

The trick is being aware that it allows you to change both the default login and default interactive shells. The chsh command allows you to change your default shell. If you decide to make the fish-or any other shell-your default, you’ll need to use the chsh command. You can explore before you make the jump and adopt one as your go-to shell. That’s great for trying out new shells, seeing what they can do, and whether you get along with them.

It closes like any other program, and we return to the bash shell. We can also use exit to exit the fish shell. We’re running fish like any other program. Because the value in the $SHELL environment variable hasn’t been changed, it has the same value in the fish shell that it did in the bash shell. So, the fish shell inherits the global and exported environment variables from the bash shell. When you launch a new shell (or any other program), it inherits the environment of the parent shell. What might be surprising is the $SHELL environment still holds the path to the bash executable, /bin/bash. When we launch the fish shell, we get a friendly welcome message and the command prompt changes.
#How to change default shell to bash on mac install
On Fedora, type the following: sudo dnf install fish On Manjaro, use pacman: sudo pacman -Sy fish On Ubuntu, we type the following command: sudo apt-get install fish Let’s install the fish shell and set it as the default for dave. That’s a neat, lightweight way to provide a safety net for scripts that expect to find sh on modern systems. if we dig a little deeper, though, we’ll see that it’s a symbolic link that actually points to dash, the lightweight shell used to execute scripts: ls -l /bin/sh Let’s see what runs when you type sh: which sh Do you really have that ancient shell on your machine, and is it being used to run your scripts? The which command will tell us which program actually runs when you type a command. This instructs the system to use the sh shell to execute the script. It’s included purely to maintain compatibility with older scripts that still have the following as their first line: #!/bin/sh It’s no longer maintained and has long since been superseded by modern shells.

Sh is the Thompson shell, written way back in 1971 by Ken Thompson of Bell Labs fame. We’ve mentioned bash, dash, and rbash, but what is sh? It simply lists the contents of the /etc/shells file: cat /etc/shells To see which shells are installed on your computer, use this command. RELATED: What's the Difference Between Bash, Zsh, and Other Linux Shells? List the Installed Shells ksh: The KornShell provides a particularly strong scripting language.Amongst its many other perks, fish offers suggestions for commands based on your history and the contents of the current folder, similar to predictive text. fish: This friendly interactive shell was written from scratch and isn’t derived from any of the other shell families.It offers neat improvements, like command spellchecks and suggested corrections. zsh: The Z shell is a modern take on the bash family of shells.While bash is the default login and interactive shell, dash is used to run system processes because it’s much lighter than bash. dash: The Debian Alquist Shell is the default shell script in Ubuntu.ash: The Almquist shell is a lighter version of bash.rbash: This Restricted bash shell provides minimal functionality to the person or script running in it.bash: The Bourne again shell is the default in many distributions.We’ve covered the different Linux shells before, but here’s a quick introduction to the most common: RELATED: What is ZSH, and Why Should You Use It Instead of Bash? A Bucketful of Shells However, another shell might offer a time-saving difference that would have a big impact on your workflow. In most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, the default shell is bash. Plus, trying a new shell on Linux is easy. If your thinking aligns with that designer’s, that shell might well be a good fit for you. Shells tend to be designed by people who want things to behave in a specific way. However, they each perform these tasks in their own way, and have their own special features and idiosyncrasies. They all allow you to perform the same core tasks: explore the file system, work with files, launch programs, and run scripts. There are many different shells available on Linux. If it needs outside help, it searches the path and finds the programs that can do whatever it is you requested. If it can perform your bidding itself, it does so. The shell checks your input and figures out what you want. It provides the environment inside a terminal window that allows you to type commands and run programs. The shell sits between you and the operating system.
