I use powershell for some scripting. I've been using .net/powershell forever and I know it better than python. If bash can't handle it in a few lines, and I don't have to use python, I'll go powershell.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
69 points (94.8% liked)
Linux
57031 readers
1231 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
I've used powershell in previous jobs and if you learn it really well I cannot deny it is super powerful.
For a college project, a friend of mine somehow made a hexadecimal file dumper with it, with formatting and everything (think like what you would see in wireshark) in one, reasonably long, line of powershell.
However I'm just not a big fan of it personally for syntactical reasons (even with the syntax being super logical) and much prefer bash, or other unix-like native shells. I've been thinking about taking zsh for a spin recently to see what it's like.
At work I use powershell to ssh into Linux boxes fairly regularly.
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
If you are using FreeBSD, you are probably using the Almquist Shell.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almquist_shell
BSD has not used Bourne since the 90’s. Bash is of course the “Bourne Again Shell”.
For Linux fans, “dash” is the (Debian Almquist Shell). It is the Linux version of the BSD shell. Dash is the default /usr/bin/sh in Debian and Ubuntu I think. So, pretty close to the same shell as FreeBSD.
That's the one!
SO much of the documentation I've seen refers to the Bourne shell I just assumed thats what I was using!
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.
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 use fish
Not that kind of "use!"
only for extraordinarily cursed situations where games need it in wine/proton
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
only when dealing with azure for work. otherwise bash/python work just fine and have for me for the last 30 odd years.
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.
Honest question: why?
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.
For a long time I used a super customized zsh setup. It was, unfortunately, crazy slow and regularly broke on updates. It had precisely all the features and behavior I wanted though. Like you say, zsh is very customizable.
Then I switched to tiling window managers and with that to the alacritty terminal. This made me value start up times and performance, as I was constantly opening and closing terminals. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time optimizing my zsh config to be as fast as possible. This is also what I used for a long time before correcting my ways.
When that device, my work laptop, failed, I had to set up my desktop for work. This involved setting up zsh, which I quickly realized was a lot of work. So, on a whim, I installed fish.
Oh my god. Not only did fish have nearly all the features I wanted out of the box, but it was easy to add plugins (customizations) in a performant way. Fish even had default behavior I didn't know I needed. And most importantly: it was crazy fast!
Since then I have never left fish. It is so much better than anything I had imagined. At this point I use way more default features as well, so I pretty much only add the tide prompt and zoxide. I also have a functions and abbreviations folder which is essentially my zsh alias collection.
The crazy part is really how much faster it is though. I really, really love it. And now they're rewriting it in Rust as well!
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
bash is also well supported in Windows via WSL
load more comments
(19 replies)
Basically no one is using powershell on Linux. zsh is popular and i'm using fish.
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.
yeah overall bandwidth was probably a consideration
Finally! Nushell is awesome. The infrequent deprecations are a bit annoying, but I prefer them to having a bad program go 1.0
load more comments
(3 replies)
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.
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 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.
What's wrong with bash? Something missing or not to your liking? It can be configured
Maybe it can, but with fish, it does what I want right out of the box, and I don't have to spend time configuring it.
Manipulating data in bash is bad.
Base 64 encode all your array variables then decode them when needed
Real
It has atrocious error handling, and there's no reasons why arrays should only be 1D.
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.
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 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
view more: next ›