Zsh vs fish performance. By the end, you’ll know exactly which shell is .

Zsh vs fish performance Both fish and zsh can install plugins easily. It is highly configurable and works well with POSIX. Reply reply captainstormy • Moreover, there are tools were made on top of those to provide more functionalities, and fill some of the gaps, for instance, oh-my-zsh, Prezto, oh-my-fish, and much more. Before diving into Fish setup, let's examine how it compares to the established players in the shell ecosystem. Fish's scripting language is different than Zsh and Bash. Oh My ZSH - A delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. Can't find the item you need? Many items have not been posted online yet. Great documentation. Además, la forma del autocompletado, los colores, y otro montón de detalles, lo hacen extremadamente adictivo y atractivo. Oct 16, 2025 · In this comprehensive comparison, we’ll dive deep into Zsh vs Fish, exploring their features, performance, customization options, and use cases. . Oct 5, 2025 · ShellBench is a free benchmark tool written in a shell script for POSIX shell comparison. That's like the big plus of fish that its scripting language is sooo much saner than sh or bash. Fairly straightforward configuration. I was impressed by its performance and the built-in features in the default setup. But what's the difference, and why are there so many? What Do Shells Do? When you sign in at the command line or launch a terminal window on Linux, the system launches the shell None of them matter for gaming, it's merely preference and use case for your choices. starship ☄🌌️ The minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell! (by starship) zsh-theme fish-theme zsh-prompt fish-prompt shell-prompt oh-my-zsh Rust starship Zsh Powershell Fish Bash Source Code starship. How do Fish and Zsh syntaxes compare to Bash here? Zsh remains close Fish provides all of those features natively, is much easier to configure (ever tried writing a completion script for zsh vs fish?), and is significantly faster. On the down side it has few quirks (loops, wildcards for example). Dec 17, 2023 · Chapter 2: Differences between Nushell and Bash, ZSH or Fish Now, you might be wondering, how is Nushell different from other shells like Bash, ZSH, or Fish? Well, the key difference lies in how Nushell treats things as data instead of raw text. Here we discuss the key differences of Fish vs Zsh with infographics and comparison table. Jun 13, 2025 · Terminal Showdown: Bash vs Zsh vs Fish for Power Users The command-line shell is the heart of productivity for Linux power users. On macOS and Linux, this includes bash, zsh, fish, and PowerShell (pwsh). Zsh (Z shell) - An extended Bourne shell with a large number of improvements. But as my needs change, so does my shell. May 12, 2025 · Bash, Zsh, and Fish each have their own strengths and weaknesses, depending on your needs and level of expertise. I have zero patience with wasting my time configuring tooling. This article explodes some advantages of Fish, such as pre-installed plugins, faster and simpler setup, along with a step-by-step guide to make your migration seamless and efficient. Among all shells, bash strikes a good balance between portability and DX. Zsh is a particularly popular alternative, and there are other shells, like ash, dash, fish, and tcsh. This way, you can test and compare the performance of various shells like Sh, Bash, Dash, Zsh, Fish, etc. Scripting Capabilities Developers spend much of shell time writing scripts to automate tasks or run builds. Feb 6, 2024 · Compare fish (Friendly Interactive SHell) vs Zsh (Z shell) and 16 other options side by side to learn "What are the best UNIX shells?" Fish for bash users ¶ This is to give you a quick overview if you come from bash (or to a lesser extent other shells like zsh or ksh) and want to know how fish differs. It’s a plugin system to integrate multiple Zsh scripts. I believe both have the necessary plugins and themes I need, so it all just comes down to speed. But Kirill, if it’s more powerful, why did you switch then? Plugins are good and bad. Now, we go further: into interpreter design, scripting flow, plugin performance, real-world developer case studies, and benchmarked customization. Thus far it’s been a good experience so thought I’d share why I did it, how I tweaked my setup and my thoughts on Fish so far. Fish Shell - A command line shell intended mostly for interactive use. Written in Rust. com. And many of the plugins that i used for zsh are native in fishshell, for example autocomplete. This article will look at Bash vs Zsh, focusing on their features, performance, extensibility, and community support. Some of the plugins are inspired by fish’s built-in functions. If fish is friendlier than zsh, why do I see more people using zsh instead of fish? And what are the main differences… Feb 20, 2024 · Why I Migrated to Fish Shell from Oh My Zsh Choosing a Unix shell boils down to personal preference, specific needs, and the features that one values the most in their daily usage. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Using zsh or fish or any other, will make it hard for others to understand / collaborate. Jul 19, 2023 · A quick beginner's intro to popular Linux Shells - Bash, Fish and Zsh with their features, installation methods and guide for you. Many things are similar - they both fundamentally expand commandlines to execute commands, have pipes, redirections ohmyzsh VS oh-my-fish Compare ohmyzsh vs oh-my-fish and see what are their differences. By the end, you’ll see why Fish provides a better overall experience for most users. Other than that, there are some features that feel “nicer” in Fish, such as vi mode and completion menus, and I consider good performance to be a feature in and of itself. I'm biased of course but when it comes to just asking whether there's a noticeable difference or not, as i think i'm starting to notice a difference after changing from fish to zsh especially… > Use bash. I also share some of the many mistakes I made in trying to configure fish to behave a bit like a Apr 12, 2023 · Guide to the top differences between Fish vs Zsh. Zsh Choosing the right shell is like selecting the perfect fishing hook for your target species—each option serves different purposes and fishing conditions. rs and with that changed my shell to Fish. Most of the people who Disclaimer: I made powerlevel10k. The features and improvements it makes on plain old bash are impressive. Let’s check the individual features now. Much faster. zsh felt like it fought me every step of trying to configure it to be halfway decent. In my experience, everyone who complains about zsh being slow is using one of those plugin packages like prezto or oh my zsh. Pros of Starship: Works in many shells. Fish prompts just involve defining the fish_prompt function, so Starship's init creates a wrapper fish_prompt wrapper function that calls into the Starship executable. In this Markdown code, we will discuss the key differences between Fish Shell and Nu Shell. This approach opens up more nuanced programming patterns and allows for easier parsing of various Explore the key differences between Bash, Zsh, and Fish shells to enhance your software development workflow. Can be configured with a wizard. Fish is user-friendly and great for beginners, focusing on ease of use. starship VS powerlevel10k Compare starship vs powerlevel10k and see what are their differences. Bash and Why You Should Switch to Fish There are two kinds of *nix users: the cautious and the adventurous Here’s a fact, most developers love Unix and Unix-like (Linux-based) … As a user and fan of fish, I hesitate to recommend it to people because support and availability for fish is just not where other POSIX shells are. 118 votes, 127 comments. Zsh is often combined with Oh My Zsh a plugin system and collection of plugins that enhance the shell. By the end, you’ll know exactly which shell is Dec 27, 2023 · In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the key differences between ZSH and Fish shell. "Auto suggestions" is the primary reason people pick fish (Friendly Interactive SHell) over the competition. It shouldn’t matter, except for the fact that if you use the shell with any Those are two total different projects that do not conflict at all. Jul 30, 2019 · My experience using zsh and changing to using the friendly interactive shell to improve performance Hi! Just want to tell you guys that i moved from zsh shell to fish shell. Especially when using zsh plugins the loading time alone is significantly Sep 26, 2022 · Profiling both Fish and ZSH, I figured out that both of them have performance degradation due to SDKMan enabled (manages multiple Java Distributions similar to NVM). There are fish plugins (albeit not that many like zsh), but you rarely need them because most things are builtin. rs Suggest alternative Edit details Sep 13, 2025 · Find the best shell for your Linux workflow. May 18, 2025 · The command-line shell is an essential tool for interacting with the operating system, allowing users to execute commands, automate tasks, and run scripts efficiently. This is a different mindset from the giant zsh configs, “plugin managers” and other junk that is wholly irrelevant to using the shell. In the question “What are the best UNIX shells?” fish (Friendly Interactive SHell) is ranked 1st while zsh is ranked 2nd. Aug 21, 2024 · Comparison of Bash, Elvish, NuShell, Murex, es-shell, fish, xonsh, PowerShell, Oil and Ion shells - comparison-of-shells. Aug 24, 2025 · Prompt Theme and Plugin Setup for Bash, Zsh, and Fish explained step by step. Old AF by some standards. Apr 7, 2021 · Zsh Zsh is for people wanting an interesting mix of a good compatibility with Bash and an ecosystem of plugins with a reasonable installation process. Fish is intentionally not POSIX-compatible and as such some of the things you are used to work differently. Starship also supports Fish, earning some positive points from me. Feb 7, 2025 · BASH, ZSH e FISH são os 3 shells mais populares do mundo Linux, (e até do mundo BSD com o macOS) alguns sendo utilizados em distros famosas como o Kali Linux e até o macOS, enquanto o BASH Jul 30, 2019 · I've been using the zsh terminal with the infamous oh-my-zsh framework for many years now. Jul 1, 2023 · This post documents the steps I took to speed up my Zsh startup times by more than 95%. Conclusion In summary, personal tastes, needs, and use cases ultimately determine which of Bash, Zsh, and Fish to choose. Apr 3, 2023 · Bash offers stability and widespread support, Zsh provides enhanced customization and advanced features, and Fish focuses on user-friendliness and simplicity. Reply reply Masterflitzer • Aug 10, 2019 · Why I Use Fish Shell Over Bash and Zsh Things that make Fish great, caveats, and the plugins you need One of the main attractions of Apple is that things “just work”. On Windows, this includes PowerShell 5 & 7, WSL2, and Git Bash. This blog post tells the story of my upgrade and the pitfalls and benefits of moving to Fish Shell. Zsh uses more aliases whereas Fish avoids using aliases in the scripting language. zsh zsh can do more than fish can do with plugins. Fish Shell and Nu Shell are both modern, user-friendly command line shells that provide enhanced features and functionalities compared to traditional shell environments. Users can navigate Dec 28, 2022 · To install fish on a Linux distribution, you can use the same process as above, substituting “fish” for “zsh. Pros of powerlevel10k: More features: Transient Prompt, Instant Prompt, Show on Command, etc. Jun 16, 2025 · Performance: Depending on individual use habits and system setups, some users may find Fish to be slower than Bash or Zsh in some instances, especially when working with sophisticated scripts or resource-intensive processes. So much neater. Just recently a colleague told me he's using starship. md May 6, 2020 · When I set up my Windows computer, I had the chance to take another look at the shell I'm using. We compare Bash, Zsh, and Fish, with pros and cons to help you decide which is right for you. Bash vs. While all modern shells are generally fast enough for interactive use, there can be differences in Apr 29, 2024 · With both Bash and Zsh providing compelling advantages, selecting the right shell for scripting can significantly shape your productivity, and simplify your daily tasks. Zsh also boasts powerful command-line editing capabilities. So, I'd do ZSH &/OR NuShell -- but Fish was a savior to me when I first started and wasn't sure how to improve ZSH (and didn't know about nushell) [Fish scripting is slightly better than ZSH scripting. Make your choice with our expert guide. Zsh shell command languages, explore their differences, and see how to use both successfully. Zsh vs. I've gotten zsh really close to what all I liked about Fish, so that is what I use now. What are your reasons for using zsh or sticking with bash? Add a Comment Sort by: Best Open comment sort options Top New Controversial Old Q&A [deleted] • Nov 26, 2024 · This script times the execution of the command ls -l, which could be useful to compare performance differences between Bash and Zsh. Nov 26, 2024 · Discover how switching from Zsh to Fish shell can enhance your productivity with faster performance, rich built-in functionality, and an user-friendly configuration experience. Which one is faster? starship is written in rust so maybe it has Mar 24, 2024 · zsh for interactive use, because I like a few of it's extra features vs bash (cd -<tab>, cd this that) and I haven't bothered with fish yet. For a long time … By contrast: NuShell also has new syntax and costs like Fish, but it offers qualitative improvements over a tricked out ZSH. While OMF can provide a prompt, Starship can handle everything involved in a prompt. Fish is easier for me to read and understand, even months later coming back to a script. Personally, I think keeping in good habits re: POSIX sh compliance is important enough to stick with bash, or ksh if I care more about performance. Compare starship vs fish-shell and see what are their differences. That made it popular for interactive use (but not for scripting). And a lot of zsh scripts out there aren’t exactly bulletproof. Starship (Shell Prompt) - Starship is the minimal, blazing fast, and extremely customizable prompt for any shell! The prompt shows information you need while you're working, while staying sleek and out of the way. Apr 22, 2024 · As you can see, each shell has its own strengths and weaknesses. ZSH has some features fish doesn't and vise versa, fish has automatic man page browsing, syntax highlighting, full true color support, automaic suggetions and more, while zsh allows for changing every little bit about it. In this blog, we’ll explore the key features of Zsh and Bash, helping you decide which one suits your workflow best. At first I thought it's just another terminal, but turns out it's a customisation prompt like omz. I've always been using oh-my-zsh (omz) on mac/linux and oh-my-bash on windows. I like zsh personally, but bash and fish are perfectly useable. zsh certainly has the bigger ecosystem of available plugins, but fish actually doesn't need this: When I started out with fish, I had a handfull of plugins installed, but over the years switched to things that are either included by default, or written my own fish functions. The difference in performance is outstanding! Dont have to wait like 10 seconds for the terminal and shell to fire up. Bash is a solid choice for those who value compatibility and simplicity, while Zsh and Fish offer more advanced features and customization options. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, themes. Pretty much EVERYTHING you find on the Web and all the random scripts and tools you find are either for Bash or standard POSIX Shell Script, and Fish (unless it's changed) is not POSIX-compliant. Feb 26, 2025 · Fish ya incluye un montón de funcionalidades por defecto que hay que añadir en ZSH como plugins. Discover which shell suits your workflow—scripting, customization, or beginner-friendly use. However, the default embedded terminal in macOS is still lacking something. Fish is nice because you don't have to spend a lot of effort, plus you can maintain a very minimal, readable configuration. For scripting, bash, though I'm very excited about nushell getting more mature. Dive into the debate of fish vs bash. ” On a Debian-based system (such as Ubuntu), you can use the following command: Oct 1, 2024 · Of course, ZSH has all these features, but they are not built-in, so they probably contributed to the performance difference we observed earlier. Jun 8, 2019 · You'll find some commands that bash handles better and some that zsh handles better. Moving from Zsh to Fish 🐠 I recently began experimenting with Fish after a long time using zsh and oh my zsh. Whether you’re writing scripts, managing systems, or navigating … Feb 6, 2024 · fish (Friendly Interactive SHell), Zsh (Z shell), and Bash (Bourne-Again SHell) are probably your best bets out of the 17 options considered. It's gotten better with time, but VSCode extensions still don't setup conda properly in my fish shell. Sep 2, 2021 · zsh-theme fish-theme zsh-prompt fish-prompt shell-prompt oh-my-zsh Rust starship Zsh Powershell Fish Bash Source Code starship. So what do the zsh veterans know about this? Im also open to the idea of performance being such a micro optimization given the millisecond differences between them all. That's why iTerm and other terminal like Hyper. Let’s dive in! What Is a Shell? A shell is more This article dives into the differences between Bash and Zsh, comparing their features, scripting capabilities, performance, and customization options to help users choose the right shell for their needs in 2025. See also What zsh features do you use?, What features are in zsh and missing from Bash, or vice versa?, What are the practical differences between Bash and Zsh?. Aug 26, 2023 · Best part of fish is how little config is needed. I think fish is quite a bit different in terms of syntax and semantics (I'm not very familiar with it), but zsh is essentially the same as bash except without most of the needless footguns and awkwardness. At May 12, 2025 · While there are various shell options available, Bash, Zsh, and Fish stand out as the most popular choices, each offering a unique set of features, making it crucial to understand their differences in order to select the right one for your needs. I haven’t tweaked my shell config in 7 or 8 months now. This is not just a comparison. I want to share which one I chose and how I went about setting it up. However, Zsh shines in performance and scripting capabilities, making it ideal for advanced automation tasks. Besides, our top traditional tailors and craftsmen can custom make it specially for you at a very reasonable price. Oh my zsh covers several aspects. See full list on carlosbecker. Mar 23, 2023 · Shell Comparison: Analyzing the Pros and Cons of Bash, Zsh, Fish, and Tcsh Helping you decide which shell to use！ Before we begin comparing various shells, if you’re not sure what a shell is Sep 1, 2024 · Here are just some of the extensions possible: [showcase some Zsh plugins and themes] Fish limits addons to "completions" – but prioritizes a simplified experience with smart defaults aimed not to need heavy tweaking. Jan 10, 2025 · When it comes to command-line interfaces, the debate between Zsh vs Bash often takes center stage. Discover the strengths and quirks of each shell to find your perfect command line companion. Tcsh was once (up to the early 1990s) the shell with the best interactive features, like its predecessor csh. Jul 25, 2022 · Fish stands for Friendly interactive shell, and it really tries to live by it’s name. Fish vs. May 19, 2019 · fish相比zsh开箱即用，自带很多常用命令的补全，而且支持语法高亮和根据历史记录自动建议命令行。 这种功能也可以在zsh上实在，要装上zsh-autosuggestions和zsh-syntax-highlighting，不过这两个插件都很重量级，装上之后zsh就会卡很多，这也是这次我想要换fish的主要 Nov 23, 2022 · I just started to use fish which seems like most of the things oh-my-zsh does but without the hassle. Fish and zsh are probably the most customizable, but bash is still fine. Feel free to describe it in the following form or email us at service@china-cart. Shell Performance One factor to consider when choosing a shell is performance. I'm increasingly seeing Zsh being recommended, but I'm having trouble finding a useful eplanation about its advantages vs bash. Zsh is usually more precise, but sometimes gives up where bash does something that isn't correct but is sensible. Jun 18, 2016 · fish for interactive use, zsh for scripting -- if it's just between those two. I really like Fish, but I just couldn't stick to it. , and upon completion, it will return the number of executions per second, with a higher number indicating better Top 5 open source command shells for Linux Learn about the various open source alternatives to using the standard bash shell in Linux, including ksh, tcsh, zsh, and fish. While both the shells are perfect for regular use, when you want to move into more specific use cases, both the shells perform differently because of the default features. Aug 15, 2025 · Bash Zsh or Fish? Discover strengths weaknesses and find the best shell for power users. Learn how to customize your shell with themes, plugins, and Starship for maximum productivity in 2025. Bash (and Zsh and POSIX) have all these arcane whitespace rules, poor docs (mostly Zsh), ugly syntax (fi, esac, etc), and dirty tricks that make it hard to make sense of. com Mar 29, 2025 · Bash vs Zsh vs Fish: Learn the key differences between the top Linux shells in 2025. When I say ag Oct 7, 2024 · Nushell is looking interesting … Written in Rust of course … Starting this thread to capture notes about it. Mar 3, 2017 · Most Linux distributions include the bash shell by default, but you could also switch to another shell environment. I still find myself frequently dropping into bash everywhere, but I really want fish to succeed. While there are various shell options available, Bash, Zsh, and Fish stand out as the most popular choices, each offering a unique set of features, making it crucial to understand their differences in order to select the right When comparing zsh vs fish (Friendly Interactive SHell), the Slant community recommends fish (Friendly Interactive SHell) for most people. ohmyzsh 🙃 A delightful community-driven (with 2,400+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration. However, they have distinct differences in terms of performance, syntax, and extensibility. I noticed better performance compared to ZSH, and the default configuration already includes Jul 14, 2025 · Understanding Shell Options: Fish vs. Shell Wars: Fish VS Zsh I think I'm a bit unique in the dev world in that I use two different shells as daily drivers. There are easy-install wrappers for them called OhMyFish and OhMyZsh; if you wanted to try one, I'd recommend using those resources. It does everything better than zsh and fish in my opinion: data oriented approach, more modern, vastly more powerful, less cryptic, more consistent so way easier to use for complicated stuff. May 15, 2020 · Fish vs. Nov 30, 2022 · Zsh vs Bash Let’s now look at the comparison between ZSH vs BASH for your command-line. You can configure prompt once and have it in bash, fish and zsh. You’d think that fish incorporating a lot of functionality that zsh has would However there is no conversation regarding fish and zsh, but someone close to me said that fish was quite lightweight and snappy. This page is powered by a knowledgeable community that helps you make an informed decision. It allows you to execute a series of commands in an infinite loop or until the timeout. Many people are still going to miss some Bash/ZSH features. How to setup Bash and Zsh on your computer Mar 19, 2025 · Compare the Bash vs. It provides you a set of customization to boost your productivity. The three main ones out there are Bash, Zsh, and Fish. I just want to maybe hear some opinions. Feb 1, 2025 · Super quick one I want to document here! I got myself on a side quest, again! No biggie, my ZSH shell was taking ages to load. zsh also has Feb 8, 2024 · fish: Ready to Use (But non-POSIX Compliant) # In the past few days, I tried out Fish, described as “ a smart and user-friendly command line shell ”. The two very powerful shells that I would recommend are Fish and Zsh. Bash is the reliable, time-tested option that prioritizes portability, while Zsh offers advanced features and customization for users who need a more tailored shell environment. Plugins list for zsh is just massive. Bash以及为什么要改用Fish 杭州程序员张张 公众号《前端全栈开发者》，聚焦大前端、全栈开发、程序员成长 收录于 · 前端全栈开发者 Warp supports popular shells across macOS, Windows, and Linux. Zsh is no slower than bash, but it will slow down a lot if you load a whole bunch of stuff with it. May 5, 2025 · In our previous post, Bash vs Zsh vs Fish – The Ultimate Linux Shell Comparison for 2025, we looked at these shells from a feature-focused viewpoint. I made the switch to the fish shell almost a year ago and here is why I switched. Dec 16, 2024 · Hopefully by outlining the background, pros and cons, feature comparisons, and key differentiators between Bash vs Zsh vs Fish – this guide has helped identify the best shell fit for your particular requirements as a beginner or advancing developer. rs Suggest alternative Edit details InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads Dec 13, 2022 · Since Fish by default comes with a lot of configurations already set, it is believed to be more beginner friendly than other sh options like Zsh. Apr 5, 2022 · I changed my prompt configurator from Oh-My-Zsh to Starship. Having a set of compatible programs would allow them to get used to the most interesting nushell features right now and make full switch once they'd start missing the rest of them. To specify possible completions for a command, zsh has three mechanisms: The “old” completion mechanism with compctl which you can forget about. I hope that anyone else struggling with sluggish startup times will find these optimizations helpful. Speed fish is faster than zsh. I’m 41, married with kids. Spelling correction It’s easy to have typos while working exclusively on the shell. Jul 5, 2025 · Zsh is better than Fish because it offers more flexibility and extensive plugins. But what is Zsh, and what is Bash? Both are powerful Unix shells with unique capabilities, making them popular among developers. The best reason to choose fish over zsh is that everything works so well out of the box that you stop messing with it. kpxtw dcy rryl lgtfi phmq xtdgc fxvtt btzib yyezou mtn ssicjj rjxbig aopozre otzret jrkgnd