Fish is a user-friendly command line shell for UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Rust




Zsh is described as 'UNIX command interpreter (shell) which of the standard shells most resembles the Korn shell (ksh); its compatibility with the 1988 Korn shell has been gradually increasing. It includes enhancements of many types, notably in the command-line editor, options for' and is a very popular Shell in the os & utilities category. There are more than 25 alternatives to Zsh for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac, Windows, BSD and Cygwin apps. The best Zsh alternative is fish, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Zsh are GNU Bourne Again SHell, Nu Shell, Elk Shell and the xonsh shell.
Fish is a user-friendly command line shell for UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux




Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, that will appear in the GNU operating system. Bash is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.

This project has reached a minimum-viable product level of quality. While contributors dogfood it as their daily driver, it may be unstable for some commands. Future releases will work fill out missing features and improve stability.



Elk is an experimental shell language that aims to seamlessly combine the syntax of a shell language like bash with the syntax of a general-purpose language like Python. Bash is great for executing programs and handling files, but can be quite limiting and tedious to use when it...

Xonsh is a Python-powered, cross-platform, Unix-gazing shell language and command prompt. The language is a superset of Python 3.4+ with additional shell primitives that you are used to from Bash and IPython. It works on all major systems including Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.


The KornShell language was designed and developed by David G. Korn at AT&T Bell Laboratories. It is an interactive command language that provides access to the UNIX system and to many other systems, on the many different computers and workstations on which it is implemented.

A new system shell that uses the Janet Language for high level scripting while also supporting the things we love about sh. Minimal knowledge of janet is required for basic shell usage, but as you become more familiar with janet, your shell...

DASH is a POSIX-compliant implementation of /bin/sh that aims to be as small as possible. It does this without sacrificing speed where possible. In fact, it is significantly faster than bash (the GNU Bourne-Again SHell) for most tasks. DASH stands for Debian Almquist Shell.


Not meant to be interactive.