Are there no shells for Windows other than PowerShell and CMD?

Question

And I don't mean terminal emulators, because I know Console Host, WT, Kitty, Alacritty. I mean shells like bash, zsh.How come there are so many alternatives for linux but none for Windows?Nothing against PowerShell, I'm just curious.

delta_p_delta_x · Accepted Answer

Why not PowerShell, though? If you ever want to directly administer Windows through the command-line, PowerShell is increasingly your only bet, as older CMD executables are deprecated.I'll suffix with my opinion that PowerShell is much nicer than many POSIX shells, especially given its hybrid object-oriented + functional pipeline paradigm.

cloudking · Answer

You can get Linux shells and environments in Windows via WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

andrewf · Answer

There's 4DOS descendent Take Command: https://jpsoft.com/

anigbrowl · Answer

Way back when there were a few substitutes for command.com, but none of them offered sufficiently utility to gain traction outside of the IT department. And since it's now trivially easy to run a unix virtual machine and do your command line stuff there if you want, I'm not sure there's much inventive to develop alternatives.

runjake · Answer

There's plenty. Do more research.- WSL -> Bash (Best, IMHO)- Cygwin (old, slow IMHO)- Git Bash (essentially includes bash for windows with a bunch of the more popular add-ons.But, PowerShell is a pretty great shell, too. Make sure you're running the latest 7.x version, as it's improved tons.

metadat · Answer

What classification does Cygwin fall under?It can run most or all of the widespread *nix shells.

HiramKHurley · Answer

There's Yori http://www.malsmith.net/yori/

Kukumber · Answer

I personally don't count powershell as a shell, it's more like an interpreted/jit compiled .net interactive CLI 'shell', hence why it is slow to start and to runA shell is a program that takes your commands and send them to the OS, it doesn't compile anything

spacechild1 · Answer

I always use the Msys2 shell.

melony · Answer

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-bash

Are there no shells for Windows other than PowerShell and CMD?

And I don't mean terminal emulators, because I know Console Host, WT, Kitty, Alacritty. I mean shells like bash, zsh.
How come there are so many alternatives for linux but none for Windows?
Nothing against PowerShell, I'm just curious.

You can get Linux shells and environments in Windows via WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

There's 4DOS descendent Take Command: https://jpsoft.com/

There's plenty. Do more research.
- WSL -> Bash (Best, IMHO)
- Cygwin (old, slow IMHO)
- Git Bash (essentially includes bash for windows with a bunch of the more popular add-ons.
But, PowerShell is a pretty great shell, too. Make sure you're running the latest 7.x version, as it's improved tons.

What classification does Cygwin fall under?
It can run most or all of the widespread *nix shells.

There's Yori http://www.malsmith.net/yori/

I personally don't count powershell as a shell, it's more like an interpreted/jit compiled .net interactive CLI 'shell', hence why it is slow to start and to run
A shell is a program that takes your commands and send them to the OS, it doesn't compile anything

I always use the Msys2 shell.

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-bash