Command Shell
A shell is a program that translates text commands (like ls
, vim
, reboot
etc) into instructions for your computer. The default shell on NixOS is bash, but it can be easily changed.
Enable
When adding a new shell, always enable the shell system-wide, even if it's already enabled in your Home Manager configuration, otherwise it won't source the necessary files.
For example, for Zsh:
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
programs.zsh.enable = true;
Changing the default shell
defaultUserShell
in the options search
useDefaultShell
in the options search
To only change the default shell for one of the users, see
Changing /bin/sh
/bin/sh
is a symlink to your default POSIX-compliant shell. It's used when writing shell scripts, so that the script works on all machines independently of which shell the user is using. /bin/sh doesn't have to be the same as your interactive shell (i.e. the one you use in your terminal). For example, some people set their interactive shells to zsh/fish but set /bin/sh to dash, because it's fast and scripts don't need any of those fancy zsh/fish features.
To change your default POSIX shell on NixOS, use
# Dash is just an example, you can use whatever you want
environment.binsh = "${pkgs.dash}/bin/dash";