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Comment by k310 | Hacker News Reader

Aside: zsh is standard on macs now, thanks to Apple's lawyers freaking out over bash license terms. If you want to change to industry standard bash (I did) then there are three ways to do it.

Short: csh -s /bin/bash

Others: system settings or terminal settings.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/terminal/trml113/mac

[2] https://www.howtogeek.com/444596/how-to-change-the-default-s...

You may want to update bash via homebrew, or install the full set of Xcode command line tools. (But not full Xcode environment)

xcode-select --install

[3] https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/install-xcode-comman...

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OP, I don't suggest you do this until you know what you're doing -- if ever.

Just start with the built-in zsh. Nearly everything you learn with zsh will work the same over on bash and Linux.

Also, I suggest resisting the urge of listening to those telling you to install oh-my-zsh. IMHO, it's a bloated plugins manager (no disrespect to robby <3) and introduces too much magic for beginners. Start basic.

I was curious as to why someone would prefer bash over zsh i.e. what are the salient differences, and a brief search led me to this thorough answer:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/361870/what-are-th...

…but I’m still not sure there’s a material difference that would impact me, and I’ve been programming professionally since the mid 90s. If I can ask a side question, why would one switch back to bash from zsh?

I prefer bash because I'm more used to it and I feel like zsh gets in the way. One example would be tab completion. When there are multiple matches, zsh will cycle through all possible matches (like cmd.exe, but slightly less annoying). Do Not Want.

> Apple's lawyers freaking out over bash license terms

Interesting! Got a pointer ?

Since macOS Catalina, zsh has been the default. bash switched to GPLv3 awhile back, and to avoid licensing issues, Apple never updated bash past 3.2, which was already well over a decade old at the time.

https://thenextweb.com/news/why-does-macos-catalina-use-zsh-...

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