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this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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there are other shells that have all the nice powershell things without the weird stuff (at least for not windows people), like nushell
although I wouldn't be surprised if powershell was the thing that started the trend of better shells
TIL. Looks like I will be installing Nushell. This is neat. Especially how everything returns the final value.
Random question for everyone from a bit of a noob. When I'm using Powershell (PS) in windows I can start to type the name of a built in command or one I have added to PATH and then press tab to auto complete the command. That part works the same in my Linux terminal.
What I can also do after I have typed that command into PS is start to type a file name that exists in the directory that PS is working in and then press tab to auto complete or cycle through the files that match and it even formats the name of the file correctly (meaning if it has a space in the name it will wrap the name in quotes so that it is understood by the commands they are fed to). This auto completing of file names even works on files that were created after the PS window was opened. This functionality doesn't seem to exist by default in any distro I have used. Is it possible to do this in the Linux terminal?
Although I have done some distro hopping, most of them have ultimately been Ubuntu based. Currently running Kubuntu.
By default Bash will auto complete filenames (In fact, in 25 years, i can't remember the time bash didn't). Sometimes, there are autocomplete 'helpers' that try to be overly smart (ie, only autocompleting files that have the right extension, which can interfere when you are doing creative things with mis-named file). However, in Powershell, cmdlets declare a type for each of their parameters, which lets powershell autocomplete the right type of item, which can make it a bit more magical and reliable.
I mean, I'm not a big fan of bash, the most likely default shell, so my advice would be to explore some alternate shells.
I am a little surprised completions aren't working in bash by default, but yeah idk if it's possible to get the cycling through suggestions. double tap tab and it should at least list the options though.
I'd recommend you hop between some shells and see what you like. most distros tend to keep the default shell pretty vanilla, the most change you'll get is maybe zsh with some nicer defauls.
nushell is great and would be my first recommendation. everything is structured like powershell, but way less verbose and more emphasis on integrating the existing cli ecosystem than pwsh's commandlets for everything.
fish or oh-my-zsh are things other people recommend. you don't get structured data but they do give a better completion experience and other nice things
I want to like xonsh, and used it for a few years, but it has the same problems pwsh has with separate ecosystems of structured commands and unstructured text. if you're a python person though I'd consider it too though.