I’m switching to it slowly. I used fish on linux and powershell on windows. I want to be able to use the same shell on both systems and prefer not to rely on microsoft. I feel that data based shells like powershell and nu are the future :)
It’s pretty nice. I’ve been following its progress essentially since the beginning and would like to adopt it as my primary shell eventually, but it’s had some blockers that prevent me from switching completely, most of which have been resolved by now. The one I’m currently waiting for is the ability to suspend and resume processes: https://github.com/nushell/nushell/issues/247
I’ve been daily driving for right around a year now. There have been less breaks and difficulties than I expected from pre-1.0 software and it has made my shell experience so delightful!
I find that when I want to do something simple quickly, nushell enables me to do it with no context switching, little to no friction, and no googling. I can just open/http get my data, pipe it through a really straight forward pipeline that practically writes itself with how clear the commands are, and save it in whatever format is convenient to me. I don’t have to monkey around with Python and packages and virtual environments, and I don’t have to spend 75% of my time googling and debugging insane bashisms. Nushell just works, and the help is so convenient I almost never have to go to the docs.
My absolute favorite feature is that it’s truly cross-platform. I don’t have to install a compatibility layer like minGW on Windows, I can just make it my default shell and it works great. Then I can use it the exact same way in WSL, macOS, and Linux.
The reasons to not be interested in nushell imo are:
- You’re already comfortable to the point of mastery with bash/zsh/fish, so the ease of use and quality of life improvements from nushell won’t be as valuable to you compared to the cost of switching.
- You spend more time in the shell on random servers you don’t want to customize than you do in your own shell. Obviously we are (infinitely?) far away from nushell becoming a default on any platform, so if you aren’t gonna be able to install in the places you would want it most, you’ll just end up infuriated that nothing else is as good as it.
Interesting for data driven servers where you routinely have to check data. I can image Mailstorages etc. Could benefit from this.
As normal shell I would still prefer zsh or fish due to its popularity.
I love NuShell. I use it as my daily driver, and have for about a year now.
