Uninstall and replace the Bash

[David Chiang]

I'm looking for the safest possible way to change the old shell to the Z shell (zsh). This could get a little complicated, but I want to risk it as the latter is a lot more powerful. In addition, it's also constantly being developed and could soon replace the former.

[t42]

How to switch from bash to zsh - Linux Mint Forums

[Flemur]

I'm looking for the safest possible way to change the old shell to the Z shell (zsh). This could get a little complicated, but I want to risk it as the latter is a lot more powerful. In addition, it's also constantly being developed and could soon replace the former.

Thanks, t42!

Here are several of my 2-cents:

Changing to zsh isn't complicated.
Don't uninstall bash, other things need it (like all those scripts with #!/bin/bash).
Don't use those "helper" things (e.g. oh-my-zsh, etc) I mentioned in that post.

I use terminal history a lot and zsh uses a (surprisingly user-hostile) negative number to return the last N entries:
history -3 = show the last three commands. history 3 = show everything except the first three commands, which is pretty useless; hence my alias h='(){ history "-"$1 }', so h 3 shows the last three commands.

[David Chiang]

Thanks t42, but this isn't exactly what I want. I don't want to just switch between the two, I want a permanent transition to zsh.

@Flemur
Many thanks also to you for the warnings, of course i would like to do it without additional software, although something like that is certainly difficult. I don't think it's a good idea to run two shells in parallel, so I'm looking for a way to completely replace the bash.

[Flemur]

Thanks t42, but this isn't exactly what I want. I don't want to just switch between the two, I want a permanent transition to zsh.

As it says in that post:

To make it permanent, enter these
chsh -l # list the shells
chsh -s /bin/zsh # use the FULL PATH of zsh returned from chsh -l

Now when you login or start a terminal, you'll be running zsh.

[David Chiang]

As it says in that post:

To make it permanent, enter these
chsh -l # list the shells
chsh -s /bin/zsh # use the FULL PATH of zsh returned from chsh -l

Now when you login or start a terminal, you'll be running zsh.

The problem with this is that it's just a permanent switch to zsh and not a real transition!

[Flemur]

The problem with this is that it's just a permanent switch to zsh and not a real transition!

Lemme make a note for future reference... permanent switch means something completely different than real transition for some reason.

[David Chiang]

Lemme make a note for future reference... permanent switch means something completely different than real transition for some reason.

No, not for 'some reason', it's for a good reason!
As long as the bash is still installed there's always an easy way back and that's not what I'm talking about.
(Some people obviously have a problem with meaningful reading.)

[Flemur]

Lemme make a note for future reference... permanent switch means something completely different than real transition for some reason.

No, not for 'some reason', it's for a good reason!
As long as the bash is still installed there's always an easy way back and that's not what I'm talking about.

Good luck

[David Chiang]

Good luck!

It has nothing to do with luck, more like an ice-cold calculation, but thank you very much for the hint!