🚀 go-pugleaf

X-Orig-MsgId: <kusu2l7ci3a.fsf@buphy.bu.edu>

"Jennifer \"AstroJenn\" Martino" <twpyhr@mindspring.com> writes:
> my first instinct is to go with zsh.. with the (flawed?) mentality
> that
> bigger is better.. but.. i would like to know what others would
> reccomend for the uber-uber-uber-uber (etc.) newbie.

I thnik you said you were using Linux..? so I'd go with bash
if I were you (which I'm not, btw. :)
Just when you think of linux shell, you think of bash,
that's all. At least I do (which remember, I'm not you),
but then I also use tcsh at school on the IRIX and AIX machines,
and I think tcsh ist sehr gut.
A brief brief abridged hierarchy of shells:

the bash shell (Bourne again shell) was derived from the Bourne
shell (sh) and so was the C shell (csh). The csh was made by
Bill Joy, who also made 'vi', which is the defacto standard
text editor of Unix (though anyone with any sense whatsoever
will see that emacs is far superior <grin>); I guess Bill
needed a shell which would actually work with something as
ugly as vi. heheheh.. The tcsh is an enhanced version of
the csh; therefore, if you were thinking of getting the
csh, you might as well've gotten the tcsh. The ash shell
is pretty minimal and you don't want it unless you're
using Minix or ELKS, probably. There is also a sash shell
which comes with ELKS, and it's even more primitive than
ash (but is VERY nice if you want to learn how a shell
works -- you can easily follow the source code, no problem,
if you know C)

> or am i just
> agonizing over it too much? (especially i think i read that i can
> change
> which shell i use later on.)

yeah, you can switch shells easily. Just edit the /etc/passwd
file, the last field contains which shell to invoke on
login (a blank last field defualts to /bin/sh).

> another stupid newbie question: do all distributions offer the same
> shells?

no. bash is pretty much standard for linux, though.

-- 
While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly. --Longfellow