What on earth are you talking about? zsh isn't bloated by any stretch, nor is it any slower than bash in any meaningful way.
Chances are, like in the article, you installed oh-my-zsh, a third party configuration framework.
Chances are, like in the article, you installed oh-my-zsh, a third party configuration framework.
$ tim 'bash -lic logout' 'zsh -lic logout'
55.3 +- 3.7 μs (AlreadySubtracted)Overhead
7454 +- 26 μs bash -lic logout
7934 +- 39 μs zsh -lic logout
About 20,000 entries in the Zsh history slowing it a little. All completion activated (but zcompile'd, along with a very large digraphs.zwc).
I think most would not be troubled by taking 1.06X longer, though, especially at this 8 ms scale and for interactive session initiation. Note this test upper bounds Time To First Prompt { a different "TTFP" from Time To First Plot ;-) }, since it also exits as part of the `-c`.