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Use Zsh

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Re: Use Zsh

#51

Post by oinksoft »

fusiongyro wrote: post #25
benvd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So put your zsh config in a git repo, clone it wherever you need it and symlink to the repo?

Uh huh. Now I have to install git on all those computers as well as make sure there's a recent-enough copy of zsh. Much less work that way. Or I can just use the bash that's already there.

Your concern about git however is unrelated to shell choice. I customize bash quite a bit (my own completions, etc.) and maintain dotfiles in a git repository. I have a post-receive hook that tars up my dotfiles and puts them at a public location on my http server that only I know about so that I can easily get them when I'm on a machine without git. I'm not going to do that for every machine, but if I'm stuck debugging something on some odd machine, at the very last I want my vim settings around.

Re: Use Zsh

#52

Post by zobzu »

So I heard "use zsh its so cool" since about 12 years, every 3 month. Here's the new post, just in time.

Don't get me wrong, I use zsh. I also use bash. I end up using more bash than zsh though. The reason are the same as 12 years ago. If zsh was the most popular shell right now the same people would be praising bash.

- they're equally fast for what we need them to do

- they've similar features

- bash is everywhere

- bash is the standard for all scripts

- zsh has extra complexity

Oh yeah and stop using pg-up in bash, use ctrl-r. And if different is cool, I don't know, use fish.

Re: Use Zsh

#53

Post by nessus42 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #27

This article really feels like bikeshedding to me. I'm always going to use whatever shell comes default with the OS I'm on (which almost always means Bash), simply because changing the shell is an unnecessary block of time that could instead be used writing software. I need a really good reason to switch, something the equivalent of pipes, and if the #1 reason you can give is "Powerful context based tab completion",…

Personally, I spend so much time in the shell that it's definitely worth spending some effort to increase my ability to use it productively. I switched from tcsh to bash about a year ago after decades of using tcsh. Switching to bash was a mistake; I probably should have switched to zsh instead. Bash is broken as an interactive shell in more ways than I can enumerate; it is a constant source of annoyance and frustration. I have no great love for tcsh, but it is far better as an interactive shell, despite the fact that it truly sucks for programming.

Re what comes with the OS: I haven't logged into a Unix/Linux box in a decade that hasn't had zsh on it.

Re: Use Zsh

#54

Post by darkstalker »

Apreche wrote: post #34
sstephenson wrote: post #22

Here's another perspective: http://sstephenson.us/posts/on-configuration

I independently wrote pretty much the same post. http://www.apreche.net/dont-change-the-computer-change-yours...

Probably you used Linux at the time it wasn't very mature. I'm running Gentoo now and never had to reinstall to fix things. With modern computers compiling is very fast, most software compiles in less than a minute. I spend more time solving binary compatibility problems with CentOS (at work) than compiling stuff via portage.

I recently bought a new video card (nvidia), plugged it and then booted linux. It just worked out of the box. Then I proceeded to boot windows, it started on a low resolution video mode because the current driver failed. So had to download and install latest drivers manually. The whole procedure took like 3 or 4 restarts.

Re: Use Zsh

#55

Post by fusiongyro »

oinksoft wrote: post #51
fusiongyro wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh huh. Now I have to install git on all those computers as well as make sure there's a recent-enough copy of zsh. Much less work that way. Or I can just use the bash that's already there.

Your concern about git however is unrelated to shell choice. I customize bash quite a bit (my own completions, etc.) and maintain dotfiles in a git repository. I have a post-receive hook that tars up my dotfiles and puts them at a public location on my http server that only I know about so that I can easily get them when I'm on a machine without git. I'm not going to do that for every machine, but if I'm stuck debugg…

It makes more sense for vim than zsh though. What color your prompt is has a lot less bearing on your productivity than your editor configuration. (Though I don't do much of that either).

Re: Use Zsh

#56

Post by jlgreco »

eblume wrote: post #31

I tried using oh-my-zsh, but all of a sudden bringing up a new terminal (on OS X) went from taking ~1 second to ~5 seconds. Totally killed my interest in zsh. I'm sure there's a way to make it all work nicely, but bash has been doing just fine for me, I don't feel the need to figure out an entirely new configuration system for a tool that ultimately has little new utility in my workflow.

Honestly I do not understand the purpose of oh-my-zsh. I've been using zsh without it for years, if I want something for it I just take 5 minutes on google to figure it out. No sense in having a lot of stuff turned on by default that I don't know how to use.

I feel the same way about Vim, but for some reason more people in the Vim community seem to agree with me.

Re: Use Zsh

#58

Post by jlgreco »

ludwigvan wrote: post #4

> In Bash, we often use PgUp to search through the command history. In Zsh you just write part of the command and press Up. This will let you cycle through all command lines that contain what you have written, not just those that begins with it. If you don’t write anything Up works as usual, by cycling through all commands. This is not true, you can do that in Bash too (via .inputrc) http://blog.theliuy.com/2011/inpu…

It depends on which completion type you want to use. Zsh can do either.

Re: Use Zsh

#59

Post by [deleted] »

zobzu wrote: post #52

So I heard "use zsh its so cool" since about 12 years, every 3 month. Here's the new post, just in time. Don't get me wrong, I use zsh. I also use bash. I end up using more bash than zsh though. The reason are the same as 12 years ago. If zsh was the most popular shell right now the same people would be praising bash. - they're equally fast for what we need them to do - they've similar features - bash is everywhere -…

[deleted]

Re: Use Zsh

#60

Post by jlgreco »

buster wrote: post #42

Been trying zsh for a while, ran fish for 1 or 2 years. Am back to bash because to many scripts rely on bash and wont't work on zsh or fish. Thing is, it's note that hard to get the mentioned features in bash. Good tab completion, good git enabled color prompt, ssh completion, host completion, command completion and (my favorite) "start typing, press up, cycle through command history with the given input" aka reverse…

I use zsh and write all my ~/bin/ scripts in bash.. what problems did you encounter? I don't see how issues could possibly even occur.
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