Merry Christmas,

I've been doing a bit of research on a handful of shells. A Google search of "powerful terminal shells for Linux", pretty much repeat these shells listed here.

It almost doesn't matter how I tried to reword "Linux terminals/emulators"… BASH seems to dominate tutorial/guides.

There is one video that stood out, BASH vs ZSH.

I know were allowed to have multiple terminals installed on Linux…

I was just wondering what you old pros are using for work/4 home/4 programming etc. etc. etc.

I'm slowly learning C++/C… So, CSH is definitely something I'm going to look more into.
Python is another programming language I'm going to slowly start learning here pretty soon. Any suggestions for the Python language as far as the Shell is concerned?

Any and all feedback/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance! :-)

The C shell was great in its day but it should be avoided these days.

For scripting I'd stick as close to POSIX as possible. /bin/sh

For interactive sessions, if you are starting new I'd say Zsh. Otherwise, it's a toss up between Bash an Zsh.

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i tend to agree that bash dominates.
i would use it while you're still learning, later you can make your own informed decision.

your thread title: the terminal emulator is what the (interactive) shell runs in on a graphical session; it is a separate application.
for a terminal emulator, i like to use something lightweight that does not depend on any graphical toolkit.
urxvt (aka rxvt-unicode) has been very good to me over the years.
for the shell, i use bash interactively and code for bash, but sometimes i deliberately choose dash (when the script is very simple and speed is of the essence).

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For Linux: bash + terminator
For Mac: bash + iTerm2

Both of these terminal-emulators have my favorite feature, the horizontal and/or vertical "splitting"
since I admin Linux all day, it seems like a good fit to have {2,3,4} work areas on the desktop in the "same space" as 1 work area...??

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Just sayin'

Happy New Year.....!

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Are 'terminal emulator' and 'shell' synonyms? I thought they were different things, e.g. you cannot use ksh instead of xterm or vice versa.

yes, c shell should not be used.
I would suggest you to start with bash and if that was not sufficient, try zsh (it has a lot of features). I mean as a working, interactive shell.
Python cannot be used as an interactive shell, but you can implement anything you want, so if you are unable to do something in bash, go for it.

you are absolutely right, nevem teve.
a shell and a terminal emulator are 2 separate things.

As a terminal to do something quick I have guake installed as a quick drop down interface but use urxvt when I have multiple screens open.

Ditto to the bash recommendations as a good place to start

My shell/terminal is Terminator, TMux (come on: first mention?) and FISH.

For Python, I like both bpython and ptpython.

isn't terminator somewhat redundant when you also use tmux?

I like Terminator's gtk3/libvte design.

I know that a lot of tmux users like either st or Termite, but I ended up trying those and switching back to Terminator.

^ yes but terminator is such a sluggish python due to its tiling capabilites, which you really don't need because you already use tmux?.
vte + gtk3, there's a few lighter alternatives out there, e.g. lxterminal, roxterm, sakura...

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I switched to Alacritty last night.

Like st, it's designed to be used with tmux.

I'm not running a system where there's any meaning difference in performance or resource usage, but it works well, has good defaults, has easy configuration, and supports the features that matter (like 24-bit color).

What do you need all of those colors for?

Back in the day, there were 2 colors, etc.

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Vim color schemes.