I wonder. Is anybody running kali as their daily driver?

This is not recommended. It's a specific tool for a specific purpose. I seem to recall a while back that it even had some default security options disabled on the system to allow for all the crazy stuff it does. It's not meant to be a replacement for a Linux Mint or Ubuntu desktop system.

Run it on a second laptop, on a USB stick, or in a virtual machine (that you cede access to the networking hardware).

Post reply on HN