At work I use powershell to ssh into Linux boxes fairly regularly.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Only when I'm doing MS shit for work. Otherwise I find it kind of a pain. I get that some of it's ideas are nice, but functionally it doesn't actually do anything for me on unixy systems that bash doesn't so I don't. I'm not going to install it on all my servers so using it for scripting doesn't make sense and I do more Linux admin than MS.
I used to use fish but I'm learning Unix right now and am trying to use only defaults so I can learn freebsd the way it exists on a dvd, so right now I've been using the Bourne shell
I use both fish and zsh
somehow
That's... a big gap. I think I'd just be confused all the time if I had to switch between them.
I mean, missing commands say that it's zsh but everything else says that it's fish.
only when dealing with azure for work. otherwise bash/python work just fine and have for me for the last 30 odd years.
only for extraordinarily cursed situations where games need it in wine/proton
I use fish
Not that kind of "use!"
Zsh is nice, particularly with a couple of plugins
I use it for some things. It's good for file batch processing, for example. I could probably do those things in python but I use C# and powershell at work so I know .net better.
At work we use it sometimes on Linux because we maintain a script that needs to work on multiple platforms, ps1 did that in this usecase better.
Came down to ps1 on Linux was better and more predictable than bash on windows.
Sadly.
Same, only time we used it is when we needed a script that was running in Windows and Linux, easier to maintain one script that 2 in 2 languages
The idea of someone using powershell when you are on Linux is a form of self harm and you need to reach out as its clearly a cry for help.
I tried to use it for admin in a Windows environment, but half the modules I needed wouldn't work in Linux which made it pretty much useless.
Basically no one is using powershell on Linux. zsh is popular and i'm using fish.
Honest question: why?
Because I have to admin Windows boxes and M365. There are PS modules for lots of different MS things.
Because, as someone who dislikes MS as much as possible, Powershell is one of the few things they done right :) And when you manage mostly Windows servers and a few Linux servers, why not choose a solution that works on both platforms? And yes, perl, python, ruby, they all work on Windows too, but its just not comparable to powershell on Windows.
So i can understand why someone asks this question :)
Personally, i keep them both seperated, powershell on Windows, bash on Linux. But i can understand why someone might choose to go “powershell all the way” :)
Powershell is a better language but is absolutely dogshit for interactive use IME. It's SO wordy and the excessive use of camelCase is annoying and I yearn for simple GNU coreutils every time I touch it. Like, give me tail -f please, why does cat also have a -Wait option or whatever the fuck
Understandable sentiments. I’m a MS Edge user, for instance, and despite slowly switching almost all my other services, MS Edge just gets it all right. Brave’s featureset is basically a lesser version, and Firefox is getting better, but Microsoft (of all companies) genuinely made a great browser.
Why not? It seems like a well supported shell on windows that isn't terrible.
It seems like a well supported shell on windows
But you aren't using Windows. You're also now adding a .NET Core requirement for any Linux box wanting to use it. That means limited functionality as its not the full blown .NET framework. So, compared to something like bash, you now have added requirements with less functionality.
To answer your original question though, a lot of people prefer zsh as its got a crazy amount of customization you can do. People also like fish due to it being very friendly and interactive.
limited functionality as it’s not the full blown .NET
This is misleading to the point of being completely wrong
On Linux, you do not have access to Windows UI frameworks like WinForms, the Windows registry, and to System.Drawimg (because it is just a thin wrapper over Win32). Essentially the entire .NET standard library is available on Linux.
I would argue that .NET is actually better on Linux for some things (like web dev).
That said, I can see no reason to use PowerShell on Linux unless you are a .NET dev.
There are PowerShell cmdlets that do not work on Linux. Again, mostly stuff that talks to explicitly Windows services and sub-systems. But that has nothing to do with .NET at all. Also, path separators and case sensitivity is different on Linux. So, cross-platform scripting is a pain.
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bash is also well supported in Windows via WSL
exchange online shell
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No.
I usually just use Bash; there’s a certain level of complexity where it begins to be more reasonable to just use Python.
I use xonsh.
I use fish, I had to learn some new syntax and modify some functions since it's not POSIX-compliant, but it was pretty painless.
I use PowerShell on Linux for work stuff. We maintain a set of Azure deployment scripts that were originally developed on PS 4 and 5 for Classic Azure. They’ve been migrated to AzureRM and now PS Core and Az. The scripts are now fully cross-platform.
We even use some PS remoting over SSH for remotely deploying stuff on Linux VMs where we run some bash commands for configuration.
I started with bash scripting years ago and never really used PS for Windows or exchange server admin. Just in the last decade for Azure stuff.
Sounds weird and horrible but it’s fine.
Bash is still home
i’m a big nushell fan.
i was once sitting where you are. when PowerShell was released on Linux i thought about switching and read the manual. i really liked some of the philosophy:
- descriptive names for commands.
catandlshave canonical short names to save disk space on the systems they were created for. this is no longer a constraint and aliasing a longer command name is better than “git gud n00b” when it comes to discoverability. - structured data. “everything is a string” is great when programs play nice. it breaks apart when programs prefer human readable output or worse don’t provide structured output, like
—format=jsonor whatever. - modern control flow semantics. yes, pipes are great, let’s keep those, but why do i have to rtfm every time i want to bang out a simple script with an if-else control flow?
i looked around at a few solutions. xonsh uses Python. eshell is integrated into emacs and uses Elisp. i briefly tried to hack something together using Kotlin Script. and yeah, i tried PowerShell.
i settled on nushell not just because it fulfilled the above requirements, but also:
- simple data types. string, number, list, record, and table are about the only types you deal with.
- wide support for structured data. JSON, YAML, TOML, CSV, etc have parsers built in.
jqand other such tools are made irrelevant because you just load it intonushellquery with a unified DSL using common syntax likeselectandwhere.
honestly, these are the killer features. there are so many more. context aware autocomplete, modules and overlays, super easy custom completions, extension functions (one of my favorites is git remote open), cross platform (if you’re forced to use Windows), plugins, and i can contribute since i do Rust development for work.
give PowerShell a shot, but i think nushell is the happy medium
catandlshave canonical short names to save disk space on the systems they were created for.
I thought it was to save on keystrokes due to slow transmission speeds.
Finally! Nushell is awesome. The infrequent deprecations are a bit annoying, but I prefer them to having a bad program go 1.0
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It is not always Bash. Zsh comes as a default with some Arch based distros like Manjaro (xfce) and Garuda, plus Kali of course. But what is the point to use PowerShell in Linux? .. Azure, Exchange or Windows servers or something else I don't get?
I use Linux to get away from PowerShell 😂 I did try zsh though, it was nice, maybe give it a shot.
I use fish, but only interactively. Scripts are either in bash or Python depending om what I need.
I use fish, mostly because it is the default on CachyOS
Does zsh count?
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