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Err isn't that a given, being that Linux is the only system that comes with or defaults to, the POS known as bash?

Wow! this is really new knowledge to me, how is it that linux defaults to bash? downloading linux doesent seem to reveal any defaulting to bash. I cant seem to find the place where its bundled? perhaps you can enlighten me.

and now on to what you really say. Bash really isnt that bad, its quite fast, runs on lots of systems, and its easy to use.

nevertheless, it simply isnt zsh

how is it that linux defaults to bash?

Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva and Slackware all default to bash.

When people say Linux, they usually mean one or more of those operating systems, and/or their derivatives. It's technically wrong, but the technically right phrase is impractically long and context nearly always disambiguates the term.

Sometimes people say something about "Linux" that is true of one or two of those OSs, but not of the others and that _is_ irritating. But that's life.

Edited 2007-02-22 01:48

you mean the impratically long sentences like "popular linux distributions", "most linux dists" and the like?

My apologies. I suppose I should have said "The myriad of operating systems that consist of a linux kernel and gnu+bsd+other userland which have been rolled into specific distributions". FFS stop playing RMS, you know damn well what I meant. Personally I will not use any other shell but tcsh for a login, and scripting belongs to sh/ksh. Bash is way too buggy, bloated, and incompatible with everything for my tastes.

Wow! You blind me with your science! Really, it will be difficult to enlighten someone who already shines so brightly.

I thought that the fact that 98% of the distros default to bash would reveal some defaulting quite clearly, and that the place where it is usually bundled is /bin/bash.

However, you have opened my eyes to the blinding fact that there is always some weirdo running his very own configuration of Linux from Scratch, who does things otherwise, and who will be very deeply offended if for a moment he is patronisingly put in the stinking pile of those who go with the flow.

I feel enlightened. I will go to bed feeling so much wiser!

POS compared to what? csh and tcsh are a compatibility nightmare and not much easier to script in than bash. ksh is possibly a little better for scripting than bash in some respects, but worse in others, and not even close as an interactive shell. Yeah, zsh is pretty good, probably better than bash in most respects. But there are plenty of extensions that give bash most of zsh's advanced features.

In my mind, the minute a task becomes too complex to be manageable with bash/ksh, I reach for Python.

It would be cool if there was a shell that was basically a python interpreter but with added shell functionality like executing commands in $PATH or piping without any added syntax. (Executing and piping in python is a lot more complicated than a standard shell.)

I've got just what you're looking for:

http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/

I think you'll be quite pleased.

Err isn't that a given, being that Linux is the only system that comes with or defaults to, the POS known as bash?

OsX also comes with bash, and it is in fact the default. Luckily it also comes with ksh. Just fyi.

I don't get the OP's gripe, the article clearly states : "The Bash shell is available on many Linux® and UNIX® systems today, and is a common default shell on Linux." Hence the article is featured in IBM's Linux tips section. Nothing out of the ordinary since IBM actually offer Linux on P-series as an option.

Edited 2007-02-22 06:18

It's because AIX has a very high degree of "Linux affinity." That's why it's called AIX 5L. The L stands for Linux. BTW, I'm not kidding.

Modern System P servers (AIX 5L 5.3 on POWER5) consist of multiple virtual machines called LPARs that may be configured dynamically at runtime. LPAR configuration is done through an interface called the Hardware Management Console (HMC), which is a commodity PC running Linux and attached to any number of System P servers via Ethernet. So you can't run AIX these days without running Linux as well.

yeahh !! thanks for sharing !! I doesn't really know how much you know, stuff like this ALWAYS comes in handy ..
thank you !